![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1){kind=small}
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif?v=92.1){kind=small}
The setting is indeterminate. We are not quite in our world; the background seems a melange of European medievalism, but most closely Italian (the Monadery d'il Sanze Manitae is home to Brooders and led by a Fader), coloured by Duncan's rambling, rich language. But neither is the story's setting overtly fantastic. The talk of war, of the demons overrunning the Holy Lands is, we suspect, literal, but there's nothing to say it's not just casual racism. And we don't explore the surroundings enough to find out one way or the other.
Like 'The Transformation of Martin Lake' by Jeff Vandermeer or The Portrait of Mrs Charbuque by Jeffrey Ford, 'The Chiaroscurist' is a story that asks questions about the way art, or Art, represents the world. It does so by discussing and exemplifying chiascuro. The artist is insistent that to be honest, art must represent the dark in the world as well as the light (there is, he says, no such thing as a blank page). In this, he was at odds with his maester, who believed that light is God and that representation of light was therefore an artist's most important job. And yet, he is also aware of the potential pitfalls of the technique he has adopted:
... it is easy to become too bold in the drama, too theatrical, too focused on the power that light and dark have to evoke a profound sense of mystery. Subtlety is lost when the artist blusters his own ideas in forms too overblown, brushstrokes too broad.The question of whether 'The Chiaroscurist' itself falls into this trap becomes important, because the closing paragraphs confirm what we suspect, that the focus is not really where it pretended to be. The ending asks the question, appeals to the reader to decide: does the whole stand or fall?
It stands, I would say, but shakily. 'The Chiaroscurist' is art about art, with the risk of inwardness that implies. It is more about process than plot--there is a restless sense that this is a story that exists to make an argument--and more about props than characters. As models for the face of God, for Death, for Titania, the artist uses the people he knows: a Brooder, a gnomish, elderly man, a whore (the story's token female character). Is it arrogance, one of them wonders, to model the face of God on a mortal? No, the story suggests; art must try, even if it is only to fail. True, perhaps, but not revelatory.
August 27 2005, 14:02:32 UTC 6 years ago
Anonymous
September 20 2005, 20:35:16 UTC 6 years ago
"The Chiaroscurist"
Just read “The Chiaroscurist” (in a copy of Electric Velocipede #9 given to me by John Klima at Interaction, which is incredibly cool, as I thought I had forgotten to renew my sub after issue #8, so I immediately gave him money to renew, only to find out much later — by John himself over email — that I *had* already renewed, so I’m good for EV for a couple of years now. Doubly cool because EV #9 sold out in no-time because of the Hal Duncan story: copies of the issue with Hal’s signature were fetching good prices on eBay: so I’m happy to have a physical copy without having to pay through my nose for it. But I digress...), and I have a different take on it.Basically — I think — this is a retelling, nay a repositioining of the painting of the Sistine Chapel ceiling by Michelangelo.
It’s not *exactly* analogous (I think Duncan is too smart for that), but the parallels are telling:
— Michelangelo took about 5 years (from 1508 to 1512), the nameless ‘chiaroscurist’ — only known by his title Maester — took about the same time (almost 6 years);
— Doesn’t ‘Monadery di Sanze Manitae’ recall, in a twisted manner, ‘Capella Sistina’? More telling, in the chapter called The Seeding of Earth, Maester tells Fader Pitro, who’s worried about the long time that Maester is taking, this: “Tell him it will be worth it when the chapel is finished” (my emphasis);
— Michelangelo’s painting depicts nine stories from Genesis: there are hints of this throughout “The Chiaroscurist”:
— “The Chiaroscurist” has eight (almost nine!) chapters, but more telling are titles like The First Day of Creation, The Temptation of the Faithful, The Seeding of the Earth, and The Exile from the Garden;
— The way Rosah the whore and Brooder Matheus (who wasn’t quite a virgin *before* he became a Brooder) become a pair, and the models for a part of the painting makes them a twisted mirror image of Adam and Eve;
— “Even Fader Pitro as a saint in one high corner” (last para of the story): need I say “Saint Peter”?
(Also: am I the only one who thinks that di Vineggio’s Nocturna d’il Houri is a piss-take on Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa?)
— Most importantly: Michelangelo depicted the creation of the World (and God, as it were) on the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling. Maester depicts, via chiaroscuro, the death of God, and possibly religion. That’s why:
— Michelangelo worked in bright, clear colours, and Maester with the darker hues of chiaroscuro. Because Michelangelo’s painting is meant to celebrate the glory of God, and Maester’s painting is meant to show the dark side of humanity.
And this is, in my opinion, what ‘The Chiaroscurist’ is about: Michelangelo painted the glory of God, Maester paints the death of God.
“God is dead” — originally coined by a character in Nietzsche’s The Gay Science, I believe — became an expression of existentialism (Sartre) in the meaning of: the belief in God is dead, especially after the horrors of the Holocaust.
Now Iosef, the hobben, is viewed by Maester as the face of God. In the chapter The Protection of the Innocents, Iosef, the hobben, needs to hide from a horde of peregrins who are obviously out to lynch him. The parallel with the Jews — Christianity stems from Judaism, so the original God was a Jew; and the persecution of the Jews — should be obvious.
And that is why God, in the person of Iosef, and as the personification of the belief in God, literally dies in the story.
And it is exactly this very death of God, of the belief in God, if you like, that Maester is painting on the walls of the chapel of the Monadery di Sanze Manitae. It is the modern-day dark against Michelangelo’s light, and the art of chiaroscuro is used as a means to bring humanity’s dark side to light (pardon the metaphor, I couldn’t resist).
Therefore, I disagree that ‘The Chiaroscurist’ is art about art. The art in ‘The Chiaroscurist’ is merely a tool that helps reveal the deeper truth, or if you will, a different viewpoint on life, belief, and humanity.
It stands firm, with both feet (dark and light) on the ground.
Now I must go buy “Vellum”, and put it on the ‘to-be-read’ pile, together with another 150 novels..."
Jetse