Of feathers, wings and cages: why birds are artists’ favourite creatures | Culture | EUROtoday

The birdman from the Paleolithic portray present in 1940 within the French cave of Lascaux. Eagles, falcons or vultures, some educated for searching and others feared. Birds put in cages. Carrier and peace doves, and the third individual of the Trinity: the Holy Spirit. Schemes of Leonardo da Vinci’s flying machines. Even angels earned their wings on human our bodies in Renaissance iconography. Our relationship with birds, endowed with symbolism and powers past life, has impressed artwork for hundreds of years. Their flight equals freedom, however they’re additionally trophies and a supply of meals in intensive poultry farming. Simon Schama, the well-known British historian, says that “there is no other creature that has been so widely adopted by artists.” To replicate on the hyperlink with nature by means of them, he has curated an exhibition titled Birds on the Mauritshuis Museum, The Hague, open till June 7.

Schama takes the picture of a humble man by the hand Goldfinch captive, painted in 1654 by Carel Fabritius, Rembrandt’s most excellent scholar, to “invite” numerous birds from completely different durations and analyze how they embody human feelings and beliefs since Prehistory. The which means of the Lascaux birdman stays an enigma. Is it a searching scene? Does it have something to do with shamanism? Schama cites it through the discuss previous to the exhibition go to, and remembers one other instance: the owl engraved in stone about 35,000 years in the past within the Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc cave, in southeastern France. “Someone needed the company of the bird of prey, and there it is, perhaps as a protective guardian. Or perhaps to warn of danger, because the owl can see at night,” he factors out.

The goldfinch sings in freedom, but additionally when it’s caged, and the one painted by Fabritius – one of many jewels of the Mauritshuis together with The woman with the pearlby Vermeer—has its leg held with a high-quality chain. Located in profile, he utilized thick yellow paint on the wing, which he then scraped off. It seems golden to the attention, and Schama notes “the masterpiece that captures the captivity of the bird.” Then he wonders if that loneliness just isn’t harking back to “that of El Salvador, on whose crown of thorns the finches are said to have landed.” In the exhibition, the stillness of the portray, barely 33.5 centimeters, contrasts with a display put in behind it. There, the synchronized flight of a flock of starlings is projected with the sound—known as murmur—captured naturally. It’s onerous to not suppose that the poor tethered goldfinch cannot even see them.

In the red-painted room arrange by the Mauritshuis, which Schama calls the “chamber of wonders”, the destiny of Icarus, who acquired too near the solar and fell into the void along with his wax wings burned, stands out in an engraving by Hendrick Goltzius from 1588. Defeated by his audacity, he wished to be like a fowl and ended up drowned. Icarus is a fable, however, if as Schama displays, the lifetime of birds “is somehow linked, like the phoenix, to perpetual renewal,” “why shouldn’t humanity imagine divinity as avian and long to put on wings?” The Egyptians represented the sky god, Horus, as a falcon. And Thoth, god of knowledge, like an ibis. The eagle symbolized Zeus, the king of the gods for the Greeks. And the owl to Athena, the goddess additionally of knowledge.

The engaging energy of the feathers wasted by Icarus has its way more mundane model within the room. It seems in a store window and is a fan of ostrich feathers painted pink. From 1900 and 88 centimeters open, it’s wonderful if one doesn’t take into consideration the fowl: a runner, however one that doesn’t fly. Martine Gosselink, director of the museum, writes within the catalog: “Consider the feathers as an extension of the skin, in the same way that we have nails and hair.” Then, keep in mind: “We have used them to write since the 6th century, but also to protect ourselves from the cold and as decoration.” Rembrandt painted some knights dressed like this, just like the Portrait of a person’s feather beret (1635-1640), the place the mushy shine of the clothes nearly competes with the headdress.

And the dove of peace? Why dove and never swan, for instance? “We don’t know,” Schama solutions. “Yes we know,” Gosselink intervenes, laughing. Remember that the fowl “does not have a gallbladder, an organ that in ancient times was associated with anger, and that is why it was considered peaceful.” In the Bible, the dove despatched by Noah after the flood returned with an olive department in its beak, representing peace between God and humanity. That picture, sketched by Picasso, may be very well-liked, and Schama remembers the painter’s relationship along with his French colleague Henri Matisse. When the second was already sick and in a wheelchair, “he needed the pigeons around.” In 1944, the photographer Cartier-Bresson visited him as a result of he wished to {photograph} him for a e book. The quantity was by no means printed, “but the images of Matisse with his doves are wonderful.”

In 1946, Matisse gave one to Picasso, his rival and buddy. He had discovered to seize them as a baby along with his father, José Ruiz Blasco, a painter and artwork trainer, who additionally raised them. “When the Spanish artist executed the pastel with the well-known Dove of Peace (1950), he recognized that the model had been given to him by Matisse.” Schama actually likes a sculpture by Constantin Brancusi, titled The fowl in area (1932-1940). It is a golden brass determine, stylized and polished in order that it seems to vary quantity with the sunshine. “An effort to make it seem to escape its base,” declares the historian. The piece is situated close to a video the place a whole lot of chicks cross at excessive pace alongside a belt in a processing plant. Some pictures that distinction with a nest, titled Magpiesassembled by the birds themselves with plastic and anti-bird metallic that’s positioned on the home windows. It is stored by the pure historical past museum within the Dutch metropolis of Leiden, Naturalis, and it hurts to take a look at it. Same as bronze you saved me (2014) by British artist Tracey Emin, with a determine hugging a fowl. As birds additionally populate music and literature, the author Franz Kafka quotes in regards to the human situation and the will for freedom to shut this winged story: “A cage went out in search of a bird.”