Seven small variations on a big theme: gold in the picture
Prepared by Dušan Buran, head curator of the SNG’s Collections of Old Art
Difficult to extract, relatively little of it usable, rare and correspondingly expensive: such was gold, from ancient times on. Yet it made a stunning impact by its permanence (gold does not rust), its attractiveness to the eye, and its amenability to artistic processing. It became the object of various metaphors, in the first instance virtually a synonym of wealth, and also of luxury, snobbery, earthly transience, and social affectation.
The significance and function of gold in art history has therefore not been as stable as its physical qualities. In art it was ceaselessly subject to factors that were changing and, simplifying somewhat, one may indicate two polar perceptions of it. The first was when symbolic contents or even spiritual qualities (in the sense, for example, of visually representing Heaven or supernatural light) were projected onto gold. The second pole involved an absolute preference for the materiality of gold, hence for its acknowledged character of metal: of non-colour and exclusive representation of itself. Needless to say, the “fan” of possible interpretation creates an entire spectrum between these two extremes.
For the purposes of this collection we will take no account of historical goldsmithing and jewellery, or in other words the sphere where gold (for the most part only gilding) was the basic art material or determined the technological procedure. Nor can we address the chronically neglected field of historical textiles, where brocades and precious silks owed their high value to gold threads and the effects those produced. For our purposes we will remain in the setting of the typical museum types: painting and sculpture. Our focus is rather on a peripheral use of gold — as background in a painting, or in the polychromy of a sculpture. In conclusion, we propose to point out that in recent decades gold has established itself even in “dematerialised” new media.
The first gold backgrounds in painting appear roughly in the 2nd /3rd centuries of our era, in the sarcophagus effigies known in art history as “Fayum portraits”. Byzantine and medieval art raised the materiality of gold to a programme. The interplay of the light of candles and gold mosaic tiles or backgrounds on icons (sometimes of gilded tin) or images on wooden altars, had an evocative power unequalled by anything else. That remained true at least until the diffusion in the 12th and 13th centuries of Gothic stained glass windows, which offered essentially new impulses to the liturgy in church spaces. But even after that, gold did not vanish from painting or sculpture. On the contrary, it continued to attract attention in metallic designs of various forms and offered an illusion of material wealth.
However, as from the 13th century with its Gothic rationalism, artists, theologians and theorists of art were obliged to find new justifications for the status of gold in painting, which was becoming more and more “realistic”. A gold background, however costly and imposing, no longer sufficed. From the early Renaissance the illusiveness of pictorial space presupposed a certain logic, vis-à-vis which the pure gold surface was in direct contradiction. Paradoxically, this crisis brought with it a development of various techniques of brocading, punching and stippling, and the so-called “pastiglia”. Though they increased the distance from modern illusiveness, they did at least transform the panel paintings and altars into gigantic works of goldsmithing. In this connection we may mention, for example, the Chapel of the Holy Cross in Karlstein, whose interior its author and evidently also concept designer, Master Theodoric, gave the scenic form of a reliquary — viewed from the inside.
But let us return to the gold backgrounds in paintings. The expansive Gothic panel in the Chapel of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary in Spišský Štvrtok (Donnersmarkt), a work by the Master of the Tucher altar in Nuremberg (about 1450), is positively a case study of the aforementioned “realism”. Here the flat gold background, at that time a constant property of the majority of altar paintings in the region of Spiš (Zips), earned its alibi only in combination with the illusively fashioned curtain of precious brocade material. Against the background of the scene of the death of the Virgin Mary (and her Assumption to Heaven), she is “physically” and quite theatrically being upheld by a number of angels. The gold background has thus survived another crisis.
The art of the modern age rose in its peculiar way to the challenge of gold. Still among the dominant motifs were the permanence of the material, its rarity and preciousness, and hence luxury. In the period from the 16th to the 18th century we only rarely encounter large gold expanses. Their one-time role has entirely vanished; now they serve as luxurious backgrounds (Carravaggio: Basket of Fruit, 1596). But more frequently gold appears simply in the form of a requisite, an accessory or jewel.
In the sacred setting, however, gold was not spared. The theatrical art of the Counter-Reformation in many ways followed on from late Gothic models, in part because by the “retro-style” it could manifest the archaic tradition of Catholicism. Baroque sculpture, then, loved to use fully gilded surfaces: sculptures, sometimes in life-size and over-life-size, imitated the works of filigree goldsmithing (e.g. Benvenuto Cennini, Saliera, 1543) and thus transformed entire altars into colossal reliquaries.
In secular architecture, for example in the French or Petersburgian courts, entire rococo or classicist interiors were, so to speak, reclothed in gold. Witness the royal rooms of Louis XV in Versailles, 1689; though we also find them somewhat closer to home, as in the “Golden Cabinet” of the Lower Belvedere in Vienna. To all of their owners and visitors they offered the illusion of movement in the jewel cases. Complemented with diverse curiosities or cabinets of oriental porcelain, they often combined this illusion with the idea of a distant paradise on Earth.
In the 19th century gold in painting experienced a certain revival, and not always in sacred contexts (Nazarenes and Pre-Raphaelites), and with the art of the Secession once again (and, apparently for the last time, in complete earnest) it returned to the scene in all forms of art. As a visual reminder Judith and Holofernes by Gustav Klimt (1901) will suffice: that celebrated painting in the Gallery of Fine Art in Ostrava, which is at the same time a specimen of the direct combination of painting and gilding, typically of Vienna’s fin de siècle. The 20th century avant-garde more or less just tolerated gold on the margin of their interest; postwar art later dusted it off. One must note that this was mainly in paintings with a sophisticated layering of media (Andy Warhol, Yves Klein). Erwin Wurm and Maurizio Cattelan provisionally brought the career of gold to a climax, in their sarcastic installations with cultural references to other works (not only the modern) in art history.
1/ Russian Icons with Plates, 18th — 19th century
In the archaic “portraits” from the Egyptian oasis of Fajum — essentially encaustic (with wax), created on sarcophagus panels with likenesses of the deceased — we encounter not only illustration with gold jewellery (e.g. of laurel wreaths) but also a flat gold background. In art history these “portraits” are usually regarded as a prototype of the human portrait, which determined the character of the genre for millennia (in the form of the passport photo it lives on to this day). One of the first globally diffused images was the icon of the Mother of God: whether in a mosaic on the wall of an apsis or on a Marian panel painting, most frequently in the half-figure form before a gold surface.
And thus the gold background became part of sacred painting for many centuries. And while in West European painting even this surface succumbed to far-reaching style and technological changes, in Byzantium and subsequently in the Orthodox part of Europe its character was maintained almost unchanged for a very long time. That might be as an undifferentiated or only slightly differentiated metal plate. Or (and our icons are examples of this) the artists thought through the idea of the materiality of the metal and, so to speak, “dressed” even the images of the Mother of God and the saints in gold. They cover everything in the picture, except for flesh (the so-called “incarnate”, depictions of human skin — faces, hands, sometimes Jesus’s feet). Despite a widespread idea to the contrary, this “gold” can only with difficulty be interpreted as a spiritual aspect of the painting. The dominance of the material (tin) and its elaboration in relief or the gilding techniques used do not in any way contribute to the “illusive” resources of the painting. Quite the contrary, they paradoxically mask most of it and redefine the image as a specific object of reverence. On the one hand (entirely prosaically) they protect the painting from the effects of frequent touching or kissing. On the other hand, simultaneously they also fetishise it, because they conceal it and create an optical barrier to viewing the original.
2/ Panels of an Unknown Altar, Bratislava / Vienna, about 1440
The two-side painted panels, which evidently came originally from one of the long-since dismantled winged altarpieces in St. Martin’s Cathedral in Bratislava, document the liturgical function of altar wings and its consequences for the aesthetic concept of painting. Gilding appears only on one side: the ceremonial side, which was accessible during the major feasts, at which time a shrine with gilded statues was open also. In this ceremonial form the entire altar was meant to be radiant, as if it were a magnified gilded object.
By contrast, after the wings were closed (which was their state for most of the year) a scene from the Passion cycle was visible, in most cases without the use of gold foil, seen here only on the saints’ haloes. About the middle of the 15th century, influenced by criticism of images by the Hussites, and also by preachers from the so-called Observant wing of the Franciscans (St. Bernardine of Siena, St. John Capistrano) for their sensuality and luxury, this trend culminated in a style tendency called modus humilis — the humble style. However, that did not last for long, and the later Gothic, roughly from 1470, again began to gleam with gold surfaces, sometimes even on the so-called Lenten sides of the altar. But it is proof of an essentially permanent problem which accompanied the use of this precious metal in sacred art.
There is no doubt that the altar painters were able to capture, even if only as coulisses, a landscape also (scenes on the Lenten sides). Indeed, they were able, however schematically, to construe space with the help of perspective (proof of that may be found on paving tiles and in the “box-like” interiors where the saints stand). And nonetheless, before taking the last step to creating a convincing pictorial space, they abandoned the effort. Instead of an airy landscape and sky behind the windows, one sees an unarticulated flat surface. There must have been reasons for that, connected with the organism of altar construction as a whole, which nowadays we do not know. Certainly, however, the original sculptures, frames, and the entire architecture of the altar was gilded. Only in this way can one explain why gold surfaces were used in the background of images on its ceremonial (open) side. That is to say, in terms of media, rather than a series of modern images the altar was meant to simulate a magnified “gold” reliquary with figural enamels. This interpretation is supported by the use (even if modestly) of the goldsmithing technique of stippling on their haloes.
3/ Madonna from Poprad, 1484
The techniques with which the background of the Poprad Madonna was gilded are called brocading and trembling. What is involved is ornamentation created in relief on a chalk base, mostly with plant motifs, though sometimes with geometrical motifs also, which in the final adjustment is covered with gold foil. The artists openly take inspiration from the models of precious textiles, although textile need not necessarily be imitated in its object quality, e.g. in the form of a curtain or other drapery in the background behind the figures. But we know examples of that kind also. By contrast, on most of the altar paintings there is merely a borrowing of the formal structure of brocade or silk models, without any pretence of being cloth, and in the organism of the Gothic panel the technique becomes an autonomous form. As such it immediately has a number of functions: in the first instance it allows (as in our featured painting) its coloured parts to have a far more plastic, more illusive purport. Hand in hand with this effect, but thanks to its own materiality (this time of an entirely concrete kind), it changes the entire panel to a precious goldsmithing work. All the more so since the frame too is decorated with the same ornamentation, including the inscription with the 1484 date. A similar technique is used on Mary’s crown and her halo with a further inscription.
Our painter also combines brocading with other techniques, for example painting with gold powder. This gold, however, also has another function: it imitates something concrete. For example, take the gilded clasp that pins Mary’s cloak at the breast, or the metal threads of her brocade dress beneath it, this time in an attempt to simulate a real costume of expensive cloth. It will also not escape detailed observation that the nimbus of Jesus with the inscription ego sum α et ω is also crafted “only” in gold paint, not in relief. Although in the scale of techniques used the Poprad Madonna remains one of the more modest works, it shows the potential of gold, whether in its material function (relief background and frame) or its imitative function (jewels, cloth). This multi-functionality also contributed to its enduring popularity throughout the entire Middle Ages, particularly where the structure of the painting (whether a book miniature or even a mural) was supposed to help catch the viewer’s interest by a diversity of techniques and the effects accruing from them.
4/ Ľudovít Gode: St. John the Evangelist, about 1760; Angel, after 1735
By the turn of the 16th century the late Gothic was developing various experiments in the polychromy of sculptures. Apart from one specific style tendency whose preferred final resolution was an unadorned wooden structure (hence without further modification of colour), on the majority of other statues the share of gilt was constantly growing. That was connected especially with the ever more capacious and complex cloaks in which male and female saints were wrapped. But other colours too were nearly always applied to them, for example to clothes and personal symbols, but especially to images of flesh (so called incarnate): the representation of human skin, hence on hands and faces.
Baroque sculpture, which in many ways followed on from the Gothic, nonetheless brought several innovations. One of them, in the area of gilded surfaces, was the use of entire-surface gildings, hence including faces and skin. The sculptural figure in such an instance made no pretence whatever of imitating the “living” saint, merely clothed in a golden cloak. On the contrary, by full-figure gilding of the sculpture the artist emphasised its primary “artistic” status; there were no references pointing to an imaginary living “prefiguration”. Far more, such an artist evokes other artefacts, art of almost all types. And hence in our case also the sculpture of the angel or bozetto (design for a monumental realisation) of St. John the Evangelist by the Bratislava sculptor Ľudovít Gode represents an overlapping not just of technologies but of entire aesthetic conceptions between miniature and monumental media.
Fully gilded sculptures ultimately attained their revival before the 20th century ended: in the busts and abstract works of the Romanian-French artist Constantin Brancusi, and relatively recently also in America (2016–2017), a sarcastic gesture by Maurizio Cattelan. Indeed, even here the alert viewer will catch a reference by the artist to another famous work of the avant-garde, Duchamp’s Fountain (1917).
5/ Christoffel Pierson: Circe and the Companions of Odysseus, 1660
With the diffusion of an ever more realistic aesthetic conception, in the Renaissance the gold surfaces familiar from Gothic paintings lost their raison d’etre. The gold surface behind the figure — whether we think of it as a symbol of the heavenly Jerusalem or of Heaven itself, or whether we give preference to the “material” interpretation as “magnified” goldsmith’s work — came sharply into contradiction with sensually perceived reality. After varied compromises, most often in the form of imitation of a metallic cloth, the artists and commissioners essentially eliminated the gold background. Gold, however, continued to be used in painting. But it was done in such a way that no doubt emerged about its formal equivalent in the depicted world: as “colours” of jewellery, embroidery, an expensive golden vessel, or furniture.
A mythological scene from the SNG’s Dutch collection is also packed with similar requisites. The pompous throne of the goddess Circe, daughter of the sun-god Helios and his wife Perseis, fulfils the criteria already indicated, even though the theme is not biblical. The golden throne has a signal function in the pictorial composition: in a deep niche, crowned by a shell, it concentrates attention on the most important personage. And yet, in doing so it is as if it merely substituted the aureole behind its figure. Compositionally and in content, the painter can thus leave the figure in the natural setting of the scene with linkages to further actors. Simultaneously, however, this borrowing from Christian painting offers, within the hierarchy of characters, a means for the definition of the supernatural status of Circe. A further notable aspect is the fact that he manages to achieve the illusion of the presence of gold objects without using so much as a single sheet of gold. He has achieved it exclusively by painterly means: by a thoughtful mixing of classical colours (brown, ochre and yellow).
6/ Stano Filko: Altar of the Present, 1966
The reception of Byzantine and medieval aesthetic concepts was a relative frequent phenomenon during the 20th century. In Russian art Kazimir Malevich raised it to the status of a paradox of the avant-garde. If echoes of these strategies made their way through to us Slovaks, then mainly in certain paintings by Ľudovít Fulla (compare https://www.webumenia.sk/dielo/SVK:SNG.OP_68 or
https://www.webumenia.sk/dielo/SVK:SNG.OP_14).
Nor did gold surfaces escape attention, though we cannot say they were a much-used means of expression. For the artists of modernism and the avant-garde, in diverse variants they were rather a synonym of sacredness, and in combination with other motifs, also of formal wealth or obscenity. Or one and the other together.
From this starting-point one could also develop a concise interpretation of the Altar of the Present. Even the very technique of assemblage (in our case a kind of stripped-down and twisted frame construction, at first sight golden, but structurally senseless, and besides all cobwebbed with nooses and wires) is more a caricature of its original purpose. Complemented with cheap black-and-white reproductions, though here and there also with sacred motifs, more than a recollection of age-old tradition it is an illustration of the saying “fool’s gold”: a captivating attraction which can be effective for a short time, and which many a tipsy trader is taken in by. In other versions of the Altar of the Present which Filko “reproduced” to the point of inflation in the years 1964–1966, the tone of consumerism is often intensified by erotic reproductions that place the gilded medium of the “altar” on the level of an idol’s shrine. Thus it relativises the altar itself, while preserving its content from a one-dimensional moralising.
One needs to add that in Stano Filko’s artistic strategies the use of gold assumed numerous forms, layers, and also functions. In certain sketches and objects he works with gold as a specific “non-colour”; for him it is a symbol of the 10th chakra, typically in close combination with another “non-colour”, white — this is documented by a series (alienated from their original purpose) of writing boards from the SF colour system.
7/ Emília Rigová: Vomite ergo sum, 2017
Emília Rigová, aka Bári Raklóri, is currently probably the most professional performer on the Slovak visual art scene. In the video presented here she personally undergoes the risky ritual of puking gold (or a substance that recalls gold at first glance). This video-staging of a young woman’s radical corporeal experience immediately poses a number of questions for the viewer: on the anthropologic-physiological level they begin with the degree of risk that this operation contained (what is vomited first had to be consumed). They continue with the semiotics of the material: gold as precious material, but at the same time a foodstuff that the human being is not capable of digesting under any circumstances. The contents of the mouth, however, are associated also with the metaphor of speech — those fabled golden words. And finally, one comes to the socio-ethnic projections: gold in the Roma milieu, which Bari is possibly sick of and which she would (also in the metaphorical-identitarian sense) rather be purged of. Or she has got rid rather of what was imposed, insofar as the folklorist requisites of Roma visual identity (rings, earrings, chains, and so forth) are more a stereotype of the perception of that ethnic group by the majority community, rather than corresponding to her differentiated reality.
The video loop, however, catches the artist in the act of inability to rid herself of this burden (on the stomach), in whatever context the viewer may now perceive it. Which is to say, her vomiting seems to be endless, it is itself becoming part of her identity. So it is with identitarian struggles: only rarely do they lead to a definitive, once-and-for-all victorious result.
