John Singer Sargent’s El Jaleo painting has loosely been my favourite painting ever since the first time I saw it. I’m sure it’s clear by now that I have a predilection towards abstract painting, but I can assert that there’s no other painting I can think of - both abstract or representational - that holds that same degree of gesture and an imbuement of rhythm and sound as does El Jaleo.
I think the thing that pulls me towards this composition the most (apart from the piece-de-resistance, I will address her in a second) is the rigidness of the figures on the left playing instruments, who all still manage to counteract the austerity of the concrete wall behind them. I say rigidity in that i’m speaking to their high contrast and lack of color depth, as well as the sharpness of their shadows (look at how transfixed the figure on the far-right of the left side looks). But still, movement is definitely conveyed, but feels stiffened and trance-like. Maybe the music that they are performing is part of a ritual? that’s what that intensity feels like to me.
What brings this all together is the dancing figure towards the middle of the composition. Her overextended, reaching arms, and comparatively gestural drapery cause her to barely be read as a painting. This ‘photographic’ moment of her in frozen movement still evokes a ghostly feeling of animation (this reminds me of Morris Louis’ “pour paintings” which convey a similar sense of time-dilation). There’s an evident flow, but also a sense of rhythm which she is conducting with her left hand; and, like a wave, the figures to her right begin to emulate that same vivacious movement which is stemming from her forearm.
I had this painting playing – or let’s say dancing – in the back of my mind the entire time that I was finishing up my P1.2 assignment for studio. Many of the trees on my selected site felt as though they rhymed with the flow of the central figure; especially against the rigid austerity of concrete. I started to see trees differently cause of this painting. Yesterday in studio, our professor spoke of the different “hurdles” in the way of trees when they grow (girdling and knots as examples) and how a tree as you see it (it’s gesture) is a product and embodiment of all those things molding it to form. Similarly, in a reading assigned to us in studio by the Patkau’s (called Material Operations), they declare not that form follows function, nor that function follow form, but that form is earned. I feel transformed by these words, as well as the unexplainable gestural essence I’ve continuously recalled in El Jaleo and now in trees. I’m hoping to see a similar logic of time dilation and form as an actual embodiment of what should have otherwise been failure in the architecture around me, as well as my next projects in studio.
