Entertaining pageant misses some golden opportunities

BOBBIE ALLEN

When an artist paints a self-portrait, one of the most puzzling

problems the viewer confronts is its audience. Imagine the situation

of its creation. The painter sits for long hours -- really long hours

-- in front of a mirror, self-interpreting. Very often, the eyes of

the painter stare directly at the viewer. But the original “viewer”

is the painter, of course; so who is he/she looking at? And what was

the painter trying to say?

I was thrilled when I heard the theme of this year’s Pageant of

the Masters was “Portrait of the Artist.” So many possibilities.

There were Salvator Rosa’s many portraits of himself as different

characters -- his “Self Portrait as a Philosopher” bears the ironic

logo (in Latin), “Be silent, unless your speech be better than

silence.”

There was the “Stanza della Segnatura” at the Vatican, done by

Raphael, with a sulking Michelangelo in the foreground (among many

others), and a wide-eyed but wise self-portrait of the very young

artist, giving you a knowing glance: He seems to be saying to us,

“Here I am, the painter himself, standing behind my work while you

admire it.”

Michelangelo himself painted his own portrait as the flayed,

drooping skin of a sinner in the Sistine Chapel’s “Last Judgment.”

Wouldn’t that have been an interesting challenge? Even straying a bit

from the theme, Giuseppe Archimboldo did a “Head of Herod” comprising

nude human bodies. What “ooohs” and “aaahs” would have come from the

crowd at the revelation of that one!

Perhaps the limitations of the pageant prevented such choices. Its

use of live models -- the very thing that defines its unique appeal

-- means the paintings in the performance must involve a large enough

composition that an arena full of people can see the thing clearly. A

waist-up self-portrait like Rosa’s wouldn’t work. And something like

Raphael’s Rooms might have involved too many people, since the

pageant seems to limit itself to depicting only the entire work, not

just a detail.

So the pageant this year instead began with a mild and sweet

premise, sung by a wholesome-looking young man at the start of the

performance, that “all paintings are self-portraits.” This seems, in

light of all of the fascinating self-depictions in the history of

art, an unfortunately misdirected start.

It was also puzzling, and got progressively more puzzling as the

performance progressed. Initially, I merely shrugged. The

presentation of Remington’s bronze of galloping horsemen, “Coming

Through the Rye,” was indeed impressive. But what does this reveal

about the artist? You had to reach back to that opening number and

its claim that all art is “essentially a mirror,” listen to the

narrator’s voice telling us it was Remington’s desire to preserve the

Old West, to see this as a portrait.

Things got even more flimsy as the pageant depicted portraits of

other figures. Two lovely bronzes of the great dancers Nijinsky and

Rubenstein segued us into a flashy reenactment of the first

performance of Scheherazade. It took enormous chutzpah to reproduce

that staging, since Vaslav Nijinsky was the greatest dancer of the

20th century, a modernist of stunning grace. And why choose

Scheherazade? Why not something more personally revealing of the

artist himself? Why not “Afternoon of a Faun,” which Nijinsky himself

choreographed?

The same held true for the crowd-pleasing movie poster segment.

Certainly, the film noir theme was cute, Gilda and The Letter in

particular. But an additional musical performance of a torch song

just seemed unnecessary. Perhaps I’m a pageant purist. But why not do

Hitchcock, a director who famously depicted himself in his films, and

make the posters relevant to the theme? How, I kept asking myself, is

this a “Portrait of the Artist?”

The exceptions to this question come in the second act. English

Pop artist David Hockney’s Portrait of an Artist, with its witty

juxtaposition, slickness and nature. Hockney’s lover and protege,

standing in a bold Miami Vice-style red jacket and white pants,

glances down at a swimmer under the water in a chlorine-blue pool.

The choice showed intelligence -- Hockney loves painting pools,

playing off the contrast of their prominence in the California desert

environment. Its title riffed on the theme, since the artist

portrayed was trained by the painter. And it was fascinating to see a

live figure conveying the sense of being under water. It was fun to

see.

So was “Radioactive Cats,” based on a cibachrome print of an

installation by Sandy Skoglund. This was fascinating, since the

original used live models (but not live cats). But if we’re going to

play with performance art, with live installations, why not choose

from the many live installations where performance artists have

actually incorporated themselves into the installation? (The

possibilities are endless here -- postmodern artists love to play

with conventions of the self-portrait.)

The final pieces continued to miss the mark. Leonardo was said to

have painted himself as a woman in “La Giaconda,” and there are many

self-portraits in his legacy. Instead, we have the “Madonna of the

Rocks,” which seems to have been chosen merely because of its

presence in Dan Brown’s conspiracy novel.

What makes the Pageant of the Masters so amazing is bringing art

to life on many levels simultaneously. Its title and theme are

shorthand to accomplishing this goal. James Joyce titled his first

novel “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” ironically. The title

was both true and false, since the artist depicted is both Joyce and

his alter ego, Stephen Daedelus. Joyce knew that the mirror the

artist gazes into never tells the truth pure and simple, and that is

the great complexity of art.

I walked away from this year’s Pageant of the Masters wishing I

had seen more of that complexity and intelligence and feeling, less

like I had been merely entertained.

* BOBBIE ALLEN is a poet and writer who has taught art theory and

criticism.