Disney Psalter

My childhood, without apology, was succumbed to the pleasures of Saturday mornings in front of the T.V. watching Disney’s Goofy and Donald Duck dance across the screen. In reference to my past I can honestly ask: Where would we be without Mickey, and further where would we be without Walt? I believe even the excessively welcoming mouse or the pessimistic duck would attest to the validity of modern cartoon animists, as well as their order and structure. The flip book technique that provides these characters with movement has come a long way from the hectic compilations of the Early Medieval illuminated manuscripts.



The Utrecht Psalter was created between 820 and 835 during the Carolingian age and Charlemagne’s great revival of learning. Illuminated manuscripts as well as Psalters (collection of psalms) helped to convey New Testament and Old Testament stories to a largely illiterate laity. Here the artist depicts Psalm 44 (or Psalm 43 of the Vulgate text of the Carolingian era) and the plight of the repressed Israelites in pen and ink. The psalmist's intention was to make the Psalter appear ancient, as well as evoke earlier artworks with swift movement of the pen. The artist, however, would have benefited much from a view of modern comic book organization of text and images, as the three columns of Latin capital letters and subsequent depictions of the text lay in a hodgepodge of space, inseparable to the discerning eye.

The literal interpretations of the text—where the psalm says, “We are counted as sheep for slaughter” the artist drew slain sheep fallen to the ground in front of a walled city—however, provide for a simple picture that an illiterate laity could understand. In some ways the structure also gets the point across: the very chaotic nature of the battle against evil as God (or here the haloed Christ) merely overlooks the slaughter below. The chaotic structure testifies as well to the vivid movement of the scene, in correspondence with the sketchy upheaval of the earth, strained bodies, hunched shoulders, and heads thrust forward in action. Yet I cant help but imagine the Utrecht Psalter more effective as one of Walt’s Mickey Mouse cartoons.

The Red Wheelbarrow

So much depends

upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens.

Sitting cross-legged on the floor of Auld Alliance Gallery, considering the work of a local artist, Pete Sullivan, William Carlos Williams’ (I’m hoping he went by Carlos) poem “Red Wheelbarrow” came to mind. The poem, which we recently dissected in English class, portrays a simple farm scene, which, at a second glance, is not so simple. In the same way, the simplicity of Sullivan’s work inspired me to look again. The scene has few defined edges, and the cars, seen only by their front lights and shadows, are the only animate objects. Two cars are easily made out, and a third set of lights peak over what seems to be a hill, or perhaps in front of the sheet of a morning fog. The fog is created by a transition of a cool color palette including a grey, baby blue, violet, and olive green that don’t distract the eye. The paint seems to have been applied like plaster with the edges of the strokes left unsmoothed. The gathering of the paint at the edges makes the painting appear still wet. Specific details of the cars and of the scene at large seem insignificant due to the rough outline of the four-wheeled objects and the horizontal strokes of thick paint applied.

And yet, just as “so much depends upon a red wheelbarrow,” so much depends upon the details of the scene. The reflection of the yellow lights of the cars on the road implies a dewiness to the highway, hinting at dawn or fresh rain. It is this play of light that also works to define the cars, which are made out by the combination of the shadows of their parts. The yellow reflections also hint at the shape of the indistinguishable road and the movement of the cars. This action is also seen in the simple realignment of words in Williams’ poem. The separation of basic words like “wheelbarrow” and rainwater” provide motion to a seemingly stagnant scene.

The details of the painting, however, are only seen after a closer look. Just as a greater tone of exists dependency exists within the simplicity of “The Red Wheelbarrow”, Sullivan’s work provides the observer with more at a second glance. Despite its original tone of simple ambiguity, at a second glance the details can be taken into consideration individually, and the piece then evokes a very different mood. The layering of colors is seen after a closer look. The transitioning color palette is in fact not just smears of blue, purple, and green, but an odd contradiction of the cool colors and their complements. The violets are layered over a bright pumpkin orange, and the yellow reflections rest on a blue road. Without this opposition, however, the lights would not be emphasized on the road and the movement of the cars would not be obvious to the observer. The frontal alignment of the leading car and the proximity of the following car suggest a hurried action. Although we sit as a sort of animal on the side of the highway we suddenly feel for the anonymous drivers behind the wheel of each car.

It is indeed the combination of these basic elements—the cars, the colors, the light, the strokes—reflected in the very words of Williams’ “Red Wheelbarrow, that give Sullivan’s work such an affect.

A Self-Portrait

At the end of middle school Mrs. Rose Pickle presented us with a charcoal gray pencil and our final assignment: A self-portrait. Every year they were hung outside the auditorium and I had always marveled at those who were able to resemble their actual appearance or apply the shading just right. We had to make a presentable effort, and in most cases play up the mediocre picture we had of ourselves grinning through gritted, in most cases braced, teeth. For weeks we labored over gridding the paper and the picture, so we could place each crease, each individual eyelash in just the right spots on our faces. The task was daunting. Who really likes to look at themselves in that much detail anyway? The final products were 70 wide-eyed, smiling faces covering the walls as a sort of remembrance of a class that was being reluctantly nudged into high school.

If Egon Schiele’s self portrait were to be found pinned outside the auditorium he would most likely be forced to have a talk with the guidance counselor. In no way does he hold back from an expression of twisted anger and an evil aura. In no way does he dress up his features. He is starved, jagged, dirty. The curvature of his back suggests old age, and his left arm is interrupted by protruding bones at the joints of the shoulder and elbow. This facing arm appears an antiqued, almost jaundiced yellow, hanging stiff from his hunched shoulder. He peers over his craggy shoulder with puckered red lips. His chest sags over two bulging growths at his ribcage, as if his stomach caves in between them.
Schiele ignores tedious grids, or where parts of his body are “supposed” to be placed. Although his elongated body stretches over the full length of the page, his crinkled face draws the most attention. Through narrowed eyes Schiele leads us into his life of suffering. He portrays a mesmerizing evilness with Rasputin-like eyes. His arm wraps around his head awkwardly, and his grimy hands seem to press his temple. Dark shadows creep under his eyes and in the creases of his sculpted face. An unabashed clump of armpit hair grows under his lifted arm.

It is as though Schiele has a dark past, which he recalls in his eyes. Bare and exposed, he leaves nothing to encourage the onlooker to smile. Hints of red and yellow are hidden by quick black strokes in all directions. Schiele’s view of himself reaches past layers of grade-school appearances into his shaded soul. It is just by looking that I feel I have overstepped my boundaries as an observer and become an intruder.