Sebastian de Morra
[click here for full screen picture]
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Dorothy Koppelman Continued: Part C |
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AESTHETIC OPPOSITES, ETHICAL OPPOSITES Velázquez felt justly that his true pride came from his way of seeing, and he wanted the profession of painting to be lifted from its low status. At the same time, he was intent on being admitted to an order of Knighthood, and spent many years trying to obtain documents proving that his Portuguese father was of noble birth with no taint of "impure blood." It is likely that his tiredness as time went on came from an unseen conflict in him about where his vanity might take him and where his true pride was. In "Art As, Yes, Humility," Eli Siegel writes: |
"THE EMBODIMENT OF SUCCESSFUL HUMILITY"One of the greatest triumphs of art—and it was the triumph of Velázquez—is the finding of beauty in the ill-formed, the misshapen, the ugly. In the 17th century court of Spain, dwarfs and buffoons were pitied, taken care of, and served as jesters to lighten the burdens of the monarchs. Velázquez, however, looked at the dwarfs for a different purpose; he saw the opposites of reality. |
| Here is Sebastian de Morra. We see a broad, light brow and eyes
that in their depth make one almost cry with love. See how the arms, with
their light and sturdy fists press down?—the little legs come towards us
and the light slippered feet point upwards with their tops glowing softly?
Those feet, with their curved motion, and vertical direction make us feel
a standing person. The kindness of art is that we cannot look down on Sebastian
de Morra without looking up.
The dwarf is in the center of the canvas. His dark green coat is divided up and down the middle, and just where his fists press down there is another division right across the center. We find perfect geometry in that imperfect body. Let your eyes travel around the shape of the whole man. It is a circle, the most complete, continuous, non-stunted shape in the world. Coming out of that circle is the warmth of the whole self of Sebastian de Morra in his light pink and gold cape, with his ever so slightly tilted, questioning head, his wise mouth and those deep brown eyes. This is man as noble, and as Eli Siegel wrote "alive: / And so at times, grotesque." The purpose of Aesthetic Realism consultations is to teach persons how to see the relation of opposites—the dark and light, the complete and incomplete, high and low, good and evil, in the world and in ourselves. Every painting by Velázquez celebrates that purpose. In 1656, four years before he died, Velázquez painted the work—to quote Eli Siegel's poem—in which, "A thing reflected mingles with the here, / The seen...." |
The Maids of Honor [click here for full screen picture] |
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| The heiress to the throne of Spain is the center
of The Maids of Honor but the artist is studying persons high and
low as they bow, entreat, kneel and stand by. The large face of the dwarf
on the right is so near the imperious little princess. The symmetry of
space and rectangle in that dark room has a serene nobility that includes
the bumping irregularities of the nobles and servants in the foreground.
Velázquez has put together the opposites of all time in the great
space of that room; the light that enters as the courtier lifts the curtain
becomes warm as it touches the artist's canvas.
And there is Velázquez himself, looking at the royal couple perhaps, reflected in the distant mirror, and he is looking at us. |
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Velázquez and his paintings say Yes over the
centuries to the most beautiful message in the world: that of Aesthetic
Realism, true about the world, true about art, true about every self—it
is in these lines of Eli Siegel's "Free Poem on 'The Siegel Theory of Opposites'
in Relation to Aesthetics" with which I end my paper:
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