This year's "end" is a beautiful painting by the talented Greg Manchess
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| The end in both senses of the word |
Greg's painting is about the commitment necessary to take meaningful creative risks.
Greg observed, "If there’s no risk, the commitment weakens and ultimately doesn’t matter. There must be the risk of loss or failure, otherwise the challenge is minimal." This picture is about taking that big leap, by an artist who has done so many times, and now counsels students over their own fear of hitting the ground.
Commitment is an important message for the end of the year (and for every year). But I think this image summons additional power and profundity from the fact that it is an archetype. It spans a variety of human experiences and deals with the fear of losing our equilibrium in the broader sense.
Stephen Crane wrote from a poet's perspective about dreading the possible meaninglessness of life:
If I should cast off this tattered coat,
And go free into the mighty sky;
If I should find nothing there
But a vast blue,
Echoless, ignorant --
What then?
Freud offered a psychiatrist's perspective in his classic Interpretation of Dreams (1900): the universal dream of falling from great heights is our subconscious way of dealing with sexual excitement and release followed by the spectre of punishment by reality (the hard ground).
Today, modern psychologists have a different perspective, focusing on clinical cures for basophobia, the fear of falling.
And this year in particular, many are concerned that the daily supports of civilization-- the rule of law, civil government, empirical science, democratic tolerance-- are being clawed away by rage, leaving society in free fall.
Greg's great Archetype stretches across many human endeavors. Some of them require a degree in psychiatry or auto mechanics. Some require the skills of a poet or a taxidermist. But dang if I don't love the way art spans them all, bringing them together in a single object of beauty.
Happy new year to you all!
19 comments:
Awesome painting! Happy new year.
Wishing you a very Happy New Year. Your hard work and love for illustration really show in this site…it’s a joy to visit, and I’m grateful for the passion you bring to it.
It's an incredibly impactful work. Dizzying. Like all the challenges we face this year and in the years to come. But we'll take the plunge with courage, and whatever happens, happens. Happy New Year
I take the intention of the picture to be a metaphor for total commitment, damn all fears and conventions. I was following Manchess closely when he created this, and one can find connections to his life and work in the idea if one has, or is, that bent.
I wish the shade areas on the figure reflected the sky rather than the airplane. The latter implication, in my view, grounds the otherwise dreamlike/metaphoric work too much in the real world of imperiled flesh, travel logistics, and flying machines. Which then implies in the image suicide as much as freedom.
Happy New Year all.
Manchess is one of the rare good artists in illustration today. No AI or digital BS. Thanks for sharing this, and happy new year to everyone here.
JSL
Movieac-- Thank you very much for your kind remarks. I confess that I do love this stuff. I'm a very lucky guy.
Albert Campillo Lastra-- "Impactful" is a good word for it. I also like the fact that after the initial shock of the image, there's plenty of subtlety to enjoy in Manchess' treatment of the figure, the freedom of her hair, the brush strokes on the left leg and arm or the right shin and knee, the effect of rushing air reshaping the body... some really good work here.
Kev Ferrara-- I like the ambiguity about whether this is suicide or freedom, or whether she is about to fly away on butterfly wings. The wild freedom of a buck nekkid woman in free fall from an uncertain source to an uncertain destination deserves a response with as much wild freedom in interpretation.
This was one from a series of paintings of nudes in the sky, in different poses which did not reflect shadows from a flying machine. Have you seen, and if so do you have thoughts on, the larger series?
MORAN, JSL, and all others--- Thank you for your comments and exchanges throughout the year, it's been an education. Happy new year!
Hmmm. But thanks for the New Year's wishes David.
I'm afraid I do not agree with you that this image is archetypical because it operates really as sign rather than symbol. That's to say: it just looks like a naked lady being pushed out of an aeroplane.
Though I will agree that is how everything feels at the moment.
chris bennett-- That's an interesting response. Why are you assuming that the lady was pushed out of an airplane rather than voluntarily leaping? Or for that matter, descending from outer space? She doesn't seem to be wriggling in fear, she seems to be calmly facing the onrushing ground with her arms spread aerodynamically. And what is the "sign" that she has neither parachute nor underwear?
Of course, perhaps she'll change her mind before she hits the ground, which reminds me of a Richard Thompson comic strip about a school room hamster that yearns for freedom, but once he is outside the school fence he panics: "I'm free! Help help! I'm free! HELP! Let me back in!" (The strip is worth revisiting for a good new year laugh: https://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2016/10/im-free-help.html )
Why are you assuming that the lady was pushed out of an airplane rather than voluntarily leaping? Or for that matter, descending from outer space?
Because people do not normally voluntarily jump out of aeroplanes without a parachute or naked. For example: if I were to come across a naked man running out of a house I would assume the most likely explanation; that he was probably fleeing an attack while taking a shower or sleeping. I wouldn't immediately assume he was someone who had that moment decided to liberate himself from all inhibition and prove it by launching himself naked into the street.
And what is the "sign" that she has neither parachute nor underwear?
Er, that she is not wearing a parachute or underwear?
As for your seeing her as seemingly calm and aerodynamically spread, I direct your attention to almost any of the 9/11 photographs of people leaping from the twin towers.
Thanks for the Thompson strip - it gave me a smile!
What does it all mean, Basil?
Knowing nothing about the artist’s intention, not really interested in the alleged aboutness of the work, and slightly surprised by locals’
eager production of meaning entirely via focus on the mimetic content, I’d say that the most interesting thing about this piece is how the extremely fore-grounded body is is assigned the function of landscape while the landscape is made to appear as flat as the sky. This is where I find the risk of the piece, and this is where it succeeds.
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Postmodern Anonymouse
…also, Happy New Year & thanks for all the care, effort, anger and love shared by all in this little corner of the internet.
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Postmodern Anonymouse
"I like the ambiguity about whether this is suicide or freedom, or whether she is about to fly away on butterfly wings."
Because people do not normally voluntarily jump out of aeroplanes without a parachute or naked
Since neither panic nor fear; nor suicidal depression is detectable in the figure or in the way it is expressed, I think it is safe to assume the picture is meant allegorically or symbolically; and not as a violent tragedy.
Which is why the shadows that seem to indicate the presence of an airplane just out of view in the foreground and above us drag against the meaning-feeling. Bright blue reflections in those shade areas would have created an expansive sense of air and dreaminess, pinging the quality of poetic ideality. And would have further situated the figure as actually in the sky. (Even if the shadows were cast by clouds, which are not in evidence, blue would be suffusing the shaded planes of flesh more than is in evidence. Blue is blasting every which way in a blue sky.)
"The wild freedom of a buck nekkid woman in free fall from an uncertain source to an uncertain destination deserves a response with as much wild freedom in interpretation.
There is only one thing happening in the picture. There is only one moment shown. What doesn't resolve isn't meant to resolve or has failed to resolve due to artistic error.
What resolves immediately is the sense that this is an allegory of some kind and not an attempt at narrative realism. Is this disputable?
"Have you seen, and if so do you have thoughts on, the larger series?"
They seemed like practice pieces for him to technically loosen up from his assignments.
Postmodern anonymouse-- The highly controlled range of value in the landscape, as contrasted with the high contrast intensity of the colors of the figure, is one of my favorite things about this painting. The great illustrator Harold von Schmidt used to be a master of that effect; he acquired that skill from his years on the prairie as a real cowboy, staring off into the distance at remote landscapes. It requires restraint and judgment.
I plead guilty to the "eager production of meaning entirely via focus on the mimetic content," and all such speculations should of course be entertained with humility and more than a grain of salt. Still, that's one of the best things that mimetic content is for. Manchess has assembled a highly incongruous collection of mimetic statements and set them loose for us to make sense of. A figure falling through space with no explanation? Naked with no explanation? What kind of world is she landing in below? If the woman was some pinup cutie in a space girl outfit the speculation would end right there. But she's not-- she's a woman of a certain age, with a certain muscle structure and dirty soles on her feet that reveal she's been walking around . What's the explanation for his choices? This painting strikes me as extremely fertile ground for the "eager production of meaning entirely via focus on the mimetic content," and that's fine.
Kev Ferrara wrote: "They seemed like practice pieces for him to technically loosen up from his assignments."
Would it make a difference that some of those other paintings of naked figures falling through the sky are 5 feet tall? That's a lot of canvas for a practice piece.
I agree with you that "this is an allegory of some kind and not an attempt at narrative realism." But an allegory of what? I think it's to the artist's credit that there are a number of different allegories that could fit snugly into this archetype. More detail would've been less. If she was wearing argyle socks that would've severely limited the allegorical range.
Would it make a difference that some of those other paintings of naked figures falling through the sky are 5 feet tall? That's a lot of canvas for a practice piece.
I think I mis-connoted what I was trying to get at. I feel strongly he was trying to get to a place a freedom with the series. And the scale plays into that. So he was looking or needed to practice freedom, but the picture was not a practice picture in the sense of a study meant simply for studio use.
>>>>>>>and dirty soles on her feet that reveal she's been walking around
Her soles aren't dirty. They're just in shadow. You can see where the one sole is partially in the light that it is clean.
~ FV
FV-- Isn't it interesting that when a figure has been stripped of all clues-- clothing, posture, facial expressions, surroundings-- we begin to imbue the tiniest remaining details (such as the soles of her feet) with significance.
Do her feet reflect "the presence of an airplane [or some other airborne object] just out of view in the foreground"? And if so, what does that tell us about the reaons for her fall? Are her feet just the unintentional residue from a reference photo? Are these earthy, natural middle aged feet to distinguish her from a fantasy nudie space girl? The human mind is made to search and search for clues. I bet Manchess never suspect he would need to contend with so many interpretations when he painted those feet.
"we begin to imbue the tiniest remaining details (such as the soles of her feet) with significance."
For those playing the home game, it is worth pointing out that the above mode of considering pictures is a matter of semiotics, not aesthetics, nor poetics. Semiotics is most strongly associated with how we understand photography; via literalist deductive reasoning which satisfies our Sherlockian intellects which long for narrative closures.
While this picture is strong in the Aesthetic effect department, I think the reason we fixate on its Semiotics is because the Poetic layer is absent. While the Semiotic layer is slightly confused...
Whether her soles are dirty are not is a bad pictorial question. Same with any questions with respect to the reference. Good chit-chat questions. But bad artistic questions.
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