Tag : JMW

Sam Ben-Meir* New York (The Hawk): Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851), the English Romantic artist who lifted landscape and seascape painting to new and enthralling heights will never cease to amaze, inspire and make us question what we thought we knew about painting, about what colored pigment on canvas can do. “Turner’s Modern World” at the Boston Museum of Fine Art allows viewers to revisit and rediscover this modern ‘Oracle’, as the philosopher Deleuze would refer to him. Turner is indeed like the Oracle of Delphi, not simply because his work evinces the ambiguity and mystery that was characteristic of the Oracle’s pronouncements; but because the Oracle was a priestess of Apollo, Olympian god of the Sun and Light – and Turner is, in his way, also a priest of Apollo: a painter for whom the Sun is truly an appearance of the divine. We must never forget Turner’s final words on this earth: “The Sun is God.” That is the key to Turner’s art. The Sun, the light, the eternal, the divine. No matter what he was exploring – the latest technological innovations, a cannon foundry, a speeding train, the growth of modern industry, it was with a mind to what is abiding in the evanescent, the kernel of eternal truth hiding within the ever-fleeting moment. That is what painting can do – it can transcend time; or rather act as a kind of time machine, color and light can transport us across the eons. This exhibition underscores Turner’s drive to paint the world he saw changing around him; not only to confront modernity but to create works that are no less daring than the industrial revolution that he saw taking shape in England, first and foremost. The contemporary painter, Adrian Ghenie, emphasized just how revolutionary Turner was to pa ...