Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863)

The 19th Century
Presentation 5 of 13

Eugenè Delacroix (1798-1863)
The Greatest French Romantic Painter and Theorist
Towards Impressionism from Classicism
Presented by Roger Weir
Tuesday, January 3, 1984

Transcript:

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The date is January 3rd, 1984. This is the fifth lecture in a series of lectures by Roger, where on a 19th century, tonight's lecture is entitled Delacroix who lived 1798, 1863, the greatest French romantic painter and theorist toward impressionism from classicism. Okay.
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We are tracing an era. The 19th century, the importance of the era for us is paramount. Since most of the cultural forms that we find ourselves surrounded by originate. At least the seeds were sown in the 19th century and are feeling toned. Substructure to our personalities were formulated largely in ideas that came to fruition and manifestation in the 19th century. We do not like to hear about the 19th century. The fact that there are very few people here tonight is just indicative. If we were speaking of something ephemeral and entertaining, uh, we could draw hundreds. But the fact is in our search for a understanding of ourselves, we have been pursuing the history of our species, moving person by person rather than moving ideation only, or politically or militarily.
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So we have been stepping outside of the traditional ways in which history has been rendered. We have in fact, been working on a development of the old [inaudible] theme, that human character is the only accurate index to reality, and that consciousness is, but a reflection in form of the flow and the vicissitudes of the tone, the music of character. So that if consciousness is the notation of character, we should look to human beings as our models and not to the ideas ground out by second rate patents who know neither themselves nor anyone else in the movement of the 19th century. We have become acquainted already in four lectures with an astonishing discovery that most of the powerful names in fact are names
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Of extraordinarily perceptive and powerful high moral minded individuals whose works have been manhandled. And this translated misappropriated so that the junk yard of the 20th century is largely due to the Mel manipulation of their themes and ideas we found in the case of marks. And vokner in the case of Bentham that in fact, a great deal of energy in the 19th century went into the attempt to net and some grand fashion, a portrait of human nature, a portrait of man complete yet had been a legacy delivered ever since the beginnings of the enlightenment, that map would in fact, find in himself the capacity to delineate the complete scope of himself.
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The 19th century, as an APAK, as a century reveals the career of one genius after another attempting to formulate some ingenious way of nutting, the reality, bringing it together, fishing it out of the waters of history, out of the waters of nature, out of the waters of the mind, then pulling up from those depths, those efforts, those extensions, the mighty truth about ourselves. And next week, when we take a look at Charles Darwin, we'll see yet another Titanic effort to characterize man once and for all. And that each succeeding effort put further and further out of the reach, any possibility of ever doing just that our figure tonight, he has much maligned and misunderstood using Delacroix
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In art histories or in cultural histories, or just in the coffee classes of faculty members who attempt to teach humanities, he's called a romantic and everyone runs to their reference books and it looks up romanticism and under the hypnotic spell of waving ideational Palm palms, they suppose that they have understood something about Della, something about art, something about French culture in the 19th century, and nothing has been achieved at all. So we retract ourselves from the hoopla and we begin before recounting Della clause, life and significance as much as we can from himself to start with a photograph. The photographer's name was Nadar Nodar was one of the earliest of photographers. And this was a photograph near the end of Della quasi life. He was 62 when this photograph
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Graph was taken, what we find yeah. Was the tremendous coolness of assessing
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The inner capacities for envisioning and in Della cross serious mean,
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We find the truth of the,
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The statement that Charles bought lair made of, um, Della qua early in his life. He said, Bob Della qua
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That his great genius
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Was to try and portray a human passion. Totally. And that, in fact, it was the, um, desire to bring all of man's feelings. All of man's capacities out in the open, uh, in one grand work. And that in this as probably the letter said wrote, Della qual was passionately in love with passion and coldly determined to find ways of expressing passion in the most visible manner.
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That is to say there is an irony in the character of Della Kwan. And the irony that we find is the motion of expression
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Was very close to the romantic rebellion formulated, uh, largely by figures like Victor Hugo to attempt to cast on free of all the confines that had been placed upon him in the enlightenment and in the age of revolution. But in fact, DellaCroce
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Yeah,
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Not a romanticist. In fact, the isms are exactly those qualifiers that destroy our vision of the man. So after showing you this photograph of the tough Dela qua coldly, determined to portray
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Passion, I
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Refer us to one of Della clause masterpieces towards the end of his life called, uh, the Medea painted in 1862 when Della CWA was 64.
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Now the way to see this yeah.
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To realize that this is a Della Quam Madonna, but the Madonna is no longer a transcendental purity archetype. But as a woman that has joined the world, Medea married, Jason had two children by him and then was thrown over for another woman, Medea. They dark magical lady from the black sea area, slew both children and serve them up
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To Jason. We have here they
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Della claw, Madonna add, instead of holding the Christ child, that was a spiritual manifestation. She is preparing to kill him. And instead of having the little baby John, the Baptist healthy, he is about to die. The dark shadow over the top of MODIS head like a mask over her eyes
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Is the
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Telltale sign of Della clause envisioning that somehow the great transcendental archetypes that had led man on a grand history of evolvement had come to a dead end. That in fact, the age of revolution was symptomatic of a desire to break out of a prison that had more and more captured. The soul of man, his mind was being frayed. And in many respects, his body was being free. But what was being enslaved by a deadening process was his soul. And so we have a statement by Bob [inaudible], who was the only man of his time to really understand Dellacqua in his spiritual profundity, wrote
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Many others.
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Besides myself have made a point of stressing the fatal consequences of an essentially personal genius. And after all, it is quite possible that the highest expressions of genius, not in the Azure sky, but on this poor earth where perfection itself is imperfect have been achieved only at the expense of an inevitable sacrifice, but no doubts, or you will,
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What is this mysterious
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[inaudible], which Dellacqua to the glory of our century has translated better than any other artists.
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It is the invisible, the palpable. It is the dream, the nerves, the soul.
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And so Delacroix should not be considered a romantic, but in fact should be considered a man in search of an over whelming medium to present a unified vision of man's soul
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On earth.
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There are so few writers who even come close to appreciating Della qua that I refer you to Walter Friedlaender whose great book Daveed to Della qua traces the tremendous movement from Davide classic or as they were called at the time neoclassic portraits one, uh, remembrance, Davide, great portrait of Socrates drinking the hemlock with all of the men, clustered around the Greeks and, and, uh, pathos and Socrates sitting up on his palate, reaching for the hemlock and the other finger pointing up towards freedom where one thinks of DaVita. My rock with him collapsed in his tub with his final letter, uh, in one hand and the pen drooping down. And what also thinks of Davide great portraits of Napoleon, but Della CWA moved completely off the map of any cultural lineage.
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That
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Is to say Della CWA, by the time that he was painting the Medea in 1862 had become a universal genius clearly on a level with Wagner and clearly on a level with some of the other individuals that we will take up. Friedly under has this to say about the Medea. Della CWA reached his greatest artistic height in a monumental single figure. The Medea, it combines clarity of form, psychological and tragic sentiment with great strength and beauty of color
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Color movement.
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The suggestion of the theatrical is not far district, but here we are not reminded of it by props ready-made passages, excited gestures or historical handling. This is theater, but great theater and Medea is played by a tragedy of genius, outwardly calm, amidst all the passion of despair with noble bearing, even in the last horrible dramatic moment. Della cross-media Medea is the purest strongest expression of his conceptual power. What was he conceiving? He was conceiving of the possibility that man at a particular poignant moment in his life
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Sees
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The whole design of his life as a composition, and that he must be prepared to live that moment fully to have prepared himself so that he may understand that moment in all of its ramifications so that a man's life, a person's life like some gigantic work of art constantly shaping itself, moving toward a moment, a den new ma where, what is revealed is the essential natal capacity of his comprehension. And that man must be ready, must have prepared himself for that moment in his great journals that Delek was kept for some 25 years. He wrote once there is, but one great moment in a life too bad for the artist who misses it. The secret of Della CWA is that very early, he received a tremendous vision and an in visioning of what the artists role responsibility capacity could be add in from this Delacroix never deviated, constantly grew. So now we have to trace him. He was in fact born in 1798 outside of
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Paris.
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His father, ostensibly was Charles Delacroix, a very high official a man who under the directory was an ambassador. But when one looks at the bulldog like features, the severe features of Della CWA, one notices that there is a grand resemblance in facial structure and bearing and so forth to none other than tally Rand, who was a friend of the [inaudible] family. And Della cross mother died very early in his life,
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But had
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Come from a very famous family in the, uh, Paris, uh, regions. And the family knew, uh, tally ran quite well. It is conceivable and I should rather think it probable that Talyrond himself was the father of Della claw, almost all books on Dellacqua mentioned the fact no one comes to a definite statement, although bottle there. And Friedly under both assume that the reader will be perspicacious. Della crock. Consequently was given extraordinary advantage as a youngster. That is, he was admitted to all kinds of events, uh, schooling. He received a tremendous education above all. Delacroix is the example of the learned artists, the man of ground culture of formed mental capacities of understanding that is disciplined and ordered. And, uh, his literary background alone qualified him. He, uh, was going to write a philosophic dictionary of fine art. He never got to it, but like, uh, a Frenchmen Pusan, a century and a half before him, he was a tremendous intellect.
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And so when he dealt with his subject matter, he generally had a background of comprehension when he was 19 Tahlequah became acquainted with one of the fabulous artists of Paris Garrick hall, who was at this time working on his grand masterpiece, the raft of the Medusa Garrick hall filled with the enthusiasm of the, uh, French revolution, the Nepal Napoleonic era. This was 18, 17, 18, 18 was attempting to portray in one grand painting the tone of the French universe at the moment of his time, the raft of the Medusa with consequently, one of the largest canvases ever painted it measured 21 feet by 15 feet. And Garrett Cole had to rent a special studio, uh, to house this enormous canvas and all the pertinent is that go with painting. Something like that. The canvas was about half or three quarters finished when young adolescent Della CRA spent an afternoon with Jericho
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And
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Mad with enthusiasm, rushed home, and began building stretchers to make large canvases and began having his mind and his sensibility turning with envisioning.
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And in fact, the
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First painting that Telequah managed to produce was a large scale painting of Dante and Virgil in hell. And where are they in hell, but in a boat. And the two of them, uh, looking grandly over the horizon, feeding with demonic figures, mankind, uh, uh, attempting to extricate themselves from hell and crime into the boat with, uh, Dante and Virgil. I'm sorry, I haven't slides for you, but, uh, the painting is, uh, quite famous and available around. I have it here in the book and you can see the enormous similarity of themes of the raft of the Medusa and Dante and Virgil in hell. This of course was shown in the Paris salon in 1822 and every critic in Paris divided it. There wasn't anyone who liked the work. There were a few friends persons who became friends of Delacroix, who enjoyed the work, the musicians show con George sand, his literary friend, and great genius.
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And in the background, of course, a broad layer would be coming in. But most of the critics derided this as the death of painting. Why? So it was because Della CRA had lifted color outside of the representational forms that traditionally had carried it. Della CWA in attempting to portray passionate movement was already experimenting in his first canvas with the massing of color in motion contrast so that there would be the constant movement of the eye on the canvas directed, not by line, nor by volume placement, but indicated like a boiling over by the seeding, bubbles of color, moving around the canvas.
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Why
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So that the audience, the individual addressing himself to this canvas would find his senses churn and his attention, uh, raised up to involve him in the quest. Where is this motion leading to,
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Of course
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In his early works Dellacqua was not quite capable of bringing it to a conclusion so that the, I just kept roving over the canvas. One can look to the expressions, the grind expressions of Dante or Virgil one can look to the horrific figures. One man is trying to chew the prowl of the bark. Uh, another man is biting the ear of another. These are the damned in
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Hell,
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But the eye finds no repose, but the attempt was there. The next attempt was a large painting exhibited, uh, two years later, the salons in Paris, where the way in which, um, most art was, uh, shown at this time
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And at
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The annual showing, two years later, she showed a large canvas, the mass secure of chaos, chaos, the Greek Island, India gin, nearest to the Turkish coast and the Turkish military had invaded the Island and had slaughtered tens of thousands of Greeks who had lived there from time and Memorial. The mass security Kayas though, which looks on the surface, like the perfect example of romantic, uh, night
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Mirror. Yeah. It was an adult
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Dance of Della cross technique of raising the seizing motion of color and it's can competent roving of the eye toning of the passionate feelings towards some sense of a composition that is the movement would make some pattern of unity. And this is what he was trying to achieve. It would not be until later in life that Della qual would be able to finally master this technique. He was divided by the French critics so much accused of actually, uh, uh, being a father again, uh, ahead of his time, a wild beast, uh, someone who did not belong in the salon, someone who should not be painting. And so Della qua, uh, quite intelligent, quite sensitive to the whole situation, realized that he was struggling with a vision that was not to bear fruition for him in Paris. At that time, he had been trying to use as one of his models, uh, Rubens, Rubens, uh, tremendous, uh, um, uh, fullness of, of life on his canvases, but something Delacroix was, was seeking to bring the color to manifest in a
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Form, a, a unified organic pattern,
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And it wouldn't fit. It wouldn't quite gel. So Della qual went to London
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While
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He was in London. He became very close with Turner JWN Turner, Constable,
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And the whole school of
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English painters who were attempting to carry moon
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By color Delacroix there re gaining his bearings, realized that what was necessary
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Was to combine a surface movement on the canvas of color and motion grandly, but to have
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A paste sauce in a theme underneath, okay,
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That constantly wove the dynamic of the colors back into the tragic pathos of the conception that while the perception would be seeding with live color everywhere, the conception that would occur out of it would be a somber tragic pathos. So that the contrast between
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The one and the other would
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Wrench an individual wholly out of his habitual form into some new mode
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Of being.
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So he set to work to find
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It theme.
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He came back to Paris. He was since he had spent a lot of time in England for the last year, he had poured over English literature and he came to a tragedy by Lord Byron called Sergeant Nepalis. And the tragedy appeared to him to have great possibility. Historically started Annapolis was the King of Nineveh. This is about the beginnings of archeological excavations. When one good thing Napoleon dead was to bring the sense of archeology, uh, to the floor, the whole notion of the Rosetta stone, et cetera,
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Nineveh as Syria in very early classical times had been a great kingdom. And one of the traditional King stories,
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Well, it started inop lists came from Alexander's time. In fact area in the classical biographer of Alexander, who wrote the campaigns of Alexander records, the story that when the Greeks under Alexander traverse the area where the ruins of Nineveh
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Were,
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They found a great monument, half buried, and Alexander had a sand removed and they found an inscription
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And the inscription read, eat, drink, and play for
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These are the only realities of life On this saying was attributed to Sergeant Opolis. One of the ancient Kings of Nineveh Byron in writing his tragedy. And Sergeant Nepalis had brought the theme to a fullness. He had, uh, found
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The perfect character
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Or to float the sense of in new way, the sense of boredom on the surface and a restlessness on the interior. And so start an op LIS was in Byron's tragedy, a figure who became bored with the luxuriance and wealth of his exterior,
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And, uh,
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Completely, uh, fearful
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For the
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Anxieties within himself, which could not be a swipe judged by the exterior wealth than women in song. And so he had a grand funeral Pyre built around his throne, and before he was in the laded, he had the Unix in the palace kill all of his wives before him, all of his women, his favorite horses, his dogs, and the destruction of all the life that had permitted him a life of, uh, uh, grandness and enjoyment was dismembered before him. And then with the bleeding remains of the Royal harem and the Royal stables laying against the Pyre. He was set on fire
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And burn Lord
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Byron and writing SART Annapolis. In fact, dedicated it to Garrett. Yah. He wrote in his dedication to the grand voice, not only of German literature, but of European literature. I dedicate tragic vision by someone not capable really of writing it, but who could not leave the theme alone? Della CRA was fascinated by the possibilities. He began sketching and working out a grand painting, which was, uh, when it was finished, it was called the death of Sarda Nepalis. And what he was attempting to do was to take that moment in the life of Sarda Nepalis, where all of the capacities of the man's life that had run into the boredom on the surface would be transposed by Diller quads, technique of enlivening by color, the passions converting the boredom of SART Annapolis into the passion of Della qua. And at the same time converting the deadened terroristic interior of Sardinian bliss into a moment of realization and unity for he who could view this painting and understand it, it was to be a tremendous alchemical transformation of the perfect theme into the perfect work in terms of what Della qual was searching for. He sketched mightily, he drew and finally brought together and it was shown in the 1827 salon and the death of SART Annapolis by Delacroix. One of the great masterpieces of Western art, sorry, I don't have them on slides. You can view these later,
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The painting fell on deaf ears. Those critics who attend these salons constantly for their life's bread, dismissed it. The judges had nothing to say about it whatsoever. It was in fact, a given some minor mention, but received no prizes was not bought by the government. So Della disappointed that he had achieved a vision had achieved a technical proficiency to bring the vision to manifestation that I had not been seen.
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He went home to brood and TeleQual by this time was beginning to have that quality that would characterize him later in life. He was to become a solitary being it's true that as long as Chopin was alive, Della qual would invite him to share his canvases. He loved having a few friends in and talk about what he was doing, how the work was going, but increasingly he was jaded about the capacity of other men to understand, and yet driven compulsively almost by the ethical commitment that having seen a great vision, having attained the capacity to manifest it. What damnation would have to man who spurned this opportunity from the gods. So he pursued his art while he had been working on the death of started Annapolis, of course, being an extraordinarily literate. Uh, man, he realized that Byron had dedicated his tragedy to garter. So he began reading Garret and began reading the Faust.
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And as he read the Faust, he became entranced and Delek Wilde then seized upon a technique which was new in the late 1820s. Lithography was just coming in where they artists could work directly on the stone. And so Delacroix illustrated Gareth has Faust by 17 great lithographs and it was published the following year, the year following the exhibition of the death of Sergeant Nepalis and the pair of Ceylon in 1828, Del across illustrations to Faust and go along with the death of [inaudible]. They are together a declaration of Della cloth coming of age of his great capacity at the age of 30. And being able to carry a great vision through, to manifestation in the illustrations. The first front, his piece was Della clause portrait of Gerta. One sees the nobility. You said a few of the lithographs and proof to Garrett who was greatly joy at the man, uh, and his ability. In fact, one of the lithograph sent him was the first one in the illustration of Satan
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Over
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The city scape and notice how the city scape or sharp spires so that if Satan falls, he will be guaranteed by the church, steeples sticking up, but notice the contorted body, the Michelangelo light contortions and muscularity of Satan and how every angle, every muscle is strained and tense. And with him, the bulging eye and the finger pointing up almost as if Davida Socrates became Della craws Mephistopheles and the long fingernails and the rye sense of not pointing to a triumph, but pointing to a little complication by which he would ensnare increasingly his prey on through the work. One finds a sense of,
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Uh, contrast
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The portrait of phallus chose him opposite completely denuded of energy, his body slouched forward. Uh, he is caught between a skull and a guttering candle and a bottle of poison up on the shelf and Faust just wonders whether he's going to end it all. And, uh, this dejection, the sapping of man's stress
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Through anyway, um, sentimentality. These were the enemies.
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These were the symptomatic diseases of civilization that should be cured by art. And so the great, uh, work went on with Della KWA, but he finally felt with the illustrations to, uh, the Faust and the death of started an op list that he had reached some sort of turning point. So he searched around for somewhere to go, something else to enter in to his life.
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He took a trip to Morocco and there with a friend, the competent Mornay
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Months that he spent in Morocco going out into the Atlas mountain region, the wilderness, it began to occur to him,
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The tremendous natural dignity of the Arab Berber peasant, the Arab Berber warrior, the individual
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Who is able to live in this dark landscape live in this non Europeanized, uh, situation without the amenities of the Paris salon without the amenities of London, without having the grand literary tradition of the European civilization behind him. And so Della quad began to introduce into his works a sense of classical dignity. The first painting from this is one called Algerian women in their apartments. Uh, since, uh, Dellacqua initiated this, they have been imitated so many times Matisse would do many Autodesk's on that theme, but Della cross was the first painting done of this ilk and it showed the Algerian women and their beautiful, uh, bangles and, uh, uh, homemade cotton dyed, uh, batik, uh, clothes sitting at their leisure and chatting with each other and grand dignity. And the ambiance of the work was such that the surface was chocked full of color, but the composition of the whole work had a classical severity to it. And underneath the implication, these Algerian women with their dignity put to shame the European nine seeking to find that dignity elsewhere, other than themselves,
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The European man seeking to find that dignity in the external world was increasingly losing it so that the more that they strive to find their dignity in the material, the more tragically they were sapping themselves, almost like a contrapositive of Faust on the interior level. When he came back the new CRA capable of such a tremendous envisioning, but by now in his mid thirties, capable of also painting almost on a level with the great Italian Renaissance masters, almost on a level with Titian, all Raphael himself finally began to draw notices when he exhibited works, the stunning capacity of Delacroix simply penetrated to everyone. The critics who had railed against him were silenced. In fact, there came a sense of awe the government, which had not bought any of Dela clause works, suddenly feeling that they had almost been guilty of a national crime of wasting such a Titanic challenge.
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As Della CWA began to give commissions to him. The first great commission was to decorate the newly built palai bourbon. And Della KWA was given the task of decorating the interior much like the, uh, Renaissance artists were giving the opportunity to the Vatican or the interior of a church here. The French government was beginning to appeal to Dellacqua, uh, decorate our buildings, our civic buildings, which for our civilization, our time are the temples of human power and meeting dignity, not only this, but for the next 30 years, Della CWA would become the great national painter of France. He would be given almost every major commission and when the loop was redoing, they, uh, Apollo gallery, the grand ceiling was given to Della claw because of the incredible busy architectural ornament. The problems were astounding. Delacroix had to work, uh, with exceedingly impossible conditions. In fact, they photographs that I have here.
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I'm sorry, I don't have it on slide. This is the ceiling of the Apollo gallery in the Louvre. And you can see the architectural ornament is just, uh, plastered a group upon group upon group, figure upon figure. How could anything be seen? And so Delacroix searching in his envisioning for a theme, realizing the Apollo gallery. What was that moment in the archetypal Apollo's life, where he became Apollo? That moment was when he slew Python, Apollo gained his God like assurance in the slang of Python, like St. George and the dragon. And so Della CRA took that moment and began to flush it out in terms of color and form and development. And at one lower end of the canvas, he had the rising price on not just a price on that one might see in a jungle. This was the all time price on that exists as a nightmare in every lurking subconscious oceanic tidal wave that would dilute the, uh, Apollonian consciousness of man.
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So this price on was a dark, dark green, almost a black green, and curled around and rising form. And then the, uh, upper body rearing back in the mouth to open, ready to strike, not a Python that in the natural world would squeeze its prey, but a price on that could bite and squeeze and do every thing that a serpent of universal capacity would do. And its evilness that at the lower end of the canvas, and then through an array of gods pulling back and grand, uh, motions, almost like Michelangelo returning to the Sistine chapel ceiling, only in this time, instead of there being a series of, uh, small, uh, paintings worked into a geometrical composition, Della quad brought it all together to one moment, one composition at all of the, uh, riding figure is seeking to flee the serpent, seeking to flee the whole radiated resonance of evil from the serpent, except one figure at the top, the other end of the canvas there, riding.
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Yeah, and he has chariot with the horses. Della qual loved horses. He loved to draw them and paint them. And the horses of Apollo's chariot, uh, leaning back in their grand jury almost as if trying to bite the center of their back and their lunge of energy to pull this chariot to the moment of truth. And then this go of solar capacity, Apollo with his Cape furrowing behind him and his hair furling out from himself and every muscle bent to pull the bowl and loose the arrow that would kill Python. And it's that moment where the arrow has been loosed and all the development of the entire canvas, all of its structure, all of the color, all of the significance to the flight of Apollo's arrow that inevitably will kill the Python. Telequah found it exactly in that moment and placed it in the center of the ceiling of the Apollo gallery as reserve.
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When one looks at a list of the holdings of the live of Della cross paintings, one notices that they have bought almost every single painting of Delacroix up to the 1840s. If one wishes to see Della claw, he would have to go to Paris. There are other canvases, but almost all of them up to the mid 1840s are owned by that, uh, Institute. These great public murals where they're not for the, but for the many, the population of Paris of France of Europe that came into the palette or bone or the Louvre. But normous capacities of insight were given to millions. [inaudible] vision became vision of his time. He became the figure who personified more than, uh, anyone at the time
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In France, even
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More than Victor Hugo Della quad became the finest expression of the French contribution to Western civilization. He was paid enormous sons, one of his, uh, compositions alone, netted him some 60,000 francs and, uh, involved him for many years, broad lair in seeking to give us some insight
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Into the man.
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And he is the only one in his time to really formulate, uh, uh, completely. This is a, uh, translation, broad layer, Eugene Della claw, his life and work. He has this to say,
(00:51:56):
Should start it here on this page.
(00:51:59):
He has done this in market well with no other means, but color and contour. He has achieved this tremendous vision for man without words, without music, without movement, color, and contour, he has done it better than anyone else. He has done it with the perfection of a consummate painter with the discipline of a subtle rhino writer with the eloquence of a passionate musician. Moreover is one of the symptoms of the spiritual temper of our century that the arts strive, if not to implement one another, at least to land lend each other new strengths. Della CRA is the most suggestive of all painters. He suggests music. He suggests literature. He suggests philosophy. Della cross works in fact, bring together in a matrix, moving towards a unity that almost impels one to flesh out the coordinates and the implications one can read into Della qua almost indefinitely so much.
(00:53:19):
Would this become the bugbear of 20th century art that they would, uh, finally, uh, come down to the old existentialist aesthetic saying that, uh, w one cannot, uh, uh, take any information that you had before seeing the work into account in the experience of the work. This was an attempt to discredit and to move away from the achievement of delic, but TeleQual was already moving into another realm. His late last works almost seem to lift the color completely out of the formal aspects. It no longer matters what natural forms are being showed or portrayed what the story might be. They feeling capacities in the motions of the color are new. And in fact, one moves very, very simply and easily from Della CRA to Renoir the eye of the Lake Delta card on the early run-walk booths with very great ease. And one can see that the genius of Renoir, the impressionist comes to the surface.
(00:54:46):
That is to say, when one has Della qua achieving consciousness, one has Monet. One has scissor. One has Renoir. It is Della CRA, who is the root source of the great transformation of art? Is he alone? Who stands there at the juxtaposition of the whole tradition of pictorial representation, going back to the classical times and bringing it up to a quality of radical envisioning, which paltry critics have called romanticism, but so transcends romanticism that it's not even worth discussing. It makes palpable, as modeler has said, the invisible, the soul, the spiritual, so that man is ready to portray something else. Probably they're talking about other artists. He says, outside of their studios, what do they know? What do they like? What do they express? Eugene Delacroix was not only an artist in love with his craft. He was also a man of broad general culture in contrast to other modern artists. Most of whom are a little more than famous or obscure dabblers, sad specialists and pure craftsman, some able paint, academic figures, others, fruit, and still others, animals. Eugene, Della qual loved everything, could paint. Everything appreciated, all kinds of talents. His mind, his mind was open.
(00:56:41):
And so it is this openness of Della quad, this capacity to bring the seeding surface to a boil and have that boil flow inward to a point of repos that made Delacroix a universal genius, able to carry man by his art to the capacity to be prepared for that moment in their lives. When all would be clear to them to gain the technic necessary, to compose a life of worth of depth and of significance, learn the workings of it and bend it by effort, diligence, and concentration to create increasingly that moment of comprehension so that a human Bing was not just some romantic hero, enjoying a triumph, but was some spiritual form coming to completion. This is the significance of Dilla. CWA Butler says these superficial nines do not realize that the two faculties can never be completely separated the material and the spiritual. They can never be completely separated.
(00:58:12):
And that both are the result of an original germ that has been carefully cultivated. The external nature only gives the artist an ever reoccurring opportunity to cultivate this germ. It is, but an incoherent massive materials, which the artist is asked to bring together and put in order an awakener or flagging faculties. What is the social value of art? It is the Clarion call of comprehension of completeness, of honing perception to its ultimate movement. It's internalization from that fire extension in the material to bend back on, come to a focus and the spiritual Dellacqua exhausted by 30 years of painting, large ground murals on the walls and ceilings of almost every important building, all of his work that was done for the whole hotel de Ville, the city hall of Paris, which was burnt by the Germans and 1871. Most of the rest of his work survives, it survives there as an indelible experience for he who would look in fact, if one would consider Mark shingles ceiling of the Paris opera, you would find I'm then Dolla in the mode of Dela qua presented for the French and world public of today.
(01:00:06):
Could it be a wonderful contrast to show this sometime the, uh, ceiling of Apollo killing the Python and the ceiling of the Paris opera Delek Juan Chagall one would find it a great deal line and color. He wrote line and color both make one think and dream the pleasures deriving from them are of a different kind, but completely equal and absolutely independent of the theme of the painting. And then this little quote from Della quads journals, you get not only the beginnings of impressionism, but the beginnings of abstract art, Dellacqua magnificent, universal genius, opening the door, the possibility for 20th century art to early 20th century art to carry this to a grand culmination. One looks at Chagall and Kandinsky and Suzanne Renoir Monet. There is Della Acqua lifted out of his solitary Paris apartment. It became, uh, a national museum after he died. And in 1863, when Della quad did finally pass on, he left such an enormous quantity of work that it never has been completely catalog, never completely brought together. They arch council. Yeah. In London in 1964 for the Centenery of the death of Della claw brought together, uh, some, uh, 200 works and it was just a token, uh, exhibition.
(01:02:05):
There are so many aspects of Della quad that I would wish to point out, but I should end with this. We are taking individuals in a linear, but remember that almost everyone that we are dealing with in the 19th century course overlapped in their lives. And we're all alive together at one time. So that the significance of this movement is like a lecture presentation of a Della CRA mural. All of the figures need to be montaged in your experience together in order to get the movement, the interior point of focus at the 19th century, it is that focus that is important because it is that focus, which is invisible to us today. And as only from that vantage point, from that calmness of cultural comprehension, that we are able to see the distortions that we take for reality in our time. And as only by perceiving the distortions that may, may renovate and realize something better. Well, next week you had another Charles Darwin.

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