Sunday, March 19, 2006
Above are two works by the great American artist John Singer Sargent that hang in Boston's Public Library. On the left is Synagogue, on the right, Church. Sargent created them as part of his theme for decorating the then-new library entitled, Triumph of Religion. When he completed the first section, Frieze of the Prophets in 1895 (see article for photo), the work was heralded as perhaps the first section of a coming "American Sistine Chapel."
But that was just the first section. It took 24 years for Sargent to finally produce the next two sections -- those pictured above -- and when he did, he created quite a stir.
No sooner were the two new paintings unveiled than letters of protest began to be published, in the Jewish press, as well as in the secular and even in the Christian press. Frederick William Coburn, a writer for the Boston Herald, wrote, ''If one were a rabbi or a cantor, it might be a little distasteful to have this middle-age fashion of deprecating his ancient religion revived in a building supported by public taxation.''...
It turns out that Sargent had gone back in art history for images, and rather foolishly settled on the wrong ones, then, caught with his naivete showing, showed his sources and had trouble understanding why these old images which had been around so long and displayed in such vaunted places might cause such offence:
The Advocate asked for a ''more explicit statement,'' but none was forthcoming. Sargent knew he was in trouble-he remembered well the scandal that ensued when his suggestive portrait ''Madame X'' made her debut with a fallen gown strap in 1884-and he retreated to his rooms at the Hotel Vendome on Commonwealth Avenue. Depressed by the events, he abandoned the murals, never returning to ''The Sermon on the Mount.'' [Meant to be the concluding piece. -S]
There are many interesting aspects here: The expert craftsman and artist but the imperfect scholar with a less than perfect understanding of even his own field's past -- themes we've seen time and again. The ability of an image's baggage and the history of its viewers (note the history of the Jews of Boston in the article) contributing to the work's ability to cause offence.
The Boston Public Library has a very nice web site for the murals, here. Here is the link to the Globe story again.
Similar carvings are on display on the exterior portals of Notre Dame de Paris, I noticed on a recent trip to Paris (Google Image turns them up rather quickly).
As noted, this invokes an entire range of topics and feelings. I agree with your concluding comments concerning Sargent, technically a highly accomplished artist while historically/socially, and perhaps morally, a naive, tertiary figure at best. Still, I'm more diffident concerning the piece itself since at some point this type of iconography becomes historically relevant and it is a first rate piece technically which, from my own subjective pov, does not seem to be grievously offensive. (E.g., compare if it had been intended to offend and additionally had been done in a technically more gauche manner, such as in the style of Nazi or Soviet era realism used to advance the cults of personality and other ideological themes.)
As something of an aside, compare Sargent's Triumph of Religion with a far more historic piece which is sometimes referred to by the same title. We are fast approaching the quin-centennial of Raphael's completion not only of his School of Athens but also of his Disputa, the latter of which is occasionally referred to as the Triumph of Religion, though am not sure of the provenance of this reference. Raphael's School of Athens is, of course, intended to underscore the value of philosophical thought and interests by symbolically portraying prominent thinkers from antiquity. By contrast, the Disputa, which hangs directly opposite The School of Athens in the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican, is intended to highlight theological interests and themes. These two works are placed directly opposite one another for various reasons, prominently because the philosophical and theological themes are viewed, both then as now, as complementary, which is not to say in a facile or simple manner. Similarly, The School of Athens serves to anchor or ground the Disputa.
A great deal more could be noted (Raphael himself, scholastics such as Buridan and Oresme, the Renaissance, Copernicus only a few years later, then Galileo Galilei, Urban VIII, etc., etc.), but suffice to say for now (in lieu of ten-thousand words), as a contrast with Sargent's, at best, naive sensibilities, nowhere in Raphael's piece is there a symbolic denigration or slighting of Jews or any other class. It's an instructive contrast, aesthetically and morally and otherwise, one worth noting.
I guess offense, like much else, is in the eye of the beholder. I got a pit in my stomach as soon as I saw the titles of these paintings. I'm familiar with a lot of Sargent's work and have always admired it, but somehow (despite having lived in Boston for 2 years and doing an intership at the Jewish Federaion there) I never heard about this before.
I was also struck by a certain similarity of the features of Sargent's "church" lady to those of this one, supposedly Sargent's most currently popular work. The contexts are rather incongruous.
To be clear, I am offended by aspects of Sargent's work. But am also offended by suggestions in various pieces of publically funded and publically displayed art which assert, for example, logical/scientific positivisms or even non-foundationalism as truth or that a materialist/physicalist metaphysics should be prescribed as a de facto state religion. However, 1) what merely causes offense vs. 2) what needs to be censored and proscribed via suasion but without legal remedy vs. 3) what needs to be subjected to even more assertive legal remedies - reflect qualitatively different categories and different degrees of offense.
Thank God the Christian prophets didn't include you-know-who [pbuh], or there might have been considerably more to deal with than civilized calls for "the opinions of experts, supporters, and detractors."
Hebrew prophets, I meant to say in my previous comment . . . The Globe is extremely delicate -- disingenuous even (could it be?) -- in referring to today's cartoon hysteria, deliberately fomented by Islamicist Danish imams, as "today's standards," dhimmitudinously failing to call a scimitar a scimitar.