While Watteau is not a contemporary artist, I have been researching his career and specifically his painting, Embarkation for Cythera (1717) with the intent to appropriate the artist in my next independent project.
The painting is one of Watteau’s preeminent masterpieces. Watteau sought to revitalize the declining Baroque mentality and spear-headed the Rococo movement in Western Survey of Art History. Furthermore he pioneered the fetes galante genre of painting with Embarkation. This kind of painting portrayed the joviality and frivolity of French aristocrats in a bucolic setting. It is interesting that Watteau would paint these scenes of aristocratic indulgence when his commissioners were mostly members of the bourgeois. Art historians have suggested it is because Watteau imbues his paintings with a latent melancholy brewing beneath the superficiality and merry-making. There is “a sense of the ultimate futility of life” (jean-antoine-watteau.org).
Cythera is an ancient island in Greece speculated to be the birthplace of Aphrodite in mythology. As Venus’ home, this is the island of love, vanity, and earthly pleasures. Putti and Cupids encircle the pilgrims as they try to woo each other. It is unclarity whether the crowd is arriving at the island or departing. This ambiguity heightens the sense of delirious delight and a dance-like procession of figures across the picture plane.
As seen in the above painting, The Indifferent Man, painting is a common motif in Watteau’s work. Stylistically, Watteau looks to his predecessors, Correggio and Rubens. His formalist approach stresses color and movement over the Poussin qualities such as line and finish. Contrarily, Watteau blurs his lines and exhibits his brushstrokes granting the painting a lushness to match the content.
In my next project, I will seek to recreate Watteau’s composition in Embarkation but substitute the characters with religious figures from Catholicism and Hinduism.
I am excited to see how this turns out and hope it doesn’t get too irreverent.
Sound & Sweet 