Velásquez:  National Gallery, London. Until 21 January 2007 Sponsored by Abbey (AR)

 

 

Velásquez and The Shining of Time

  

 

“Lighting bestows the shining, opens what shines to an appearance. The open is the realm of unconcealment and is governed by disclosure. The lighting not only illuminates what is present, but gathers it together and secures it in advance in presencing.”

 

Heidegger, Aletheia: Heraclitus Fragment.

 

“Only by virtue of light, through brightness, can what shines show itself, that is radiate. But brightness in its turn rests upon something open, something free, which might illuminate it here and there, now and then. Brightness, in the form of lightning, plays in the open and wars there with darkness.”

Heidegger, The End of Philosophy.

 

 

The National Gallery's Velásquez is the first major British exhibition devoted to the artist and has sold more than 13,000 tickets in advance - a record for the institution - and has proved a near sell-out before it has even opened.

Gallery director Charles Saumarez Smith has described the Velásquez show as "a remarkable exhibition which will change the dynamics of the institution" and displays around 40 works, almost half of the surviving works by the master, including eight major loans from the Prado in Madrid. The extensive exhibition shows the development of the artist’s styles and use of paint from the early ‘dry naturalism’ (influenced by Caravaggio and other tenebrists) to the later ‘wet sensationism’ that pre-empted the painterly freedom from Goya to Manet through to the bravura brush-work of John Singer Sargent, Emil Nolde, Lovis Corinth and Francis Bacon.

 

Eduard Manet rightly described Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velásquez (1599-1660) as "the painters' painter". I would also describe him as "the philosophers’ painter” - Velásquez is the painter of the sensation of time passing - before being a painter of people per se: for time gives space and light for being to be there. Velásquez’ extraordinarily light, subtle and fleeting use of paint gives light to shine time through.

 

With Velásquez’ shimmering paint there is the sense of time passing  where his subjects become revenants: those that return and come back to haunt us – and this is seen in his later works: Queen Mariana of Austria (1652), The Infanta Margarita in a Blue Dress (1659), The Infanta María Teresa,(1653) and The Infante Felipe Próspero with a Dog (1659). Here is a haunting sensation of time going to work and doing its thing through the flickers of paint – those tears of time.

In the latter works Velásquez paints the allure and allusion of time through the fleeting flicker of the brush which signals each split second through passages of paint: through the fluent flight of the brush the flicker of time darts, dances, skates ,and shimmers the paint in time with the sensation of the sitter’s fleeting sensibility shining through. The flicker is akin to a tiny lightning strike that lights up time ,and this can be seen at work in Queen Mariana of Austria (1652) and The Infanta María Teresa, (1653) where the elaborate and ornate hair and dress decorations glint and sparkle her time for all time.

 

 

Pope Innocent X (1650) is the most spine chilling and haunting abimage on display with its stern, shrewd and penetrating gaze that x-rays us before we have a chance to read it. We cannot look into the eyes because they have already hollowed out our vision – our ability to see – such is Velásquez’ genius. The Pope’s head is conceived and executed so sculpturally that it has all the impact of a three dimensional object, and this is what makes it such a compelling composition.

 

 

The skin textures are painted with a feather-light touch and glow with a radiant translucency – just like in The Toilet of Venus (1647-51) – his only known nude and the greatest nude in Western art - and one wonders why heavy handed painters like Lucien Freud and Frank Auerbach never learnt from their master – for both fail to fathom that skin is pearly, translucent and multi-coloured – not yellow ochre and burnt umber. Velásquez’ use of paint is far more intense, real, radical and revealing than that of Freud or Auerbach, or even mud merchants Jenny Saville and Cecily Brown. For Velásquez skin is the shining of time passing by as a lighting of being there for a time: skin is the connecting and coming together of being and time through light.

 

 

The Dwarf Francisco Lezcano (1642-45) also has a serene skin sensation that shimmers with compassion and respect, and this is one of Velásquez’ most touching and poignant portraits yet without a hint of kitsch sentimentality or political correctness.

 

As this once in a lifetime exhibition has become a sell-out, advance booking is vital to guarantee the day and time of your choice – either way do not miss this life enhancing experience.

 

National Gallery exhibition catalogue title:  Velásquez: Authors:  Dawn Carr, Xavier Bray, John H. Elliott, Larry Keith and Javier Portus. 224 pages, 172 colour illustrations: hard back: £35 paper back: £19.95. ISBN: 1857093038 Publisher: National Gallery Co Ltd.

 

This Exhibition Catalogue explores and contextualises the artist's work and discusses his influence. Written by world-class Velázquez scholars, the book surveys the artist's entire career, from his studies in Seville and Italy to his final great works at the court of Philip IV. It includes a full catalogue and chronology.

 

 

Alex Russell