‘Babylon’ is a name which throughout the centuries has evoked an image of power and wealth and splendour – and decadence. Indeed, in the biblical Book of Revelation, Rome is damned as the ‘Whore of Babylon’ – and thus identified with a city whose image of lust and debauchery persisted and flourished long after the city itself had crumbled into dust. Powerful visual images in later ages, l perpetuate the negative image Babylon acquired in biblical tradition.
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Two weeks ago for Bookman’s birthday we were going to go see the special Rembrandt exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. We were not surprised that we needed tickets for the special exhibit at the usually free museum – we’ve been there for other ticketed special exhibits like Georgia O’Keefe. What surprised us was that we had to get the tickets in advance. You see, the exhibit hasn’t been advertised much and it had been here for almost a month before we found out about it. Not until last week or thereabouts have I begun seeing ads for the show in various places around the city. Needless to say, we did not get to go for Bookman’s birthday, tickets were sold out.
But we were not to be defeated. Lesson learned, we planned ahead. Each got today off work, and we bought tickets for a 10 a.m. (opening time) a full week in advance. We arrived a little before 10 and they were already allowing people in. Yay!
The exhibition was set up in a series of linked gallery rooms in a sort of chronological order always beginning to the right of the entry door. But by creating an order, everyone entering the exhibit bunches up in a crowd trying to see the two tiny early paintings. Neither Bookman nor I are tall people and jostling for position to get close enough to read the plaque telling about the paintings was not possible in the scrum. So we bucked the order and went left where there was no one looking at that painting. We didn’t end up getting to see the small early paintings until the very end when we were walking out. But this ended up being okay and very interesting after seeing all the brilliant and mature work to then see how he began. In these two pieces by eighteen-year-old Rembrandt we could see the elements of what he was going to become. If we had seen them first we would not have been able to see that.
Amongst the authentic Rembrandts were many paintings that had once been attributed to him but have since been attributed to other artists in his workshop. There were also several paintings signed by Rembrandt that had been begun by his workshop lackeys and finished by him. Having the chance to see these paintings alongside “real” Rembrandts was fascinating. At first it was hard to tell the difference but gradually it became easier to see what was Rembrandt and what was Rembrandt-like and why.
My favorite painting in the show was Minerva in Her Study. Minerva was modeled by Rembrandt’s wife Saskia and the info plaque described the painting as his “love letter” to her. This painting was so amazing, the quality of the light, the detail, the composition. Love in paint. Sadly, Saskia died in 1642 probably from tuberculosis. During her illness they hired Geertje Dircx to care for and nurse their infant son Titus. Even before Saskia died, Rembrandt and Geertje became lovers. Poor Saskia.
As much as I loved the experience, there were a couple of downsides for me. There seemed to be a large number of mostly elderly people wearing very strong perfume and cologne. I am allergic to most perfumes and one man’s cologne especially nearly sent me into a panic because I suddenly couldn’t breathe. When I left the exhibition I had a headache and was slightly nauseous – my personal sacrifice to art. There were also audio tours available to rent that tell you about the paintings. Audio tours have been the worst thing to happen to art in recent years. People wearing headphones are oblivious to their surroundings. They also have the bad habit of standing in front of the info plaques and reading them while their audio tour is giving them the same information.
While my fellow visitors were annoying, the worst part about the exhibit was the lighting. Rembrandt’s paintings tend to be dark and varnished. The museum had spot lights on the ceiling shining on the paintings in addition to regular room lighting. The spots made the worst glare that blotted out half the
Today marks the would-be 404th birthday of prolific Dutch painter/etcher Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn, who was born in Leiden in 1606, and passed away in Amsterdam on October 4, 1669.
Cynthia Freeland is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Houston. Her most recent book is Portraits and Persons, and in the excerpt below, she considers Rembrandt’s many self-portraits, and speculates as to why he was so attracted to this art form.
Rembrandt was a particularly prolific self-portrait artist. Susan Fegley Osmond informs us that,
he depicted himself in approximately forty to fifty extant paintings, about thirty-two etchings, and seven drawings. It is an output unique in history; most artists produce only a handful of self-portraits, if that. And why Rembrandt did this is one of the great mysteries of art history.
There are numerous speculations about Rembrandt’s preoccupation with self-portraiture. “From youth to old age, Rembrandt scrutinized himself before the mirror, painting, etching, and drawing his changing physique and physiognomy as well as the varying psychological states that reflected the fluctuating fortunes of his life.”
A first concern that seems evident in these works, as with the previous artists I discussed, is Rembrandt’s social status and his identity as a gentleman. This concern shows up in his elegant garb, cloaks, hats, armor, and even in the poses in some of the images. Along with this is a concern with his artistic status and success.
Another conjectures about at least some of the images is that they are studies for paintings. Rembrandt used himself because he was a cheap, readily available model when he was planning certain sorts of composite history paintings or biblical portraits. This might account for the self-portraits showing extreme facial expressions, ones for instance where he is laughing or fearful. But these may also have been examples of a genre called “tronies” which were popular at the time and had a good market.
At a deeper level, we can sense that Rembrandt is seeking to formulate and reveal a conception of his own psychological identity, the unique person that he was. This fits with the view expressed by Arthur Wheelock Jr., who notes:
[Rembrandt] was a singularly complex individual, who from an early age seems to have fostered the image that he was different from other men, and that neither his talent nore his success depended upon others or upon the good fortune that came his way.
Wheelock later comments,
Rembrandt’s earliest self-portraits are of particular interest because they demonstrate that the myth of Rembrandt as isolated genius did not first emerge in the Romantic era…but was fostered and developed by the artist himself.
Along these lines, art historians compare Rembrandt to more recent artists who have used the self-portrait as a form of experimenting with self-formation by trying on various identities (Rembrandt as the Andy Warhol of the seventeenth century!).
Like Cézanne more than two centuries later, Rembrandt employed the self-portrait as part of an effort to fashion the self, a s
