15 November 2021
Tauromachie and the art of graceful death
In front of such a sky like today, I’ve always attacked the canvas board hard and fast. It is partly from impatience, but also from anxiety because the colours and the drawing are moving around so quickly. In a certain way that nervousness is similar to when painting a portrait of a person in front of me, alive and breathing, twitching and shifting softly in place. But unlike this innocous sky, painting a person who is staring back at me, makes me self-conscious because I’m the one on display. Here, I’m painting a portrait of the sea and sky, so consequently I can often thrust myself upon the poor canvas with an awkward force.
I’m suddenly reminded of a conversation I had with a painter many years ago. He was talking about the work of Henri Michaux, who did a series of ink pictures on the theme of Tauromachie. This is a grand theme for a lot of European writers, painters and poets. Hemingway and Picasso both returned to it again and again throughout their long creative lives.
He had just read a book by Michel Leiris about La Tauromachie, the art of bull fighting as an apt metaphor for painting a picture. The ideal death for the bull in this ‘sport’ is a quick one, and when performed correctly it is considered a great art for aficionados of the ring. The matador must get it right in the first go-round or he will lose the crowd and the bull will suffer an ignoble death. But by that point, his own reputation will be sullied too.
The bull fighter must insert his sword (espada) into a narrow space between the shoulders of the charging bull, directly into the racing heart of the beast. In a ‘perfect’ death, the bull will die within an instant, but if he misses, it will be a mess and he will have failed. The crowd will hate him before he will hate himself.
So my friend who works a lot like myself, was speaking to me about his own pictures that are also born from speed and precision. But he also spoke of the miracle that can be produced by a kind of ‘spontaneous perfection’ when painting a picture. Now, years later, I too, find myself again working rapdily in front of a motif whilst this perilous goal of a spontaneous perfection hangs over me like a sword.
Years ago, a another friend took me to two bullfights, one in Nimes and the other in Arles. Like many tourists, I was both horrified and fascinated. My friend had been to many fights and he explained how everything was supposed to happen. In Nimes, when I saw the first bull come charging out and I heard the roar of the crowd, I was suddenly transfixed, and I stayed for the whole afternoon watching several fights. My discomfort was overwhelmed by my curiosity. What did I feel in front of such a spectacle of which I had heard so much about and was even prepared to reject out of bias? I still wasn’t sure how I felt after being at there for an afternoon. I had been to southern Spain a few times many years earlier and visited a few rings (empty) but I forget where, maybe Seville? More of a tourist, I was fascinated by the structures of them and the coulour of all that clay within. Because I was much younger, I didn’t yet possess the arrogance I have today around my ideas concerning the ethical treatment of animals.
Regardless of whether we (outsiders) like it, or not, this is a grand culural tradition going back a few thousand years to a time when all forms ot violence against pretty much everything was easily accepted as a way of life. Let’s face it, humans can be pretty awful stewards of high morality. Today we still love the bloody gore of cage fighting between both men and women. But hey! Better they go at each other than at animals I think.
Anyway, a year later I went again with my same friend. This time, we went to Arles, and when the first bull came charging out to the roar of the crowd, I found myself telling him that I would see him afterward at a cafe and I left to wander the lovely streets which Van Gogh had
traversed just one hundred years earlier.
As the first bull come rushing out into the noisy arena I suddenly realised that I didn’t want to see it all over again. I didn’t need to see it. I was curious the first time, but the second time around I understood in an instant that it brought me nothing more. My decision to leave was as quick, sharp, and intuitive, as that of a Matador inserting the espada into the heart of the charging beast.
Maybe it’s these ancient but corroded memories of Spain or possibly the two trips to Nîmes and Arles, but I do sense a violence in this study from a few days ago. Could it also be the colour of the clay arena within the sky? Not sure, but there is something about it that evoked these old memories for me. While it’s true that this quick painting I exercise here also looks for a quick kill with one clean (or messy) truth, if there is any success or glory here at the end of the day, it is an anonymous one, solitary and bloodless.
oilé
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