Compelling Faces in Art - Simon Vouet, self-portrait.

Simon Vouet is perhaps best remembered for helping to introduce the Italian Baroque style of painting to his native France. He lived in Italy from 1613 to 1627 (on a pension from the King of France and his patrons), where he absorbed the influences of Caravaggio's dramatic lighting, Paolo Veronese's color and “di sotto in su” or foreshortened perspective, as well as the art of Carracci, Guercino, Lanfranco and Guido Reni. 

And in this self-portrait, we find a face that has the capacity to see beauty, the desire and the need to live, a growing sense of himself in the world, and ambition. 

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tales of the Jazz Age comes to mind, in the words: “Youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness.”

Compelling Faces in Art - Teodor Axentowicz, Under the burden of misery.

The work of Teodor Axentowicz, as well as other Eastern European Symbolist artists, were ignored, presumably because virtually all their paintings were behind the Iron Curtain and thus impossible to see. It appears they had an approach to Symbolism all their own, heavily influenced by folklore. 

"Under the burden of misery" (pastel on paper) stands out for me. Symbolist painters believed that art should reflect an emotion or idea rather than represent the natural world in the objective, quasi-scientific manner embodied by Realism and Impressionism. They felt that the symbolic value or meaning of a work of art stemmed from the recreation of emotional experiences in the viewer through color, line, and composition. 

And the emotional reaction I get from this, brings “Signs and Symbols” by Vladimir Nabokov to mind. In particular the passage: “This, and much more, she accepted - for after all living did mean accepting the loss of one joy after another, not even joys in her case - mere possibilities of improvement. She thought of the endless waves of pain that for some reason or other she and her husband had to endure; of the invisible giants hurting her boy in some unimaginable fashion; of the incalculable amount of tenderness contained in the world; of the fate of this tenderness, which is either crushed, or wasted, or transformed into madness; of neglected children humming to themselves in unswept corners; of beautiful weeds that cannot hide from the farmer and helplessly have to watch the shadow of his simian stoop leave mangled flowers in its wake, as the monstrous darkness approaches.”

Compelling Faces in Art - Hugues Merle, Mary Magdalene in the Cave, 1868.

If you saw this work and thought “Bougeureau,” you could be forgiven. Hugues Merle (French, 1823-1881) is in many ways a forgotten proto-Bougeureau. Merle and William-Adolphe Bougeureau (1825-1905) knew one another well and, for a time, were represented by the same gallery. 

Their penchant for mythical, allegorical and literary scenes combined with mastery of the monumental human figure, made them competitors for the same pupils, positions, prizes and patrons. Mary Magdaline is known for her remarkable understanding and appropriation of Jesus’ teaching, and is at the center of the controversy reflecting a developing tension between those who claim authority based on the idea of succession and those who claim authority based on spiritual gifts, especially prophetic experience. 

As a result, she is usually remembered as a woman of questionable reputation rather than as the first witness of the resurrection. The face in this painting, to me, depicts a women, chosen by God, to be the first to proclaim the most essential truth of the Christian faith: that He is risen!

Compelling Faces in Art - Petrus Christus, Portrait of a Young Woman, c. 1470

She certainly does not feel the weight of the yoke on her back, yet is locked into privilege. She is a slave to it; completely unable to define and determine alternative standards; to decide on the nature and extent of her identity. The artist may be implying, that those of wealth and privilege have lost the ability and daring to imagine what the future could be.

Compelling Faces in Art - Egon Schiele, Mother and Child (Madonna).

Mother and Child (Madonna) by Egon Schiele. Here we have an emotional and spiritual vision that vividly communicates a profound psychic experience. The mother conveys an ominous, frightening, anti-maternal aura. And oddly enough, her plump illuminated child looks stalwart if not resigned to be trapped in her foreboding grip.

Compelling Faces in Art - Gari Melchers, Sunday Mass.

Gari Melchers was an American artist (1860-1932). His painting, Sunday Mass (c.1886), depicts the interior of a church with parishioners in traditional Dutch clothes. The faces, as well as the poses, demonstrates Melchers’ qualities as a storyteller. I can imagine the preacher teaching these women to pay attention to the good gifts of God that surround them, and developing habits of gratitude. And, I also see in their faces what Norman Maclean describes in A River Runs Through It and Other Stories: “We can love completely what we cannot completely understand.”

Compelling Faces in Art - Vincent van Gogh, Agostina Segatori Sitting in the Café du Tambourin.

Vincent van Gogh’s “Agostina Segatori Sitting in the Café du Tambourin.” This face is almost expressionless, but it is not inactive. It displays a certain resignation, emphasized by the resting pose of the body. She offers her face to be looked at in all its stillness. A stillness that is also full of hidden movement, on the verge of change, whether into sadness or into a smile: sadness in the drooping eyes; a smile beginning to curl itself into view. Is the resignation evolving into realization?