By Terryl Lawrence, Ed.D.
The great painter Pierre Bonnard said, “One can find beauty in everything.” While this is true, the artist must be inspired as to how to represent the beauty one sees. When asking most artists about what has inspired them, be it a person or the power of their own work, you will get very similar responses: it could be another’s technique, choice of materials, subject matter, etc. But when it comes down to day-to-day inspiration, the answers are all similar – artists are influenced primarily by other artists – by work that they have admired, or simply chanced upon. It can be from an impression that has worked its way into the subconscious, or a dream remembered. There are times when an artist is actively looking, perhaps trying to break out of a blocked period, or just hoping to move in a new direction.
Inspiration comes unannounced – one can be moved by the serenity and glory of nature – or taken with the tilt of a friend’s head, the peacefulness of a sleeping child, the colors experienced at sunset. Any occurrence can inspire any artist.
Recognizing that moment of epiphany is necessary. The artist must be open to the new insight and grab it with mind and heart, aware that such moments are elusive and can be lost. Most books, most music, and most art come to us in a spontaneous instant of inspiration – when the mind is open and flexible to new ideas.
Having an open mind is the key. When we analyze genius, we discover that there is a flexibility of thought. Typically, a brilliant mind is not full of all kinds of distractions – but is ready for a higher calling – and receptive to new ideas. Often a new discovery can occur during meditation, or more commonly, in sleep. The musician Billy Joel says that his music comes to him in his dreams. When he wakes, he puts that music into tangible form.
Paul Cezanne was a hardworking artist whose early paintings touched on a variety of themes: portraits, still life and imagined scenarios. It wasn’t until his friend and mentor, Camille Pissarro, encouraged him to paint out of doors that Cezanne became inspired to replicate nature. From this example, we have tangible proof that the decision of where and how to work definitely has a profound impact on what an artist is inspired to create.
Vincent van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo – “I think a painter is happy because he is in harmony with nature…if he can reproduce what he sees…every day I am more convinced that people who do not first wrestle with nature do not succeed.” Pierre-Auguste Renoir on the same subject said, “A painter…must have confidence in himself. And listen only to his real master: Nature.”
When Henri Matisse was asked why he paints, he answered: “To translate my emotions, my feelings and the reactions of my sensibility into color and design, something that neither the most perfect camera, even in colors, nor the cinema can do.”
Matisse was born in 1869 into a family of shopkeepers in the dreary northern French town of Bohain-en-Vermandois. The town’s major industry was weaving sumptuous silk fabrics for the high fashion couture houses of Paris. These glorious silk brocades offered Matisse his first glimpse of the brilliant color and design that would later come to life in his paintings. All of his life, Matisse remembered and searched for the glowing blue color of the sulphur smoke emanating from these textile factories, and his search to recreate that hue ultimately became part of his palette.
In the early twentieth century, very few artists were immune to the influence of Japanese art. Among these were Mary Cassatt, Edgar Degas, Monet, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Bonnard, Vuillard and Picasso. This phenomenon completely transformed painting and the decorative arts in the Western World. The compositional devices of the Japanese, with their strong diagonals and flat, simplified, and saturated areas of color, demonstrate how entire bodies of art can impact another culture. We have seen this happen again and again. Think of Picasso with Les Demoiselles d’Avignon inspired by African art.
The contemporary artist searches in much the same manner as those who came before him. Remembering a color, a shape, an image, a sound, a feeling, another work of art, they use the idea for inspiration. Willem de Kooning admitted he could open almost any book and find an image that he would be inspired by. Jackson Pollock could only paint to American jazz, and on and on.
In the work of many of our greatest artists, one often finds the figure of the Muse. Whether spouses or lovers, protectors or tormentors, models, patrons or artists themselves, Muses are always a main source of inspiration. Every art, from painting to writing to filmmaking to music, has a rich history of these inspired pairings. Today, we speak of a Muse as the spark or perfect model for the creation of a master work. In most cases, these muses are not marginal figures but are talented, willful, and complementary characters in their own right.
Muses are extraordinary, either for who they were, or what they did, or solely for the heroic qualities with which the artist endowed them.
Two famous muses deserve recognition:
Most biographies of Botticelli stress his delight when he first saw Simonetta. She appeared to him as the ideal of feminine beauty for which he had searched all of his life – “a combination of chastity and sensuality, physical beauty and ethereal radiance.” She possessed an unworldly innocence and inspired his most famous works Primavera, and the Birth of Venus. It seems that they had a purely spiritual affair; Botticelli knew no romance in his life other than Simonetta. She was the 16-year-old wife of Marco Vespucci and the darling of intellectuals, poets, scientists, and navigators who associated with the powerful Vespucci family. Writings speak of her goodness and beauty. Poets wrote odes to her, artists painted her, knights jousted for her, but, as far as we know, she never did or said anything, or went anywhere, noteworthy.
Giuliano de Medici fell in love with Simonetta, and it is with him that her name is usually linked, though always in a highly respectable way. The romantic trend of chivalry made it possible and quite permissible to carry on a platonic love without causing a scandal. When Giuliano chose Simonetta as the lady he would champion at the Courts of Love, her husband felt no resentment at all. In fact, it was his idea to commission Botticelli, already famous for his portraits of beautiful women, as the suitable artist to paint the standard for Giuliano to carry. The Courts of Love was an annual event. The whole population turned out and there was great excitement when each knight entered the arena carrying a banner on which was painted the portrait of his beloved. The winner of the joust established his lady as “Beauty Queen of Florence for a year.”
The gown chosen by Simonetta for her banner picture was a long gold tissue tunic which, with her shining blonde hair, gave the effect of gold from head to toe. In Sandro Botticelli’s study, she appears as Pallas Athena, the Goddess of War and Wisdom, a symphony in gold. (The banner has since been lost). On January 25th, 1475, Giuliano won the jousting event firmly establishing Simonetta as the most beautiful woman in Florence. That day, Botticelli made scores of sketches of her and of Giuliano which he used as notes ten years later when both of them were gone. We see them now as Mars and Venus (London’s National Gallery). Mars is sleeping exhausted after his battle; Simonetta, as Venus, is draped in a tunic – this is one of the rare paintings in which the Goddess of Love wears any clothes.
Simonetta Vespucci typifies the Age of Chivalry and became a cult figure who was celebrated as late as 1904, about 450 years after she lived. In Botticelli’s portrait, her partly braided golden hair, creamy skin, and arched brows are similar to Petrarch’s description in his famous poem Laura. Her hair is adorned with a net of pearls called a vespaio, or wasp’s nest, probably a pun on her surname. The work is evocative of a Petrarchan sonnet written in the 1300s:
Breeze that surrounds those blond and curling locks, that makes them move and which is moved by them in softness, and that scatters the sweet gold, then gathers it in lovely knots recurling, you linger in the eyes whence wasps of love sting me…..
Simonetta died at 23 – no pregnancy, no illness, no accident – she just died; and her early death only increased the adulation of her admirers.
Virginie Amélie Avegno (known as Amélie) was born in January of 1859 in the French quarter of New Orleans. She had copper red hair, pale, creamy skin, and a distinctive upturned Roman nose. When her father died during the Civil War, her mother chose to make a new start in France. In 1867, mother and daughter arrived in Paris. Amélie made a good marriage to Pierre Gautreau and became a darling of society.
Artists were eager to paint or sculpt her, but she realized that she must select the painter of her first major portrait with great care. She would not entrust her image to anyone until she was certain that he could create a masterpiece. That painter was John Singer Sargent who found her beauty intoxicating.
At that time, the French were passionate about art and the Annual Salon, like today’s Cannes Film Festival, was a monumental event replete with press coverage and publicity. The Salon always opened on May 1st, and artists worked toward acceptance by the prestigious jury. The year before, Sargent’s first foray into that arena brought him both fame and derision. Some felt that the French were too liberal welcoming an American into their circle. The same type of bias was exhibited towards Amélie Gautreau making them the most visible American imports of their day.
After much indecision, Sargent finally decided on a pose and thus condemned Amélie, who hated to remain motionless, to one of the most tortuous poses in art history. She had to stand with her right arm leaning tensely on a table that was a little too short to be a comfortable source of support.
At the Salon of 1884, anyone who entered Salle (Room) 31 had a single purpose; to see Sargent’s Madame X – or the Gautreau as it was often called, as she was more famous than the painter. Public reaction was: “What a horror.” Some said, “She looked decomposed and monstrous…The painting was indecent…And that fallen strap! Was it a prelude to – or the aftermath of sex? The fact that she was looking away made her appear blithely indifferent to her shocking careless appearance.”
Even in Sargent’s darkest and most insecure moments, he had never imagined a reaction so overwhelmingly negative. Amélie also had not expected the negative reaction and acted swiftly to repair the damage caused by Madame X– the painting would have to disappear. Negative criticism continued in one publication after another. Sargent asked for permission to remove the painting and retouch the fallen strap. The request was denied. Both painter and model were humiliated by the riotous uproar.
Twenty years later, Sargent was persuaded to show the painting in London. British critic Roger Fry called the portrait a masterpiece and Kaiser Wilhelm pronounced it his favorite painting. As for Amélie, she realized that the now acclaimed work was in great demand, and not purchasing it in 1884 had been a mistake. With each exhibition, the portrait was winning more support while Amelie saw herself fading. She almost never received anyone, rarely emerged from her self-imposed prison, and ventured out only under cover of darkness. Late at night, swathed in white veils, she would walk the beach at St. Malo (in France).
Both woman and painting were works of art, but Madame X, not Amélie, proved the real and enduring masterpiece.
Therefore, artists must look, see, and translate their vision or their muse, into their own vocabulary.French novelist and art historian, André Malraux, wrote, “If the great artist’s way of seeing is quite different than that of the ordinary man, the reason is that his faculty of sight has been educated, from its earliest days, by paintings and statues; by the world of art.”
In conclusion, inspiration can come from anywhere or anything. The artist must face life with eyes wide open –because one can never predict when that spark will occur to light the way!
Terryl Lawrence, Ed.D., is currently teaching an eight-week course,”Artistic Inspiration,” on Fridays at 11:15 a.m. She will be teaching an eight-week course,”Exotic Art, Fantasy and Politics,” for the winter semester starting on Friday, Jan. 13 at 11:15 a.m.
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