Vermeer, Malevich and Art Therapy - A Reflection

Whilst on a trip to Amsterdam in March 2016, I visited the Rijks Museum and the Stedelijk Museum, and a lasting memory has been the contrast I have held in my mind’s eye of two paintings from very different cultures, periods in history and aesthetic styles. The first is a painting by the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) called ‘The Love Letter’ (De liefdesbrief), considered to have been painted between 1667 and 1670. The other picture is ‘Supremus’ (Yellow Quadrilateral) painted between 1917 and 1918 by Kazimir Malevich (1879-1935), a Ukrainian of Polish descent. Although these two images are worlds apart in terms of time and significance, I can now enjoy and absorb such works in quick succession due to advancements in technology and historical preservation.

The context in which these two pictures were made is complex and beyond this short reflection to do justice. However, I feel that a brief summary and subsequent comparison is necessary to make sense of the responses to the paintings. Vermeer lived during a period referred to by historians as ‘The Dutch Golden Age’. This was a period of peace and prosperity for the nation after the ‘Thirty Years’ War’, a war that had raged throughout Europe and which ended in 1648. Dutch 17th-century painting was a highly refined, technically accomplished and scientifically considered skill: a tradition that was passed on through lengthy apprenticeship. During this period in Holland, painting was based generally on complex composition paying great attention to accurate perspective, natural illumination and fine detail. It is without doubt that Vermeer’s paintings are exquisite, with jewel-like mastery of oil paint. The making of handcrafted oil paint was in itself a part of the chemistry of artistic accomplishment at this time, aiming to produce the most vivid colour from the best and most refined minerals. Paints were mixed by the artist specifically for each stage of the painting process.

Against Vermeer, Malevich is not unsurprisingly a quite different character, and from December 1915 to January 1916 exhibited his work as part of The Last Futurist Exhibition 0.10, presented by the Dobychina Art Bureau at Marsovo Pole, Petrograd. The term ‘suprematism’ was actually developed by Malevich and refers to an abstract art based upon the ‘supremacy of pure artistic feeling’ rather than on the visual depiction of objects. This term derives from the word ‘supremus’, meaning ‘superior’ or ‘perfected’. Malevich’s aim was to liberate painting from the shackles of mimesis and figurative representation, with a view to raising it to a higher state and into greater spacial freedom. The world of light and pure optical phenomena was a key preoccupation and in order to achieve this he would use combinations of chrome yellow, cobalt yellow, cadmium yellow and zinc yellow (a pale lemon yellow) combined with white to create an illuminated surface. This effect can be particularly observed in ‘Supremus’ a painting aptly named by Malevich. Oil paint was by this time widely manufactured and readily available in tubes. Developments in scientific colour theory and artistic content coincide during this period. Spectral light as observed and studied by scientists was a key influence. It is also worth mentioning that Malevich was working at the time of the First World War, against a backdrop of revolutionary tumult across Europe, and the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 in Russia. It was at this particular time of political upheaval and uncertainty that he was formulating his theories and ideas about art in collaboration with poets and linguists who were also challenging the conventions of language and deconstructing the artistic paradigms of their respective predecessors.

According to Crone and Moos (1991, p3), Malevich was making a clear and radical break from the tradition of Western painting and it’s preoccupation with ‘a ceaselessly illusionistic representation of observable experience, realism as a measure of truth, and requisite accuracy proclaimed through perspectival systems’. Vermeer and Malevich created paintings that are now embedded in a rich aesthetic history and culture well beyond their times. The two paintings I studied within hours of each other both made an enduring impression leaving me puzzled and curious about how they reveal different truths and realities about looking, seeing and understanding. It is this experience of looking and seeing that has also become intriguing in terms of how the visual impact of the images effects my thinking and opens up new and novel ways of understanding the world. As Crone and Moos state, ‘It is...only through different ways of looking that we can begin to think differently’ (1991, p6).

As I stood in front of the Vermeer painting, jostling with a huddle of other visitors to the museum, I was utterly captivated by the luscious surface of the picture, the handling of paint and the depth of colour, tone and pigment. The narrative of the painting is intriguing and invites speculation about the dialogue taking place between the servant and the lady of the house who is depicted bathed in dreamy light beyond the door frame which casts a dimly lit shadow. Virtually tripping over the shoes and broom in the foreground of the picture, I became fascinated by small areas of conjoining shapes and angles that I abstracted from around the sumptuous glow of the protagonists’ faces and the yellow dress. I noticed delicate edges defining objects and dividing the picture surface. For example, the shapes in a small space between the paintings hanging on the back wall of the room and the fireplace. There is also a vertical, narrow line highlighting the door frame - the finest line you can imagine that the artist could paint to enhance the optical move from shadow to light. This in itself is a perfect example of mastery and precision.

Malevich’s painting ‘Supremus’ had a quite different impact. Having been impressed by the storytelling, symbolism and craft of the Vermeer I was now confronted with this no less skillfully achieved yellow quadrilateral hovering amongst a surrounding plane of white. Three sides are clearly delineated with a hard edge, and a fourth edge blended into the surrounding surface. This suggests that the shape is simultaneously emerging and disappearing from one optical plane to another. The image is an example of a challenge to the conventions of oil painting and visual representation that Malevich espoused. It illustrates a world view that deconstructs the principles that the Vermeer painting would lay claim to and is a visual experience intended to provoke the viewer both optically and intellectually. The attention the image brings to the picture surface, the evocative use of colour, the material qualities of paint, the handling or facture of the artist, and the meaning-making it encapsulates were intended to invoke a new sensation and encourage a fresh understanding of the cultural significance and purpose of painting.

These paintings offer two quite different points of entry into visual modes of understanding and open up a vista onto the meaning-making that the images harness. They are examples, that when compared, bring together complex ideas that in some ways are competing for aesthetic ascendancy. There is much to learn from this kind of examination of how disparate images reveal important and complex layers of meaning. I am convinced that much can be discovered about this kind of approach that lies somewhere within the spectrum of naturalistic representation to abstraction. This can go far in enhancing how art therapists engage with the images made in their own art therapy practice. The nuances of 17th century Dutch painting and the dynamism of suprematism are most likely to be distant historical phenomena in the moments when an individual is creating a drawing or painting for the purposes of art therapy. However, as an art therapist, the key to unlocking the potential of an image and the deepening of the psychotherapeutic experience must be informed by this kind of analysis of art.

Psychoanalytic theory is often employed in the wider debate about art and culture, and there is now an enormous range of material available to explore (Walsh, 2012). Yet, there is nothing more intriguing and enlivening than standing in front of an art object such as the ones discussed here, looking and seeing as clearly as possible what is actually there. Wrestling with the intentions and motivations of the artist, the impact of the images on the mind and emotions, involves ideas about the world which can be interpreted through paintings. This all helps to inform the practice of art therapy as we look to all these conjoined modes of expression, in the act of ‘making sense of seeing’. Translating this into active engagement and participation in the art-making process and creation of artifacts in art therapy is a way of increasing the potential for insight, greater therapeutic depth and precision in practice.

Crone and Moos comment that Malevich and his collaborators were attempting to re-invigorate and liberate painting so that it’s audience would be free to see the world differently stating that a ‘fixed eye is a blind eye, like a frozen mind is a thoughtless mind...All echelons of experience concluding in information connect with ways of looking - of looking through to understanding (1991, p5). The process of looking and seeing in art therapy practice, I believe, is a faculty that requires constant exercise. There is a discipline to looking, in order to understand visual phenomena, so that developing theory and practice in art therapy is firmly related to the creative media of drawing and painting. The impact of new or re-envisioned schools of thought such as Mentalization (Bateman and Fonagy, 2012), neurological science and the ever increasing understanding of the functionality of the brain (Weston and Liebmann, 2015) are held in balance with how the arts and humanities inform practice.

Vermeer and Malevich have both provided a wealth of images and ideas that will always generate a rich harvest of insight and knowledge. As I study these paintings and continue to compare them they lose none of their incredible verisimilitude. I believe that it is the kind of hypothesizing here, accompanied and stimulated by looking and seeing that provides insight into the ‘grains of truth’ about human experience to which we are sensitized in art therapy practice.

References

Bateman, A, W and Fonagy, P (2012) Handbook of Mentalizing in Mental Health Practice. Washington, London: American Psychiatric Publishing, Inc.

Crone, R and Moos, D (1991) Kazimir Malevich: The Climax of Disclosure. London: Reaktion Books Ltd

Walsh, M (2012) Art and Psychoanalysis. London, New York: I.B.Tauris and Co Ltd.

Weston, S and Liebmann, M (2015) Art Therapy with Neurological Conditions. London, Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Kingsley Publishers.

Useful web addresses

For a discussion about Malevich and a reproduction of ‘Supremus’: https://www.incorm.eu/journal2011/suprematist%20palette.pdf

For a detailed description of the life and works of Vermeer: https://www.essentialvermeer.com/index.html#