Umberto Eco once wrote that “Every Broadway musical is, as a rule, nothing other than the story of how it is put on.”{ref1} His insight into what the various plots have in common is striking because it is equally true of great paintings. The common features of a great musical are, of course, easier to recognize than those in poetry and art because popular productions tend to drop the veil of metaphor to make their meaning clear. Thus a musical about making a musical is easier to recognize than the making of a painting is in a scene of The Holy Family. Yet the same process is at work, as we have shown over and over again in dozens of paintings. So, to echo Eco, art is, as a rule, nothing other than the story of its own making.

For those of you not quite so au courant with Broadway musicals as Eco is, here are seven of Broadway's most successful: 

42^nd Street (1980): a Broadway director’s attempt to mount a musical
Chorus Line (1975): dancers auditioning to perform in a musical 
The Sound of Music (1959): about the power of music 
All That Jazz! (1979) Bob Fosse's semi-autobiographical account of a life in musicals
The Barkeleys of Broadway (1949): about a husband-and-wife musical comedy duo
The Band Wagon (1953) followed a new musical as it traveled the road to Broadway.

Chicago (1975), on the other hand, was one of those musicals not so obviously about the making of itself. Its method was more similar to the visual poetry we describe, its true subject veiled under a different storyline. The plot follows Roxie’s attempt with the help of her lawyer to manipulate the judge and jury the way a director and actress manipulates an audience.

For yesterday's article on the painting, click here.

Yet however strange it may sound to a modern-day Christian to hear that the artist is God, it would not sound odd to a Hindu. Hinduism was formed from diverse traditions with no single founder but is instead the product of a philosophical evolution spread over several centuries and has been described as “the culmination of the human thought process.” Esoteric Christianity is part of that tradition, sharing a common link with the esoteric side of many of the  world’s religions. In Hindu idol worship the worshippers themselves become God while the statue in front of them stands symbolically for the whole process of creation. The forms and ideas that the worshippers find were already in the World Soul but the worshippers bring them to life by pouring their devotion and thought energies into the statue. The statue is, of course, inert matter like stone or even plastic but in their minds the devotees can derive inspiration and guidance from it. It becomes alive in their thoughts and dreams. Thus deep in the Hindu worshipper’s inner world the practitioner becomes a creator, God himself.{ref1} Man, the Christian Bible also says, was made in the image of God and thus, like the Hindu, is divine.

It can be very difficult for some people to accept the esoteric interpretation of the Bible and of Christ’s life but it is important to try if you are an art lover whether you are religious or not. Just as art historians have been unable to see Titian’s image in some of his most important compositions, so you too can fail to understand art’s meaning without an esoteric understanding of Christianity. Once you know how you yourself are both creative and divine, your aesthetic satisfaction on looking at art will bloom and your eyes will open.

“How do we define our subject?” or “what is art?”

"What is the difference between art and craft?”

From our point-of-view, imagining all the varied settings as all taking place in the artist’s mind, art is visual poetry. As for the difference between art and craft, art contains meaning beyond its apparent content; craft is what it is.

While there is little evidence to suggest that an artist’s character is reflected in his art – indeed the reflection would not be universal if it were - we have already shown some examples (by Leonardo, Corot and, above, Van Gogh) in which Lavater is partially correct. The lines and contours of the artist’s face appear as significant parts of the overall composition but reproduced as something else, in these cases lines of the landscape. They do not, however, express the artist's character. He probably had too little opportunity to study art in depth to realize that artists often use the well-known idea metaphorically, not just literally, and in so doing express our universal humanity not each artist’s individual character as he believed. Nevertheless, Lavater’s use of the phrase indicates that the concept continued to be of compelling interest, at least to a mystic and poet, long after the Renaissance had ended.

I mention this because an earlier, well-known physiognomist Johann Caspar Lavater (1741-1801) wrote: “Every painter paints more or less himself. As one is, so he paints.” His view is somewhat different to what we argue here but more about that tomorrow.....

In the meantime, if you have further interest in Degas' Little Dancer, click here.

This year’s crop of Hollywood nominations is no different. Both The Artist and Hugo are movies about making movies while The Help and Midnight in Paris are about writers writing the book on which the movie is based. All four feature artists working on their craft. This knowledge must be of benefit to screenwriters because the chances of writing a successful screenplay are clearly enhanced by it. And if something so obvious is little known about Hollywood films, it is not so surprising that others fail to see the same issues in our subjects: painting, sculpture and prints. Yet it is no less true.

“Painting is not only a science, it is even a divinity because it transforms the painter’s mind into something similar to the mind of God.”{ref2}

There are several ways to interpret this depending on your point-of-view. It could mean something like “good artists not only learn the craft of painting [a science] but their mind also becomes creative like God’s.” That misses Leonardo’s central point, though, that Painting itself is a divinity? How, for example, could the making of the Mona Lisa or the Portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci be divinities?  

From our perspective, where every painter paints himself, the comment means: “Painting is not only a way to find wisdom [a science] but is a divinity as well [a path to God]. The artist’s mind becomes like God’s so, in painting a reflection of it, the painter allows the viewer to see a representation of God’s mind.” That is why painting is a divinity and why so many artists paint themselves as Christ, as I have often shown{ref3}; the alert viewer can find wisdom and God….even in a secular portrait.

Leonardo leaves unsaid in the quote above that every painter paints himself.  He did, however, write elsewhere that:

‘the painter’s mind should be like a mirror, which transforms itself into the color of the thing that it has as its object...’{ref4}

That does not mean that painting reflects the world. It clearly does not say that. What it does say is that the painter’s mind turns itself into the form of the object observed.{ref5} The Mona Lisa or Ginevra de’ Benci thus reflect the painter’s mind which is like God’s. Why should anyone doubt then that the proportions of the Mona Lisa’s face match Leonardo’s precisely or that the Mona Lisa represents an alter ego of Leonardo?{ref6} His words imply that they would. This also explains why he chose to paint Ginevra de’ Benci and Cecilia Gallerani, his two most famous female sitters. Both women were poets, a little-known fact too unlikely to be coincidence that takes on added importance once you know that the sitter reflects the artist’s mind.{ref7} They represent Leonardo’s own creative and androgynous mind which at the moment of creation becomes like God’s.

It is almost unnecessary to add that Leonardo cited the phrase – every painter paints himself -  at least seven times in his writings, sometimes positively, sometimes as an inevitable tendency in artists to guard against.{ref8} Either way, the phrase and the concept were central to his own thinking, to art and to most true artists of his day.