"Musee des Beaux Arts" by W H Auden (read by Tom O'Bedlam)

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• published: 06 Aug 2009
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Auden visited the Museum near Brussels in 1938 when he was 31. The references in the earlier part of the poem are to various paintings, obvious some about the nativity - the miraculous birth - but the latter part is about "The Fall of Icarus" by Pierre Breughel. The theme is that life goes on much the same regardless of personal tragedy. It's about the myth of Daedalus who made wings out of feathers and wax for himself and his son Icarus to escape from Crete. He told Icarus not to fly too near to the sun, but Icarus took no notice, the wax melted, he fell into the sea and was drowned. You can look at it as the tragedy of the father who kills his son, or as the son's foolhardiness in not taking heed of his father's advice. You can see Icarus' legs disappearing into the sea the lower right corner of the picture. In fact only the legs and the title have any relevance. Without these it would be just a landscape. Is there any real relevance in the rest of the picture? Why is the sun setting, for instance? Icarus must have been falling for a long time. The ship's sails are full of wind but nothing else seems to be affected by it. Maybe Pierre thought to himself, "This landscape is boring, I know, I'll paint some comedy legs 20 ft long sticking out of the water and call it 'The Fall of Icarus'." Auden's poem too is about how uninvolved with the tragedy the remainder of the picture seems. One might think that things could hardly have been different, there wasn't time for the other figures to show a reaction to a boy plummeting into the sea, the ploughman wouldn't have heard the spash and the forsaken cry, the ship wouldn't have had time to change course. But this is modern thinking, corrupted by photography. Photography changed Art fundamentally with the concept of a moment in time captured. It's easy to recognise pictures painted after photography was invented. In these paintings perspective is correct, even though it's usually only correct for what the camera sees and not what the human eye sees, running horses have their legs in the right places, and so forth. A painting isn't a photograph. The idea of the moment frozen in time had not been a concern of earlier artists. Like children drawing a face, artists didn't so much paint what they saw as what they knew to be there - or the way they wished to see it. The impressionists painted what they noticed rather than what they saw. Thus it didn't matter to artists that all the elements that they depicted couldn't reasonably have happened at the same time. Also, before photography, Art was a commercial venture, the only way of making a picture. These days we assume that the artist painted the whole of the picture - back then, it was less likely. A studio might have apprentices to paint the sky, grass or background scenery and maybe experts who had a special talent for hands or drapery. Art was usually commissioned, meaning ordered in advance and prepared to a specification. The artist was charged with the task of capturing somebody's pretty daughter on canvas while she was still in the bloom of youth. Some, such as madonnas and figures from mythology was just an excuse to paint naked people, pornography for clients who could afford it. (Some cynic said about modern art that the difference between Art and Pornography was that if it's the right colour and you can see it clearly, then it's Pornography) So it makes little sense to examine these ancient pictures as though every part of them had some significance. Maybe Breughel just added something to a picture which lacked a focal point. Maybe he had an apprentice who was good at painting sheep and ships. Some things are there because they just happen to fill the space and they have no more significance than that. To be an artist it wasn't necessary to be a social commentator or hide deeper meanings, it was only necessary to please the client. Artists were the equivalent of modern commercial photographers or even the guys who now design video games. We should beware of trying to squeeze too much out of a damp sponge.

"Musee des Beaux Arts" by W H Auden (read by Tom O'Bedlam)

• Report rights infringement
• published: 06 Aug 2009
• views: 29622

Auden visited the Museum near Brussels in 1938 when he was 31. The references in the earlier part of the poem are to various paintings, obvious some about the nativity - the miraculous birth - but the latter part is about "The Fall of Icarus" by Pierre Breughel. The theme is that life goes on much the same regardless of personal tragedy. It's about the myth of Daedalus who made wings out of feathers and wax for himself and his son Icarus to escape from Crete. He told Icarus not to fly too near to the sun, but Icarus took no notice, the wax melted, he fell into the sea and was drowned. You can look at it as the tragedy of the father who kills his son, or as the son's foolhardiness in not taking heed of his father's advice. You can see Icarus' legs disappearing into the sea the lower right corner of the picture. In fact only the legs and the title have any relevance. Without these it would be just a landscape. Is there any real relevance in the rest of the picture? Why is the sun setting, for instance? Icarus must have been falling for a long time. The ship's sails are full of wind but nothing else seems to be affected by it. Maybe Pierre thought to himself, "This landscape is boring, I know, I'll paint some comedy legs 20 ft long sticking out of the water and call it 'The Fall of Icarus'." Auden's poem too is about how uninvolved with the tragedy the remainder of the picture seems. One might think that things could hardly have been different, there wasn't time for the other figures to show a reaction to a boy plummeting into the sea, the ploughman wouldn't have heard the spash and the forsaken cry, the ship wouldn't have had time to change course. But this is modern thinking, corrupted by photography. Photography changed Art fundamentally with the concept of a moment in time captured. It's easy to recognise pictures painted after photography was invented. In these paintings perspective is correct, even though it's usually only correct for what the camera sees and not what the human eye sees, running horses have their legs in the right places, and so forth. A painting isn't a photograph. The idea of the moment frozen in time had not been a concern of earlier artists. Like children drawing a face, artists didn't so much paint what they saw as what they knew to be there - or the way they wished to see it. The impressionists painted what they noticed rather than what they saw. Thus it didn't matter to artists that all the elements that they depicted couldn't reasonably have happened at the same time. Also, before photography, Art was a commercial venture, the only way of making a picture. These days we assume that the artist painted the whole of the picture - back then, it was less likely. A studio might have apprentices to paint the sky, grass or background scenery and maybe experts who had a special talent for hands or drapery. Art was usually commissioned, meaning ordered in advance and prepared to a specification. The artist was charged with the task of capturing somebody's pretty daughter on canvas while she was still in the bloom of youth. Some, such as madonnas and figures from mythology was just an excuse to paint naked people, pornography for clients who could afford it. (Some cynic said about modern art that the difference between Art and Pornography was that if it's the right colour and you can see it clearly, then it's Pornography) So it makes little sense to examine these ancient pictures as though every part of them had some significance. Maybe Breughel just added something to a picture which lacked a focal point. Maybe he had an apprentice who was good at painting sheep and ships. Some things are there because they just happen to fill the space and they have no more significance than that. To be an artist it wasn't necessary to be a social commentator or hide deeper meanings, it was only necessary to please the client. Artists were the equivalent of modern commercial photographers or even the guys who now design video games. We should beware of trying to squeeze too much out of a damp sponge.