The Serpentine Tool

I just loved this essay by Michael Fried about Courbet in which he methodically deconstructs Burial at Ornans in order to show Courbet’s intended placement of the beholder painter or beholder toute court. The parallels that Fried draws between Courbet’s elements of serpentine lines in his landscapes and group portraits are interesting in that by way of a formal analysis they point to sociopolitical ideas as laid out by TJ Clarke, but also the painter’s relationship to other people including himself and the viewer – even us right now. Not only does the serpentine line represent something larger, but so do the aggressive use of paint and the use of a lack of color.
Fried begins by explaining previous arguments that have been accepted as deconstructions of the painting. The first is Linda Nochlin’s argument that the additive organization of the painting offers a sense of egalitarianism and that it is a painting of the everyday. The second argument is in regards to the sources that Courbet may have used or referred to. The third is an assumption based on Courbet’s relationship to Champfleury that the black clothing represents universal equality in that everyone is “celebrating some funeral.” But, Fried thinks that it has more to do with a particular “Parisian milieu.” The final argument was posited by our favorite TJ Clarke who said that the painting is related to the social and political events that unfolded during the years of 1848 – 51. In the end Fried points out that his own deconstruction does not refute Clarke’s argument, but can coexist alongside it.
Fried argues with Nochlin’s approach of seeing the additive formula as egalitarian by pointing to the individual portraits within the painting. Rather the additive construction and Serpentine-like construction allows for the lines back and forth across the picture plane that Courbet supposedly wants us to notice to bring an awareness that the painter and the viewer exist. Fried solidifies this argument by pointing to Courbet’s use of the serpentine in his landscapes and the ways in which they lead the viewer around the picture plane so that the viewer is in the painting. This is what I consider to be the most beautiful part of Fried’s account. That is his description of the imagined lines of vision across the picture plane and how they relate back and forth from the procession, to certain people within the painting (especially Buchon, the crucifix bearer, and the young boy with the vessel), to the grave, to the beholder and then again to the beholder toute court. The dip that occurs in the drawing and a bit less so in the painting draws the beholder’s eye directly to that space exactly in the same way that the dip in a valley would. All of this “affirms Courbet’s determination to affirm his (as well as the viewer’s) active presence...in the scene of representation.”
And Courbet did all of this in order to remove the previous fashion of the theatrical. But, isn’t all of this theater in a sense? Regardless of whether the viewer is in or out of the painting, there is a certain drama to the painting. The placement of the grave solidifies this. The beholder, whoever they are almost certainly imagines their self being beckoned into this grave. One wonders if Courbet is not calling to a very specific viewer to imagine himself or herself in this grave? Perhaps TJ Clarke touches more upon this idea by relating it to the political. After all, he has been described as one who “relished scandal as a shortcut to prominence.” (quote taken from New Yorker, July 30, 2007)