The Lord Is My Shepherd, Eastman Johnson, 1863 |
Yesterday Jane Bartlett sent this
to serve as a tonic for the two days I spent thinking about what she called Dead Baby Art. Another artist, Kristine
Greenizen, calls it Damien Hirst
Steak Spectacular: spectacle that has little about the craft and thought of art
in it.
To our modern eyes, The
Lord is My Shepherd looks quaint, but it was painted in 1863, shortly after
the Emancipation Proclamation was issued. There were roughly 4 million enslaved
blacks in America, and by no means was emancipation assured.
A Ride for Liberty: The Fugitive Slaves, Eastman Johnson, c. 1862 |
“This painting is a statement, a teachable moment, and even harsh in its own way, but an expression that does not arrive before the work of art does,” Jane wrote. The message has not been divorced from the medium itself.
Johnson accords this young black man the dignity of assuming
he can read and understand Scripture. Of course, you think, but that was by
no means the universal opinion in 1863. The assumption that a black person
could and should direct his own spiritual life was a politically- and
religiously-charged issue at the time.
Portrait of an Old Man in an Armchair, Rembrandt van Rijn, 1654 |
The painting appears dark to our modern eyes, but Johnson is
deliberately modeling his technique after Rembrandt. Rembrandt did not always
enjoy the cult-like status we accord him today. He was rediscovered in the 19th
century by French intellectuals who saw in him a champion of realism (most
notably, the poet Charles Baudelaire).
Johnson is classified today as a “genre painter” for his
depictions of slave life. It would be more accurate to call him social realist
in the tradition of the Barbizon painters before him and the Ashcan School who
would follow. By using a technique he associated with social realism, he is
making the political nature of his work perfectly clear. That we no longer see
his paintings as revolutionary is a testimony to his (and other artists’)
polemical skills: they have thoroughly converted us to their viewpoint.
Let me know if
you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any
time. Click here for
more information on my Maine workshops!