The National
Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh (exhibition): Rembrandt: Britain’s Rediscovery
of the Master
The reviews of this exhibition sometimes play the ‘great master’
game: The Guardian’s reviewer says of the use of Glenn Brown, in the introductory
curator’s film and on show with paintings based on Rembrandt works:
Who cares what Brown thinks about Rembrandt once you’ve seen
his glib postmodernist exercises near to some of the most profound works of art
ever created? Where Rembrandt used oil paint to probe the deepest recesses of
existence, Brown creates self-conscious, fussy parodies full of perverse
arabesques that stay steadfastly on the surface.[1]
Whether this be true or not, it hardly seems to get the
point that this is a show not about Rembrandt but about him and his reception by
audiences, including influential opinion builders like artists and collectors. The
reviewer reserves his barb for Glenn Brown we note rather than confront the
more numerously represented Frank Auerbach, who is harder to target. However, currently
in the Laing Gallery in Newcastle, Brown is curating through his experimental
art-objects the reception of the entire Laing collection, including some fine Auerbach’s
and Bomberg’s.
This review is a ‘self-conscious, fussy parody’ that refuses
to re-see a Master without insisting on that being entirely by their own skill
and unaided insight, even via the open eyes of historical reception. Hence it
may miss the point, even of Reynold’s touching up some of these masters. Fortunately,
some of us try to see Rembrandt but accept views of him from elsewhere –
whether by plagiarism, imitation, competition or, as in Auerbach’s case, sheer
admiration of someone who has solved some of the problems raised by the
problems of painting:
When I was young I felt like I was in the ring with (him) …
Now I just need (his) help.’[2]
You can do worse than contemplate what Auerbach does with
Rembrandt, including one modest drawing of Three Trees in this exhibition.
Yet the Guardian reviewer is correct in one respect. To see
these rare Rembrandts, some not seen for many decades or at all, as well as
great icons like Belshazzar’s Feast
and The Mill, is to see something
unbelievably marvellous. I don’t feel I need to prove though that I am
sensitive to this by rubbishing Glenn Brown.
In the end, what compels is the mastery of what
understanding the aging and change-through-time process conveys to Rembrandt and
how he delivers that competence as a master of a style appropriate for a great
subject. I could have stayed for ages in front of the tiny and lesser-known Head of an Old Man (1659) without
needing to see less in A Man in Oriental
Costume (1639) or the wonderful illuminations of An Old Woman Reading (1655) or the Falstaffian Portrait of an Elderly Man (1659). Of Rembrandt himself I hesitate
to say more. I still feel overwhelmed.
However, reception studies of artists tell us a lot about
what is seen in certain historical circumstances and how and why, if we are
prepared to reflect in this way and not revert to the judgements of the ego and
its pretence to ‘objectivity’. I have not before in an exhibition been so moved
to feel I must review my thoughts of a painter as I have from seeing one rather
wonderful Augustus John portrait inspired by Rembrandt. Rembrandt it is not,
but neither is it what I though Augustus John was. Elliot (2018:51) kindly
quotes John’s conclusion from seeing Rembrandt in the flesh:
‘the scales of aesthetic romanticism fell from my eyes,
disclosing a new and far more wonderful world.’
All the best
Steve
Seifert, T. (Ed.) (2018)
Rembrandt: Britain’s Rediscovery of
the Master Edinburgh, National
Galleries of Scotland
[2]
Elliott, P. (2018) ‘Rembrandt and Britain: The Modern Era’ in Seifert, T (Ed)
op.cit. cites this.
