Read Him the Riot Act

The latter paintings of John Mallard William Turner from the 1830′s and 1840′s were quite reckless in his handling of paint.The mucky density of the oils, the trowelling effects, and bleeding watercolors reflected a love-hate relationship with obscurity similar to the literature of D.H. Lawrence. The controversy was not the subject matter but how it was done, particularly this seemingly anarchic, semi-abstract style.

 

 

The later Turner paintings had little in the way of finished details. Form becomes increasingly diffuse and even static forms like architecture dissolve into light.Like John Constable, there is the use of atmospherics, but the narrative pushes deeper into the darkness of light.Narrative clarity is vanquished by poetic atmospherics producing a disconcerting visual ambiguity. Turner’s fatalistic view of history is expressed with increasing liberty, as a culmination of a long and mysterious development process for him  where his ideas of the sublime clearly bridge the gap to modernism.

There is a conjunction of imaginative intensity in these paintings which appeared random and arbitrary yet are backed up  by a sensibility and concentration of intent that assume a narrative that escapes its creator’s control.

Turner was carried away by the proverbial ”divine spark” about which he could not really explain. This speechless quality corresponds to the conception of the painter as an ”instrument” , and how he does it defys any rational, linear understanding since the brush in his hand took over as a life unto its own.

 

 

Turner was classified as a Romantic painter but his influence on impressionism was paramount to its development.He was criticized during his life for his ”unintelligible c

of color”,an intensity that was impossible to define. Like Constable before him, Turner expanded the vocabulary of visual art by forcing, through his obsession with light, a redefinition of what a painting could be. For this he was labelled as ”unintelligible” which was only enhanced by his reclusiveness and gruff temperament.

 

 

And he was half mad  in a sense since his passion for painting consumed his entire being. Like Van Gogh, Turner was obsessed by a compelling demon, a reasonable demon that made him push on, the same propulsion as Van Gogh’s divine state of inspiration which produced an intensity that probably made life equally unbearable for Turner.

His central thesis of man’s insignificance in the face of nature was a commentary on his own despair and mirrored the Romantic literature of Heine and Byron. Turner’s pessimistic view of mankind, the view pre-ordained, destiny and absence of free will had heretofore never been expressed in such imposing fashion.