researching romanticism: Piranesi
From the ‘Grotteschi’’ ca. 1748. See image at: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/37.45.3.38
'Views of Rome: View of the Flavian Amphitheatre known as the Colloseum" 1760-78. See image at: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/59.570.426
Piranesi: Elaborate, highly detailed, highly fanciful prints of classical architecture and ruins.
'Skeletons…’ (first link)- an elaborate jumble of vegetation, ruins and skeletons. Inspired by ideas of the ruinous and exotic from classical ruins, bringing to mind the 'grand tours’ of Lorraine’s times when sites of classical ruins were visited like tourist destinations, the decay found there strangely fascinating. This print is confusing to the eye at first, detail at first lost amongst the countless fine etched lines. A more a apocalyptic view of overwhelming sinister yet fascinating ruination.
The Colosseum (second link) was originally built to stage elaborate often gruesome public spectacles such as gladiator contests, animal hunts, re-enactments of battles, dramas from mythology and executions. It was a symbol of power and triumph in the Roman state, a hyper-ambitious work of architecture. Here we have a dramatic view of the structure, with detail and complex architecture covering almost the whole surface of the print. The cluster of people at the centre are ant-like, more dots in the overwhelming construction of power and spectacle. The ruination of the Colosseum is clear however in the misshapen tumbling arches inside - the whole structure seems so ambitious it almost inevitably tells of its future ruination. This print allows the mind to drift beyond the present, imagining its past construction and gruesome heyday, as well as its future complete ruination.
’VII Drawbridge’. 1761
‘IV A Large Arcade’. 1761
See images at: http://gravures.ru/photo/dzhovanni_piranezi/tjurmy/10
After looking at both Piranesi’s classical ruins and these - his famous prisons or 'Carceri d'Inventious’ - it seems that as well as 'romanticising’ ruins, Piranesi reads a power-hungry, despotic side to these vast classical ruins. He shows this sense of obsession in exaggerating complexity and scale to such a degree. The classical buildings, manifestations of the ancient civilisation’s ambition, knowledge, and developments in science (which underpin our own Western ideas) seem to have a darker side in these ruins.
Inventions of pure fantasy, Piranesi’s prisons (above) take the viewer to a terrifying place of endless towers, staircases, epic arches - a place of endless wandering and suffering. As etchings, they are very dark, again very detailed - but not with the clean, pristine finish of the Rome work (previous post). Dark dense shadows add to a claustrophobic feeling, and overall there’s a more murky rough texture almost like the effect you get with over-inking in etching. As Dr.John Marciari describes, these plates were reworked from an earlier edition, adding to this more murky, sketchy quality to give a direct sense of the artist’s hand working and re-working the surface obsessively - something darker and restless here.
There’s little suggestion of focal point here, but an overwhelming all-over-ness and a confusing composition of diagonals and verticals in the complex staircases. In his 1949 essay “Prisons”, Aldous Huxley suggests ideas of power, psychological states and torture in these works. Huxley himself is probably best known for his dystopian novel “Brave New World” (1932), set in a future ideal society controlled by systems of consumerism and science. Huxley suggests that discussions on Piranesi’s prisons depict a metaphysical ruination of souls, the tiny figures hopelessly alone and without purpose. He talks about the 'panopticon’, a design for a prison which means prisoners are constantly visible and watched, although still isolated. Huxley links this vision of a 'perfect’ prison with a machine-like efficiency, giving its prisoners “a consciousness of being inside a machine”. Piranesi’s structures with their vast scale, complex tunnels and ambiguous pieces of machinery certainly give this feeling. Huxley goes on to discuss prisons within the mind itself, pointing out Piranesi’s forward thinking psychological insight. For Huxley, the suffering caused to the soul when in a state of being inside a machine was present even in 1949, with workers in offices and factories becoming ghostlike - “…a few small, faceless figures haunting the shadows” with “inhuman vacancy”. These prisons are visions of architecture and power without limits - and seemingly also without purpose. The staircases and corridors lead to nowhere, and nature is completely absent. Here, humans are lost in prisons of their own construction, illustrating our own potential to create suffering through power-hunger and despotic denial of nature’s all-powerful forces of ruination.
Self Portrait’ 1760. See image at: www.wikiart.org
As a final note here on Piranesi, I’d like to talk about his “Self Portrait” of 1760. Here, he actually imagines himself as a ruin, his arms broken off like the ruined busts from classical Greece and Rome. This self-portrait also brings to mind ’The Transcendence of All Earthly Things’ by Adriaen de Valck - here Piranesi has made a vanitas of his own image. He hovers in-between statue and real human - the memorial like inscription at the bottom places him in the past, yet the face seems very much alive. The forces of nature sweep across him in misty restless clouds and the growing leaves visible. Here Piranesi has depicted himself in a state of being 'outside of time’, eerily both of the past and the present.
I think Piranesi’s influence can be seen in the many Romantic works which followed. This work seems to show that he was aware of himself as a 'Romantic’ artist figure, a kind of 'lonely heroic’. It think it can be said this new self-awareness (the figure of the artist) points also to a wider self-awareness of the power of humans. The Romanticism would emerge at a time of increased industry and new awareness of human power. I think it can be said that Piranesi thought about the fate of humanity, what the power of a few individuals in power (and intoxicated by this power and ambition) could do to the masses - individual human souls. Aldous Huxley gives insight into the individual/collective identity as well as the state of the souls that inhabit Piranesi’s prisons: