Skip to main content

Jasper Johns, 'Diver', 1962-3

 



My eye is drawn to an overall sense of darkness. The monochrome palette made up of charcoal and pastel sucks the viewer in, plunging them into the canvas and echoing the title of the piece. This is foregrounded by Johns' stencilling of the word Diver on the bottom left hand corner of the piece, barely visible against the murky colours. The capitalisation of the word seems like a warning - do not be pulled under. Diver has been interpreted to be Johns paying homage to the suicide of Hart Crane, an American poet who jumped overboard a ship in the 1930s, his body never being recovered. With this interpretation in mind, both the dark colour palette and warning label below the anchor shape depicted are even more emotionally effective. 

If Johns is referencing Crane's suicide, he takes the human element of the painting further. Johns said that he wanted to convey the idea of a 'swan dive' through this depiction. Despite an overall darkness, there are graceful movements to the brushwork. As one swan dives towards the water, their arms sweep out, just as Johns has swept his brush across the mounted canvas to create the head of the anchor shape. The body is a vertical line during the dive, Johns using the line of connection between the two panels in the centre of the piece to portray this. The title is not 'dive' or 'diving', but the 'er' again amplifies the sense of humanity behind the piece, giving its sense of purpose. In addition, Johns has dotted handprints about the painting, adding depth to an otherwise flat, monochrome picture plane. The work therefore does not just have vertical depth, but also three dimensional depth, the hands standing out to the viewer and interacting with their eye. The handprints at the base of the anchor in particular hark back to the idea of the swan dive, the hands pulling apart to the create the arc that forms the head of the anchor. 

Johns' inclusion of the anchor shape, however, adds weight to the piece. Not only does the strong, vertical and the approximate symmetry of the anchor imply depth and downward movement, but even the eye itself seems to be dragged downward. The painting itself is large, and would be especially evocative on the white walls of the modern galley space. Often critics compare a dark colour palette to the artist's apparent state of mind - Mark Rothko used dark tones throughout the 1970s to perhaps signal a man spiralling further into depression. With Crane's suicide in mind, there is definitely a darker reading to the painting, with seemingly no light breaking through and no hope of reaching the surface once again. The viewer is instead anchored to the painting, not able to look away, dragged down towards the seabed and the abyss. The colours envelope the real world, and it becomes our very own handprints on the canvas that claw at the darkness, desperately trying to find the light.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Guccio di Mannaia, 'Chalice for Pope Nicholas IV', 13th century

  As the only work remaining of Sienese goldsmith Guccio di Mannaia, the chalice he created for Pope Nicholas IV in the late thirteenth century is an incredibly important work of art. Not only does it highlight the rich, opulent nature of papal commissions, but it proves the talent of Sienese goldsmiths and their resulting influence on painters and sculptors of the period. The chalice is innovative in shape and form, but it is striking first and foremost through the use of gold. It is an object that deserves to be viewed in the flesh, because of its reflective and therefore mimetic potential – like a bronze sculpture it is activated by light and should be experienced in the round as a three-dimensional, highly decorated art object. Its complicated design features an almost architectonic base, star-like as it spills out towards the viewer. The base builds up into the stem of the chalice which is decorated with an array of enamelled plaques featuring saints, prophets, angels and furt...
Post a Comment
Read more

Cellini, 'Perseus with the Head of Medusa', 1545-1554

  My eye is immediately drawn to the head of Medusa. At first glance it looks gruesome, as though Cellini has captured the moment just after the head has been decapitated, and it oozes blood and bodily matter. However the viewer then notices the similarity between that and Medusa's hair. Maybe it is just her hair after all. Cellini has cleverly enticed the viewer in here, to take a closer look and therefore involved them in the sculpture as a whole. Once they do come closer, they begin to notice other things such as the similarity between Perseus' hair and Medusa's snakes. Hero and monster are not so separate. Even the features of their faces are very similar. Perhaps Cellini wants to suggest that evil can often wear the mask of good. Or he could even be implying that everyone has some evil within them, even the hero Perseus.  One of the good things about sculpture is that the viewer is able to walk around it, and fully immerse themselves in the piece. Cellini has used this...
Post a Comment
Read more

Marianne von Werekin, 'Sunrise', 1920

  An endless line of men that tug the rope of a small boat soon disappear into murky, burning red waters beyond. Colour is fantastical, mystical and otherworldly, producing an atmosphere far from reality. This is the Symbolist work of Marianne von Werefkin, part of the German Expressionists that worked in Munich from the 1910s. A movement so often dominated by the male names of the time – Kandinsky especially – Werefkin was a vital participant, expanding the range of art produced and displayed, complementing her work with art theory and written sources, as well as creating her own Salon upon her arrival in Munich. It is easy to get lost in biography with a piece such as this. Wasted, human potential seems to be at the heart of this work, signalled by the endless line of men pushing forward towards the edge of the picture plane. There is a sense of struggle and a universality to the suffering through the portrayal of faceless men in similar blue tones. Looking at the date produced o...
Post a Comment
Read more