Petra ten-Doesschate Chu

Scatology and the Realist Aesthetic

Scatology in Western art of the post-Renaissance period has generally been discussed within the context of two related aesthetic categories, the comic and the grotesque.1 Otherwise put, students of...

Before the White Cube

To those familiar with seventeenth-century Dutch painting, the name of Pieter Saenredam evokes white-washed church interiors devoid of any kind of decoration. Saenredam’s painting of the choir of the church of St. Bavo in Haarlem (Worcester, Art Museum) shows a tall Gothic structure, without any color except for the small crests painted on the two black rouwborden (mourning tables) belonging to the well-known families whose members are buried in the church.2 St. Bavo had, of course, not always looked the way it did in Saenredam’s time. Built in the Middle Ages, it must once have had wall paintings, tapestries, and stained glass windows, as well as a well-appointed altar surmounted by a painted or carved altar piece. After 1578, when the church was converted from Catholicism to Protestantism, all this art work was removed and the church assumed the austere and pristine character evoked in Saenredam’s painting. At the root of the church’s metamorphosis were the teachings of John Calvin, who emphasized that worship is spiritual, individual, and focused only on God. That led him to advocate for spaces of worship that were simple and bare, offering no distraction.3 In Calvinist Holland, the Medieval Catholic churches that were taken over by the Calvinists were emptied of all art work and the frescoed walls were covered with white wash. Thus the faithful could concentrate on God and God alone. While in Northern Europe, under the influence of the Reformation, churches were turned into empty white spaces, in the South, the Counter-Reformation

Gustave Courbet's Venus and Psyche: Uneasy Nudity in Second-Empire France

As late as January, or perhaps even February 1864, Gustave Courbet embarked on a large-scale figure painting destined for the upcoming Salon.1 Writing to the dealer Jules Luquet, he described the work as “two nude women, life size, and painted in a manner that you have never seen me do.”2 In later letters he suggested that he might call it Venus in Jealous Pursuit of Psyche. But in April, when he submitted it to the Salon, he gave it the neutral title Etude de femmes, or Study of Women (fig. 1), which allowed for a maximum freedom of interpretation.3 The painting, which has since disappeared, showed a blonde woman (“Psyche”) sleeping on a large four-poster, while a dark-haired companion (“Venus”), seated on the edge of the bed, drew away a curtain to gaze at her.4 Like Return from the Conference (destroyed), submitted the previous year, Study of Women, after some apparent disagreement between the jury and the Count de Nieuwerkerke, superintendent of the Fine Arts Administration, was barred from the Salon ...