JANUARY 2022
Nocturne in Black and Gold - The Falling Rocket, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, 1872-1877, oil on canvas.
Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
What could be a more perfect time to launch VANGUARDGIRL than at the turn of a new year? I hope everyone has had the most magical of festive holidays and that your year began surrounded with good health and happiness, especially in the face of Covid-19 and the new Omicron variant. It seems only fitting to start this blog off with a work of art that instantly makes me think of the mixture of feelings which come around each and every new year - a mixture of hope, uncertainty, relief, and change…
During the years between 1872-1877, James Abbott McNeill Whistler painted Nocturne in Black and Gold - The Falling Rocket - an image that would forever become known as one of the key moments in the birth of modernism. Whistler’s painting depicts Cremorne Garden’s fireworks display, illuminating a misty London night sky. It’s quite difficult to decipher between the foggy darkness and the shadows of the surrounding architecture - the scene is adorned with a spectacular scattering of gold flecks of paint - the explosion of fireworks allowing you to make out the subtle outlines of buildings as though you were right there amongst the eruptive bangs of sky confetti. We’ve all encountered those moments of difficulty in trying to capture the Thame’s New Year’s fireworks display for insta - glass of prosecco in one hand and phone in the other - the resulting blurs and snaps just missing the full firework in its moment of glory. Whistler’s painting isn’t too far off that - we don’t catch the glittering spectacular in its prime, symmetrically displayed like some kind of synchronized swim - but there is something so truthful to the moment…and those viewing this painting at the time were just not quite prepared for it.
Self Portrait, John Ruskin, 1875, watercolour and pencil
Hewison, R., ‘Ruskin, Turner and the Pre-Raphaelites’, 2000
The epitome of art in the Victorian era is often stereotypically reserved for the Pre-Raphaelites, the leading art squad of the time - which included artists such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt, Ford Madox Brown, Marie Spartali Stillman and later William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones and John William Waterhouse. These artists championed the concepts of history painting and literary references, imitating nature as central to the purpose of their art. Their work was vastly different to the work in which Whistler was producing at this time; the Pre-Raphaelites work was characterised by intense compositions, lots of detail, crammed full of literary references and laden with symbolism - Whistler’s Nocturne paintings like Nocturne in Black and Gold were more concerned with tonal qualities, the atmosphere and feel of the setting.
The Pre-Raphaelites associated themselves with the writings of the famous art critic of the time, John Ruskin - and similarly, Ruskin came to champion the Pre-Raphaelites for their truth in painting. Ruskin wrote heavily about art, often emphasising the connections between nature, art and society. Prior to his support for the Pre-Raphaelites, Ruskin defended the work of Joseph Mallord William Turner in which he argued that the main role of the artist was “truth to nature” and that Turner did this in his Romanticist landscapes and seascapes.
When Ruskin saw Whistler’s Nocturne paintings exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery he found particular fault with Nocturne in Black and Gold. He launched a scornful attack on Whistler’s painting in a series of letters published in a pamphlet called Fors Clavigera (these letters were addressed to British workmen during the 1870’s and communicated his beliefs and interest in moral and social change of the time):
“For Mr.Whistler’s own sake, no less than for the protection of the purchaser, Sir Coutt’s Lindsay ought not to have admitted works into the the gallery in which the ill-educated conceit of the artist so nearly approached the aspect of wilful imposture.I have seen, and heard, much of cockney impudence before now, but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the face of the public!”
- Anderson, R.,; Koval, A., James McNeill Whistler: Beyond the Myth, 1995, New York, p.125
Arrangement in Gray: Portrait of the Painter (Self Portrait), James Whistler, c.1872, oil on canvas
Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit.
Following Ruskin’s criticism, Whistler’s popularity and sales suffered and Whistler came to the decision that in order to save his financial situation as a result of Ruskin’s words, he needed to take Ruskin to court. The painting became known as the inception of the lawsuit between Whistler and Ruskin, if not one of the most famous art world court cases in history. Not only had Ruskin put Whistler in a dire financial situation, slammed his painting and technique - he also questioned Whistler’s validity as an artist. Ouch! As a result, it became unpopular to collect Whistler’s work. What’s particularly interesting about this is that Turner, an artist Ruskin defended, seemed more abstract in technique than Whistler - why? When you compare works by both artists you see the same fluidity in brushwork, the same vivid use of colour and light - and overall, a definitive play in the abstract. It perhaps then wasn’t necessarily Whistler’s abstract quality in Nocturne in Black and Gold that he hated so much, but rather his treatment of nature. To use the same techniques as Turner, especially found in Snow Storm sometimes referred to as Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth of 1842, its near impossible to tell the sky from the sea due to the swirling brushwork - and its far more prominent in Turner’s than Whistlers Nocturne paintings. The difference that Ruskin found was in the combination of subject and treatment, where Turner’s works are of the divine, the unparalleled power of nature and its possibilities in painting, whereas Ruskin felt that Whistler glorified the industrial and his art undermined the widely held view that art had moral obligations.
[Below: Comparison between Nocturne in Black and Gold - The Falling Rocket by James Abbott McNeill Whistler, 1872-1877 and Snowstorm or Steamboat off a Harbour’s Mouth by Joseph Mallord William Turner, 1842, oil on canvas, Tate Modern, London.]
The court case was an absolute disaster for Whistler - when the painting was presented in court it was accidentally displayed upside-down (this is pretty much what I imagine curators of modern art have nightmares about) and when the judge asked Whistler how long it took him to “knock it out” I’m sure Whistler felt like it was a lost cause:
Holker: "What is the subject of Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket?"
Whistler: "It is a night piece and represents the fireworks at Cremorne Gardens.”
Holker: "Not a view of Cremorne?"
Whistler: "If it were A View of Cremorne it would certainly bring about nothing but disappointment on the part of the beholders. It is an artistic arrangement. That is why I call it a nocturne..."
Holker: "Did it take you much time to paint the Nocturne in Black and Gold? How soon did you knock it off?"
Whistler: "Oh, I 'knock one off' possibly in a couple of days – one day to do the work and another to finish it ..."
Holker: "The labour of two days is that for which you ask two hundred guineas?"
Whistler: "No, I ask it for the knowledge I have gained in the work of a lifetime."
I often wonder what Ruskin would have made of the prices works of art in Tate Modern go for…yikes. It’s also important to note that at this time, there was still a heavy amount of value placed on the time it took to create a work of art - the labour and skill involved - this is clearly indicated in the judges links between labour of love and price. Whistler saw that there was no longer the need to imitate nature - the advent of photography could do that at the click of a button. The new age - the dawn of a modern era, needed more than that
“The imitator is a poor kind of creature. If the man who paints only the tree, or flower, or other surface he sees before him were an artist, the king of artists would be the photographer. It is for the artist to do something beyond this.”
- James Abbott McNeill Whistler, quoted in The Gentle Art of Making Enemies: As Pleasingly Exemplified in Many Instances, Wherein the Serious Ones of this Earth, Carefully Exasperated Have Been Prettily Spurred on to Unseemliness and Indiscretion, While Overcome by an Undue Sense of Right, 1892.
(What a title…!)
Despite the odds, Whistler won the case but only received only one farthing in costs and was bankrupt within six months. Talk about labour of love, huh? Whistler is often regarded as the forefather of abstraction, painting essence over accuracy and going against the traditions of the past. It’s quite interesting how looking back to Ruskin’s criticism - “flinging paint at the public” - well, that’s exactly what the artists working in America of the 1940’s and 1960’s did to the canvas.
“The new needs new techniques. And the modern artists have found new ways of and new means of making their statements…the modern painter cannot express this age, the airplane, the atom-bomb, the radio, in the old forms of the Renaissance or of any past culture. Each age finds its own technique.”
- Jackson Pollock in an interview with William Wright in the summer of 1950 for presentation on the Sag Harbor radio station.
[Above: Comparison between Nocturne in Black and Gold - The Falling Rocket, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, 1872-1877 and Full Fathom Five, Jackson Pollock, 1947, oil on canvas with nails, tacks, buttons, key, coins, cigarettes, matches, etc., Pollock-Krasner Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.]