Picture Game experience...

A few days ago I asked my friends / relatives to try the following on my lj:

PEOPLE! I'm launching a new feature in here. Remember I said I was going to say a little something about nice pictures everynow and then? Well, actually, no. YOU are going to. Right, I know it's Friday night and everybody (but myself) is busy going out getting drunk etc... But if you participate drunk or hungover (or even in a few days) that's even better.The principle of the thing? I post the reproduction of one painting. And you are asked to react. Say whatever you want; it can be thoughtful, silly, provocative, weird, even injurious ... whatever.The interest is: you'll be doing me two favours a)share your oh so wonderful vision of art; b) unveil yourself a little further in the process. And you may even enjoy it.Come on, I am not being difficult: I ask 5 minutes of your time. So please, POST YOUR COMMENTS.

For info: Rembrandt - Woman bathing in a stream (Hendrickje Stoffels?), oil on oak, 61.8x47 cm, National Gallery, London.

That's what came out of it:

Sam: bien que j adore les couleurs sombres en peinture et aime bien Rembrandt, je ne trouve pas cette peinturte particulierement interessante. Tres sombre, couleur du corps fade. Un bain la nuit peut etre et encore! A la limite morbide (paleur de la peau et reflets rouges dans l eau). Rq: cette peinture rend surment mieux en vrai qu en photo.Next painting ;-)

Greg: "c est nul a chier".

Mnkyclldshlly: Set in a gloomy part of the forest, this painting shows a woman bathing in a stream.

Mnkyclldshlly:What I really meant to say (apart from stating the obvious), was that it is a peaceful picture. She has picked a place where no-one can see her, so she can enjoy the silence and comtemplate life.That's the (sort of) clever answer.Here is the Monkey answer;This woman, thinking she has got away from her husband for a while (one of the horses on his carriage has broken down, so he's waiting for someone to come and fix the horse), goes for a nice refreshing bath. Then suddenly it hits her. What if she has a pee in the stream. No-one will notice as the stream is gently flowing somewhere else, and no-one can see her. She has dreamed about doing this in public for a long time. She would get beaten in school if she did it in the communal baths. Also, her brother died of a rash he developed that was attributed to urine in the water when they shared baths when they were little. Then she thinks that "maybe I shouldn't do it. There's a nice family of ducks a litlle further down, and I would feel bad if they died as well. What if this water was being bottled at the end of the stream and then sold onto the masses in pubs, clubs and bars for ridiculous prices. Serves them right, spending money friftily(?) when they can come to this stream and just drink for free! But... then I wouldn't be able to bathe in nice little streams like this if everyone came out and had a drink. Maybe I SHOULD get rid of them for once a...." Her husband's shouting interrupting her internal arguement. The horse has been fixed, so they can go home now. She leaves, thinking, "when will I be able to pee like that again?"

Mnkyclldshlly: Or maybe she has just stepped in something...

pi_po_lucio:So, it is the first time that I see this painting which I did not know at all. I went on the web site of the National Gallery because there are very increased photographs of the painting. On the photographs, something seemed odd to me: it seems that the painting has been made very quickly: there are great blows of brush for the white shirt of the woman. And even with the enlargings, I did not really arrive to understand what is painted in the second plan. Is the painting completed ? Another thing: in the bath there is very little water (to the tibia not more) but the woman raises her shirt quite high (to the pubis but not more!) but only front side, the shirt is not raised on the back side.Who is that woman really ? In any case, the painter wanted to show us his body… Also, what does she look at? Her feet? This is a little bit curious. She does not seem to be in a river, so there is no risk of stones :-). Does she feel some shame? Another idea which came to me: it is that at the time where this table was painted, one washed oneself only very little. Did the painted scene really take place or is it the fruit of imagination (desire?) of the painter?

JB: Pourquoi elle ne monte pas plus haut?Elle n'a rien d'autre à se mettre?C'est du sang derrière elle?Elle marche dans du sang???Bon je n'ai surement rien compris....bisous

Blonde: c'est etonnant mais cette peinture ne m'inspire pas tellement. comment dire, ce n'est pas qu'elle ne me plait pas mais elle me laisse plein d'interrogations et ca me derange un peu. en meme je ne sais pas exactemement ce que tu attends de nos commentaires: juste de la spontaneite peut-etre...ce qui me marque en premier lieu c'est sa carnation, sa peau est d'un gris morbide, mais c en meme temps caracteristique du travail de rembrandt.il est vrai que l'arriere plan est a peine perceptible: elle semble s'etre deshabillee pour se baigner, ses vetements sont ceux d'une femme aisee aux couleurs vives et riches. je crois me souvenir qu'il y a peut etre un lien avec une scene mythologique (bethsabee?) d'ou cette richesse; ce n'est donc pas forcement une femme de l'aristocratie.en tout cas a l'expression de son visage elle semble heureuse, elle esquisse un sourire et son regard semble happe par ce qu'elle voit(ou ne voit pas justement, that is the question mrs nuche?). est-ce son reflet qui l'emerveille?pour resumer elle ferai mieux de se jeter dans cette eau qui semble glacee pour reprendre des couleurs la ptite-la, elle est bien palote, faut qu'elle rosisse!!

T4z4: Ok straight to the point.I am amazed by the colours firstly the fact that the background is much darker than the women puts her forward as is done in photography by properly lighting the subject and not the background or by blurring the background to create that effect.The women’s skin is white and reminiscent of the days when whiteness was a sign of beauty as it still is in many parts of the world. Her size also reminds me of that time, she is plump and not skinny like today’s models.The title is bathing in a stream but she holds up her clothes as if she didn’t want to wet them or was waiting to be sure the stream was safe before removing them, the way she looks at the stream goes in that direction.Her colourful clothes lying behind her imply she is probably from a rich background as peasants didn’t really have access to colours at the time.Why would a rich beatifull woman bathes in a stream????Lastly the description says "oil on oak" so it seams the paint was applied on wood, I am curious to know if that was to create the dark sombre atmosphere or if it was a current technique in those times.Great project M,Keep it up

Me: Thanks so much everybody for your comments!I was not planning on explaining my choice nor giving my thoughts, but then many of you seemed quite puzzled by different aspects (no JB, she is not bathing in blood...), so I thought I'd give you my impressions.Rembrandt was accused of chosing women who in no way reassembled the classical Venus but were ordinary women with flabby breasts, obese bodies, garter marks on the legs. His representation of female body were inspired by life rather than academic rules (as a result many critics accused him of not knowing how to depict the female nude), and by his rejection of the canon of beauty, he expressed his artistic liberty.
The woman in the picture is stepping down in the water, lifting her undergarment and reveals all but her pubis area. Looking down into the water, she is apparently gazing at the reflection of her body and smiling to herself. The painting is reminiscent of representations of Bathseba, Susanna, Callisto, Danae… but there are no clues of identification. Even more, she is self-absorbed, in an act of intimacy, not in the overtly sensuous attitude lent to mythological nudes. By isolating her from a context, Rembrandt intensifies the impact of what she is feeling.The peaceful mood of intimacy of the bathing can be explained by the supposed identity of the female figure. She has been identified as Hendrickje Stoffels, Rembrantd maidservant after the death of his wife Saskia, and with whom he developed an intimate relationship. The year of the painting, Hendrickje, pregnant was banned by the Church's council because she was living in sin with Rembrandt. The painting itself has been interpretated as a deliberate rejection of the Church council’s verdict. And as a love testimonial.But yeah, right, her skin is a bit grey-ish green0ish as if she was an old corpse taken from the morgue. I like her though. I like her normality. I think she does not only smiles to herself. She also smiles at all those vain pretty girlish posh tacky venuses and other goddesses. No to the star-system! No to the dictats of beauty!!!!

Attempt at a Review: My Name is Red -- Orhan Pamuk

A thriller set in 16th century Istanbul, among the miniaturists of the sultan Murat III, My Name is Red tells the difficulties of the declining Ottoman Empire in receiving the influence of the West -- here, it is the influence of the Venitian painters upon miniaturists who sought inspiration from the Old Masters of Persia. To win the heart of his beloved Shekure, Black Effendi is in charge of finding the author of a horrid double murder among the miniaturists. More than a thriller, the story addresses the importance of calligraphy over painting (the paintings stand mainly as illustrations of text) in a world where the power of images is feared by the all-powerful Muslim clergy which denounces figuration as evil. The emergence of the influence of the Western ‘heretic’ interest in reality (perspective, shadows, recognizable portraits) shatters the centuries-old traditions, and threatens to precipitate the decline of Ottoman art – hence civilisation.

Non commitally, Pamuk sets out these rock-hard orthodoxies. Clearly he has no use for fatwas or fundamentalist rage. Elsewhere, though -- his own civil war is fought on both sides with exquisite weapons -- he sympathetically refines the implications. These, in fact, brush up against our own tradition's questioning of the place of art. Does it create its own order (or disorder) or does it discover, serve and bring out a larger, timeless order (or disorder)?(Richard Eder, NY Times, September 2, 2001)

Orhan Pamuk lovingly describes the masterpieces of ancient Persian miniatures; intertwines the story of Black and Shekure with that of myhtical lovers Shirin and Husrev; mixes history with religion; sacrifice with conspiracy.

Part of Pamuk’s dazzling mastery is in the narrative devices. The story is told by no less than nineteen ‘characters’, who successively become narrators, in a succession of fifty-nine chapters. I say ‘characters’ but Pamuk even gives voice to images (a dog, a gold coin, Death, Satan, even the colour Red who gives her name to the book…), via the performances of an itinerant story-teller. It also tells to what extremes the love of art can lead, from murder, to heresy, even to self-mutilation. It seems that art can lead to the same fanatical excesses as fundamentalists

This use of multiple main-characters does make the reading difficult for the reader though, and I think this book probably needs, to be fully appreciated, to be read more than once. Although Pamuk manages to subtly individualise the characters through changes of tone, pace, style and mood, the reader has to set his mind in a different pattern for each chapter to be able to follow the plot. This is emphasised by the fact that the three main suspects, three miniaturists, are not adequately distinguished throughout the book. By the end of the novel, I barely cared anymore about who was the murderer, as I was gradually mixing up the different personalities and had to keep flipping the pages back to understand what was going on. In my particular case, the difficulty was probably raised by the fact that English is not my mother tongue, and the extreme richness of his writing made it harder. Richness which at times turns to heaviness (I think about Master Osman’s experience in the Treasury for instance, recalled in exhausting details). I had difficulties also to understand in what extent the rendering of Shekure’s character was relying on a 16th century vision of women, and on the author’s own vision. Shekure is for me a barely likeable character, whose only obsession if finding a father for her sons – using criteria that a 21st century woman would, I hope, found extremely inappropriate – makes completely obnoxious. But women in this novel are mainly double-faced, animal (enjoying ‘copious lovemaking), hollow, deeply dependent, devious, single-minded.
Mind you, everybody in the novel is obsessed with something: tradition, religion, art, glory, love, ‘copious lovemaking’… It seems also that the final aim of each character is to liberate oneself by achieving one’s most desired goals, whether it be immortality, love, or the subliminal bliss of the vision of God, as achieved through blindness. As Richard Eder writes, it is the story of the ‘stubborn humanity in the characters' maneuvers to survive. It is a humanity whose lies and silences emerge as endearing and oddly bracing individual truths.’
It is finally, despite its magnificent descriptions of the Ottoman civilisation, a deeply dark book, as it seems that nothing can be achieved without correlative loss, and that decline is unavoidable.