Magical left hand
―The painter Goethe and the painter Hugo
Wen / Feng Jicai
People with many talents, for various reasons, one of them can be used, the other talents are idle, gradually shrinking; even if they are occasionally revealed, they are often not paid attention to. It's like the right hand suppressing the development of the left hand. This is a kind of obscuration of oneself, a kind of partiality and strangulation. What if that "left-handed talent" is also on display? Wouldn't it be more magical?
There is a small castle on the banks of the Loire River in southern France, where the Italian painter Leonardo da Vinci spent the last three years of his life. The most peculiar exhibits in the castle are some of leonardo da Vinci's scientific inventions. Such as aircraft, ladders, hammers, steel cable suspension bridges, various gadgets and new cannons and so on. These inventions seem ancient, naïve, and romantic today. But for the level of science and technology in the fifteenth century, the imagination and creativity of da Vinci's inventions were very amazing. His scientific inspiration is no less than in painting! I even learned that science needs inspiration more than art. However, the exhibitions in this castle are very interesting. The several floors above the ground are full of da Vinci's life and paintings. And all of his scientific inventions were in the basement. Is this a deliberate symbol that his brilliant painting genius buried his scientific potential in the ground?
I had the privilege of getting to know Leonardo da Vinci's scientific talents at his former home. I said that there will always be new discoveries in the "celebrity houses". I'm right! This time, I learned from the former residences of Goethe and Hugo that they were both quite good painters!
An ancient castle on the banks of the Loire River, where the Italian painter Da Vinci lived
Goethe's former home is in the small but sophisticated old city of Weimar in Germany. It left a strong impression on me about the German cultural giant's fanaticism with Italy. Anyone who has a "fine art gene" in their hearts will be stirred up as soon as they step into Italy. Goethe began his travels to Italy in September 1786, and his trail stretched from Venice in the north to Sicily in the south, so that he was so completely conquered by this great "land of fine arts" that he had a great sense of "happiness". His travel deadline was delayed again and again, up to one year and nine months. He did not return to Weimar until May 1788.
When Goethe returned home, he immediately set out to do a very fanatical thing, that is, to decorate his home exactly like Italy with the large number of sculptures, paintings, furniture and craft utensils he had brought back from Italy! The structure of his rooms is originally interesting, one after another, and all the doors are in a straight line, much like an art museum. He painted each house a color according to the image of the art museum, and all the walls were covered with large and small paintings, and the cabinets were decorated with sculptures and crafts. From Titian to Bernini. Although most of these sculptures and paintings are reproductions, when you walk through them, it feels very much like walking through an art museum like the Vatican or the Uffizi in Italy.
The yellow salon in Weimar Goethe's house
In the past, I only knew from The Goethe Talk that he loved painting and was very good at talking about painting. It was in Weimar that it was more specifically known that collecting and appreciating painting was an important part of his life; painting by drawing in person was a regular artistic activity outside of his writing. He also hung his own paintings on the wall with great interest, among these Italian paintings he loved. Did he really think of himself as a painter? If he's like that, he's right!
In my opinion, his paintings, especially the landscape sketches, are of a very high standard. It is a pen sketch or sketch, with some watercolor colors, which is idyllic and elegant, serene and serene, and full of air. The most difficult thing about landscape painting is the sense of air. The sense of air is far more difficult to express than the sense of space. A higher level than the sense of air is the mood and character. It all depends on the inner cultivation of the painter. The mood of Goethe's landscape paintings is first-class. In addition, there are many of his techniques, including watercolor, oil painting, printmaking, and decorative painting, and the technical expression is very strong. If it were not for the fact that the suffering of the nation weighed too heavily on his heart, I believe that he would have become a great painter. Even some of the landscape sketches of today are no less than Battier and Dürer. Don't think I'm exaggerating, and I don't believe it.
Goethe's own landscape painting, 1807, now in the Weimar Classical Foundation - Goethe and Schiller Archives
Speaking of Hugo, I remember that when I read the second volume of Hugo's Les Misérables, "Waterloo", I was very impressed by a few sentences written about the scene: "On the grass in front of the door, there are three nail handles upside down, and the wildflowers of May are randomly opening between the teeth." "I thought, this is not a writer but a painter's thinking. There are a few examples of this in Hugo's work. Where did Hugo come from with this kind of painterly thinking? This time I understood, because he himself was a painter, a real painter.
On the second floor of Hugo's house in the Place des Vocs in Paris, there is almost an exhibition of Hugo's own paintings. Previously, I didn't know that Hugo was good at painting, so at first I thought it was the work of a painter of Hugo's contemporaries, probably because of the special relationship with Hugo in content; Hang here. When the Accompanying French friend said that it was a painting by Hugo himself, I was shocked. The reason for the shock is that these works look very strong, have a note, and technically can be called the work of a professional painter.
Hugo's painting Turg Tower in 1835, 1876, is now in the Hugo House in Paris
Hugo's painting "Wind and Waves, Or My Destiny", 1857, is now in the Hugo House in Paris
Hugo's paintings are not large, mostly sixteen to eight open pages. He paints with pencils, pens, and watercolor brushes (brushes) and an ink-like black color. In addition he no longer uses other colors. This is probably like the Chinese literati painters – the color of the painting is taken from the ink in the brick table on the table. Hugo used ink for writing. This makes his paintings look a bit like Chinese ink paintings. He likes to paint on brown paper, which is a bit like ancient Chinese paintings.
He likes to paint the ruins of ancient castles, the destruction of trees, the wilderness of wild villages, the fierce winds and waves, and the monsters and gods. There are also some themes, such as love qing, fate, life, death, and regional culture. Most of these paintings are a continuation of his literary imagination. His comic characters are almost entirely illustrations of novels. His technique is very skilled, as if he is painting every day, the speed of the brush is very fast, the ink is free and indulgent, and there is a very strong atmosphere on the picture. His paintings are gloomy, thick, obscure, desolate, eccentric, and have a sense of mystery. Mystery is harder to draw. Paintings like Bada, Xu Wei, Miro, Munch, and Matisse have a sense of mystery. Hugo's mystique probably comes from the mind of a writer. Because the things that writers focus on are always mysterious—whether it's a life or a person's note. Without mystery, the writer loses the desire to write. This is also the real reason why many writers have come to great understanding when they are old, but they cannot write anything.
Therefore, in essence, the charm of literature is a sense of mystery.
Hugo's painting "Castle with a Cross", 1850, is now in the Hugo House in Paris
Hugo's painting Landscape of Three Trees, 1850, is now in the Former Residence of Hugo in Paris
Because of this writer's nature, Hugo was extremely interested in the far East. There is a tea room on his third floor. He calls himself a "Chinese tea room." This little living room, which is used to entertain friends, was entirely of his own design. He decorated the tea room with many items imported from China, including furniture, tapestries, idols, porcelain, glass, wood carvings, bamboo curtain paintings and scroll paintings. I recognized that the scroll painting was "Three-Star High Illumination Map"; the bamboo curtain painting was a story fragment of "The Legend of the White Snake", the deity was a Zhujin wood carving in dongyang, Zhejiang, the bottle should be a Qianlong folk kiln, and the plain white glaze Guanyin was a fixed kiln. In the middle of the house is a cinnabar lacquer bottle antique shelf, which at first glance shows that it is an early Qing Dynasty object.
In order to strengthen the oriental atmosphere, in addition to using the favorite colors of ancient China, such as bluestone green and cinnabar red gold, which appear solemn and calm; he also asked someone to make some reliefs of Chinese patterns, hanging on the four walls. Such as gods and strange beasts, rare birds and exotic birds, acrobatic figures, Bo ancient artifacts, their images are magical and ethereal, graceful and elegant, this is the era (before 1840) Westerners on the Chinese "social collective imagination". This mild-mannered imagination is in line with the distant Marco Polo's description of the East, or rather from Marco Polo. But after 1840, the "collective imagination" of Westerners about China changed. It's like Arthur Smith's Temperament of Chinese.
Having said that, Hugo's "Chinese Tea Room" also reflects the interest and attention to mysterious things in his paintings. The significance of his paintings is that he does not express superficial visual interests, but allows us to see realistically what is inside his mind. Only good painters do this. Because real painters paint to present their hearts.
A man of many talents, if he uses the second talent he possesses, must come from the desire of the heart. For words can only describe the mind, but they cannot visually present the mind. Only then did Hugo pick up the paintbrush with his left hand.
Any kind of art can only express a certain part of the content. Words can't write about the instantaneous sound of the piano, nor can it depict the hundreds of colors on the palette. So, it is only when we see the paintings of Hugo, Goethe, Pushkin, Thackeray, Bullock, and others that we understand them more holistically and deeply. By understanding, I don't mean their talents, but their hearts.
The "Chinese Tea Room" in Hugo's Former Residence