Jirí Anderle - The Smile (Il Sorriso), from the series Cycle: Portraits in the Passage of Time

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Jirí Anderle (Czech, b. 1936), The Smile (Il Sorriso), from the series Cycle: Portraits in the Passage of Time, 1978, color etching, drypoint, mezzotint, Cyril W. Nave Endowment Fund purchase, 1988.37

Throughout time, portraiture has become quite a loose term, defined in a variety of ways. In broad terms, portraiture can perhaps be explained as portraying the likeness of a person, who is a real, living being. Looking to artistic tradition, one may imagine a sitter within the artist's studio as the artist carefully crafts a mirror image of the person before them. But, what if that “sitter” were not from the artist’s own lifetime, or only known to the artist through the lens of another artist and culture? The conventions of portraiture become challenged and new meaning develops as a figure/portrait is taken out of its original context.

Jiri Anderle’s The Smile, completed in 1978, is a print within his larger cycle Portraits in the Passage of Time. The subject of his work, the noble woman in profile, comes from a mid-15th century portrait by Italian Renaissance artist Alesso Baldovinetti. The original is the epitome of traditional portraiture; the sitter is shown in profile to the waist, dressed in fine clothing, and shows no emotion. Anderle re-imagines this female sitter in his print and brings modern ideas into the work. Time, motion, and emotion are brought into the pictorial space. Anderle joins an art historical tradition of portraiture as he simultaneously speaks to his own time and challenges older conventions. In relocating the Renaissance woman into his own contemporary context, the subject becomes less important than the ideas she embodies.

The Smile brings viewers into a quasi-dreamlike space. A variety of printmaking techniques allow for the deep color and varying tones. Anderle used color etching, which involves painting over an already etched plate, and mezzotint, which allows for the large areas of lighter tone (the woman’s body).1 The female depicted wears formal 15th century clothing and jewelry. Her figure is overlapped and repeated across the page, forming a blur of motion. Her mouth gradually curls into a smile and regains composure as one scans from left to right. Anderle presents not merely one captured moment in time, but an entire action, both past and present, depicted on one picture plane. The overlap and repetition gives the woman a ghostly quality; the pale white of her skin seems almost transparent. One gets no sense of a background context; the woman floats in a sea of turquoise and hints of tan. The palm-leaf patterns on her dress become amorphous creatures, apart from the shoulder of her dress, and develop a life of their own. Unidentifiable shapes and lines find themselves within the print, as well. Viewers may question who this woman is, what space she occupies, and why she is smiling. Upon first viewing, the print’s formal qualities bring up a lot of questions and little clarity, but in recognition of the interplay between past and present, certain themes begin to emerge.

Anderle often uses his art to reflect on his own experiences or personal interests. Born in 1936 in Pavlikov, Czechoslovakia, Jiri Anderle began his formal artistic training at the Secondary School of Applied Art in Prague in 1951, and went on to study painting and graphic art at the Prague Academy of Fine Arts in 1955.2 After graduating, Anderle toured with Prague’s Black Theatre, which opened in 1961 as the first black light theatre in the world; Anderle performed as a mime. Actors dressed in all black, against a black background, and carried props. The effect of the black-on-black made the props appear to move on their own and float in space.3 The theatre group allowed Anderle to travel all over the world for performances. He was introduced to works of western European modernists such as Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, and Paul Klee, among many others, and continued to work on his art, particularly prints, as he traveled. After working with the theatre for eight years, Anderle accepted a position as assistant professor at the Prague University of Applied Arts.4 He continued to work on his own art, though came to dislike his now excess time for the completion of each work. Anderle once said, “I put too many hours into changes…all because of the lack of urgency in time, which I feel is necessary.”5 His work itself explores the concepts of time through movement, aging, and overall meaning. He continues to work and create his art in Prague today.

To better understand Anderle’s choice of sitter in The Smile, it helps to analyze the original portrait and artist in their own time. Baldovinetti was a Florentine artist in the Early Renaissance period.6 The identity of the woman he depicted has been contested. Until the early 1900s she was believed to be the Duchess of Urbino, but more recent scholarship has identified her as Francesca degli Stati, wife of Angelo Galli, a minor poet.7 Anderle seems to agree with this identification by the inclusion of, “Homage to a Poet” in Italian at the bottom of his print. The palm-tree motifs may represent Galli’s family home, which was nicknamed “Palazzo de Palme” for the palm trees that surrounded it: the motif would have been an indicator of her family (possibly just married into) and a symbol of status.8 Baldovinetti’s portrait would have then been hung in their home, to be seen by visitors.9 One must be cautious, however, in seeing this original portrait as a true depiction of likeness; it was not uncommon to idealize specific features according to the artist or patron's aesthetic taste.10

Humanism, a way of thinking that originated during the Renaissance, also proves to play a role in Anderle’s print. Humanist ideas revolved around a view of the individual as a sort of microcosm. Scholars and artists were interested in learning about the anatomy of the body and the human condition.11 Learning about the world and humans’ place in it was believed to bring one closer to a higher knowledge. Similarly, Anderle explores the human body’s movement to better understand the world around him. Through his performing, Anderle came to value gesture and facial expression. The concept of time is embedded in thinking about movement and the human body in space. Joann Moser writes, “Although Anderle subscribes to no specific theory or philosophical approach, he explores freely the complex nature of time, not as an abstraction but as an expressive device that enriches the allusions and levels of meaning in his strongly humanistic work.”12 Anderle certainly transforms the image, but recalls its original context in the ideas he explores.

Through Anderle’s process of de-contextualization, the original portrait’s intent becomes almost completely inverted. In Baldovinetti’s portrait, the woman’s familial status was highlighted. The palm-leaf symbols on her shoulder would have been recognized within her time as a defining characteristic. In Anderle’s, the palm leaves are distinct, but simply become odd amorphous shapes in the dream space. Contemporary viewers would not know what family to link the motif, if they even understood that it was linked to a family at all. Instead of familial symbol, the woman’s defining characteristic is her smile; facial expression and human anatomy become more distinct than family ties. The concept of time is also changed with the new context. The original shows a frozen moment in time; the woman sits eternally in her own pictorial present. Anderle depicts an action; both past and present in one pictorial space. The woman becomes an agent of motion. What each portrait celebrates is changed, as well. Whether the original is a wedding portrait or simply to commemorate a stage in the woman’s life, it honors a special moment or occasion; it would have been commissioned for a specific reason and with great importance.13 Anderle’s print celebrates the simple gesture of a smile; he honors an action of the everyday. The facial movement of forming a smile almost overpowers the woman herself. A tan shading over the repeated mouths seems to highlight the action, calling viewers to look at what is occurring. A final alteration is seen in the change in medium. Baldovinetti’s painting was on wood. It was meant to be uniquely and specifically made for his patron. Anderle’s, as a print, is on paper and can be easily reproduced. It is not necessarily meant for just one person, but is for everyone. The woman’s portrait goes from being meant for the private space of her family’s home to the public sphere of the world.

Anderle's change in context allows him to acknowledge a tradition of portraiture, but to also assert a new definition. In its original setting, art was seen as a mirror or reflection of the world. Modern and contemporary artists, in contrast, have embraced art as a way to transcend reality. They depict dreams, abstract images, and allude to larger ideas, such as time or motion. Anderle seems to maintain that art cannot accurately depict tangible things in the world, as artists’ hands are imperfect mediators. What art can do is provide a starting point for thought on more complex concepts. Anderle’s print serves as a foundation for viewers to contemplate time, its effects on humans, and how bodies express movement across time. One might also think about smiling and what a smile means, culturally, emotionally, and physically. The portrait becomes less of the woman and more of time or even smiling itself.

With these concepts in mind, it is beneficial to view The Smile within its larger cycle titled Portraits in the Passage of Time.14 In each print, Anderle uses other past subjects in works by other artists, but also mixes in his own family members and friends. The figures are of various ages and are most often overlapped and repeated, showing motion, just as in The Smile. The concept of time is apparent in this mixture of ages and repetition of motion, but also in the way that these are depicted. Richard Lobar writes of the series, “Each marking is a visual proposition of action…functioning rather more as energy conversion formulas…they can only be understood metonymically, as trophies; fragments out of time, they recall a whole in time, surviving as temporal markers—souvenirs, relics, props.”15 Anderle’s stress of urgency in his creative process appears to be most evident in this series. Many of the works seem unfinished, but it is in this fragmentation that one sees the fleetingness of time. The randomness of subjects, past and present, addresses time, but also emphasizes the insignificance of identity for Anderle. The figures are used to embody his broader themes.

In borrowing an already used figure, Anderle does much more than imitate; he comments, questions, reflects, and reimagines the subject. He brings up themes of time, motion, and contextualization. In Anderle’s print, the woman loses her initial identity as a noble figure, but gains value for her portrayal of time and reflection on gestural expression. Anderle situates himself within a tradition of portraiture by investigating the genre's limits and surpassing its boundaries.

Erin Green

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1Lower East Side Printshop, “Intaglio Printing,” Glossary of Printmaking Terms and Techniques, http://www.printshop.org/web/Learn/Glossary/ (Accessed 7 Nov. 2015).

2Jacques Baruch and Jiri Anderle, Jiri Anderle Master Graphics 10th Anniversary Exhibition, September 16-November 8, 1980 Jacques Baruch Gallery 900 N. Michigan Ave Chicago, IL 60611 Suite 605 (New York: Astoria Press, 1980), 21.

3Black Light Theatre Srnec Online, “History,” About Us, http://www.srnectheatre.com/eng/node/148 (Accessed 6 Nov. 2015).

4Baruch and Anderle, 21.

5Moser, 37.

6The National Gallery Online, “Alesso Baldovinetti,” Artist A to Z, http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/artists/alesso-baldovinetti (Accessed 4 Nov. 2015).

7Eliot W. Rowlands, “Baldovinetti’s ‘Portrait of a Lady in Yellow,’” The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 122, No. 930 (U.K.: The Burlington Magazine, 1980), 624.

8Ibid., 624.

9Web Gallery of Art, “Portrait of a Lady in Yellow (with frame),” Baldovinetti, Alessio, http://www.wga.hu/html_m/b/baldovin/portrai.html (Accessed 7 Nov. 2015).

10The Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Portraiture in Renaissance and Baroque Europe,” Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/port/hd_port.htm (Accessed 6 Nov. 2015).

11Roebuck Classes Online, “The Italian Renaissance Humanists,” Science: Knowing and Understanding the World, http://www.roebuckclasses.com/ideas/humanist.htm (Accessed 4 Nov. 2015).

12Moser, 39.

13The Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Portraiture in Renaissance and Baroque Europe."

14The Baruch Foundation, “Portraits in the Passage of Time,” http://baruchfoundation.org/page/search/ (Accessed 1 Nov. 2015).

15Moser, 39.

Catalogue
Jirí Anderle - The Smile (Il Sorriso), from the series Cycle: Portraits in the Passage of Time