But Munch was an artist concerned more about the future than the past, and especially anxious about the pace of technology. It has long been assumed that the howling figure in Edvard Munch’s The Scream – an archetype of angst that still flickers above the popular imagination more than a century after it was created – was indebted chiefly to the aghast expression frozen on the face of a Peruvian mummy that the artist encountered at the 1889 Universal Exposition in Paris. These chimneys, which seem more like paintbrushes daubing the work into existence, are a tribute to the thinker without whom Seurat’s resplendent vision would not have been possible. In the hazy distance of Seurat’s painting, a row of smokestacks rise from a factory that produced candles according to an industrial innovation for which Chevreul was also responsible. The colour theory that underpins Seurat’s more mature pointillist style owes its origin in part to the ideas of a French chemist, Michel Eugène Chevreul, who explained how the juxtaposition of hues can generate a persistence of tone in our imagination. It was then touched up by the artist years later, after he had begun to perfect his signature technique of applying small distinct dots that cohere in the eye of the observer when seen at a distance. The large painting of Parisians whiling away a lazy lunch hour on the banks of the river Seine, the first work ever exhibited by Seurat, was initially finished in 1884. Georges Seurat, Bathers at Asni è res (1884) By going small in the emblem of the hare, an artist famous for going big transforms his painting into a poignant tribute and meditation on the fragility of life. The emotions of visitors who saw the painting when it was first exhibited in 1844 were still raw with the horror of a tragedy that had occurred on Christmas Eve two and a half years earlier, when a train derailed 10 miles from the bridge depicted in the painting – an accident that killed nine third-class commuters and maimed another 16. But how does this tiny detail ignite the meaning of Turner’s huge meditation on encroaching technology? Why did he feel compelled to point it out? Since antiquity the hare has symbolised rebirth and hope. The artist himself pointed it out to a little boy who visited the Royal Academy on varnishing day just as the work was about to go on show. It’s no secret that Turner secreted a sprinting hare in the murky path of the approaching locomotive. JMW Turner, Rain, Steam, and Speed – The Great Western Railway (1844) What follows is a brief digest of some of the more extraordinary details – touches of strangeness that invigorate, often subliminally, many of the most recognisable images in art history. “Beauty,” the French poet and critic wrote in 1859, “always contains a touch of strangeness, of simple, unpremeditated and unconscious strangeness.” Combing the surface of these works, I was surprised to discover that each contains a flourish of strangeness which, once spotted, unlocks exciting new readings and changes forever the way we engage with these masterpieces.Īs these remarkable details began to reveal themselves, from a ghostly finger fidgeting on Mona Lisa’s right hand to a tarot symbol for fortitude hiding in plain sight in one of Frida Kahlo’s most mysterious self-portraits, I was reminded of a remark by Charles Baudelaire. Taking as my starting point the most revered images in all of human history (from Trajan’s Column to American Gothic, the Elgin Marbles to Matisse’s The Dance), I went looking for what makes great art great – why some works continue to vibrate in popular imagination century after century, while the vast majority of artistic creations slip our consciousness almost as quickly as we encounter them. This story was originally published in January 2019. That, at least, is the premise of my book, A New Way of Seeing: The History of Art in 57 Works, a study that invites readers to reconnect with works that are so familiar we no longer really see them. What do the greatest paintings and sculptures in cultural history – from Girl with a Pearl Earring to Picasso’s Guernica, from the Terracotta Army to Edvard Munch’s The Scream – have in common? Each is hardwired with an underappreciated, indeed often overlooked, detail that ignites its meaning from deep inside.
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