Dorothy Koppelman, Aesthetic Realism Consultant, on Diego Velazquez

“In reality opposites are one; art shows this." --Eli Siegel

ART HISTORY & CRITICISM
Talks on the Aesthetic Realism understanding of art

WHAT WILL MAKE US TRULY PROUD OF OURSELVES?

A Study in the Art of Diego Velazquez
by Dorothy Koppelman

I learned from Aesthetic Realism that the deepest purpose of every person is like the purpose of art: to like the world and oneself at the same time by seeing both as an aesthetic oneness of opposites. Eli Siegel's mighty Aesthetic Realism principle, stated for the first time in history, has in it the proud purpose of all men, all women: All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves. I am going to talk about what I learned which has had such a tremendous effect on my work and myself. I shall also talk of the 17th century Spanish painter, Diego Velázquez whose study of objects and great paintings of the Spanish court put together those opposites without which, I have learned, there would be no art: pride and humility. Velizquez self-portrait within another painting

Velizquez self-portrait within another painting

Diego Velázquez

"SUCCESSFUL HUMILITY IS PRIDE"

I first came to know and care for the paintings of Velázquez when I was studying Eli Siegel's incomparable essays of art criticism, now published in The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known. I learned from the essay "Art As, Yes, Humility" how I wanted to be and what affected me so much in a painting. Mr. Siegel writes: All seeing, while an expression of oneself, is also a submission. In artistic seeing, humility and submission are pride and grandeur....Successful humility is pride. I saw in this work, The Surrender of Breda, the beauty of submission and pride at once.

The Surrender of Breda

This is one of the few historical paintings the artist ever did and I believe he painted it because he was so moved by the drama of opposites in a battle situation, and the story of gallantry at the time of surrender.

Right in the center of the painting opposites are one as the two generals meet. One, in his dark armor gallantly reaches over to touch the yielding, bowing general who so sweetly holds out the key to the city. The motion of the rising and falling rope echoes the motion of the heads, one high, the other low. But between those heads marches a row of white spears, joining them. In the center, an upright and softly furled flag, proud and humble, signals peace. I was so moved by these two men, taking their hats off to one another, that I wanted to be like them, yielding and victorious.

Detail
from the Surrender of Breda

When Mr. Siegel looked at a reproduction of this central detail, he wrote a comment: "destined consent." I think that is what a person feels when he can say Yes and proudly surrender to the beautiful structure of opposites in reality and in himself.

Diego Velázquez was born in Seville in 1599; his mother was Spanish-her name was Velázquez-and his father Portuguese. As a boy he was apprenticed to painters, the second of whom, Juan Pacheco, wrote The Art of Painting in which he tells how, from the age of 11 to 19, Velázquez studied ordinary objects and paid a peasant boy to pose for him so he could study facial expressions. What the artist wants to do is what every person wants to do and Aesthetic Realism teaches how. In "Art As, Yes, Humility" Eli Siegel writes,

To see is to be humble....To be pleased by an object, by what it is, its form, texture, color, relation, is felicitous, sometimes magnificent, humility. It is a humility one has to learn. I love teaching with my colleagues what we have learned from Aesthetic Realism: the art of liking the world. The first Aesthetic Realism assignment is: Every day write a complete sentence about one thing you like. Liking an object and saying so is the beginning point for liking the world, and being proud of the way you see. If a person is depressed it is because he has made less of the outside world, and he is asked: Look at an object close to you: Are you like the tape recorder?-dark, quiet and contained on the outside, and smooth perhaps, but turning around and listening to everything on the inside? Are you like the chair you are sitting on, feet on the floor, back upright, at rest and alert? This is the only way of seeing the world which can combat conceit and contempt. Eli Siegel taught that because the opposites of reality are in us, "when you lessen the meaning of anything you lessen yourself."

Old Woman Cooking Eggs
[click here for full screen picture]

Diego Velázquez painted this Old Woman Cooking Eggs when he was just 19. The critic Raymond Cogniat writes that the artist

approached domestic interiors as seriously as historical scenes, portraits of peasants with as much respect as those of great noblemen, and a simple still-life with as much exactness and care as a composition on a grand scale.

We can learn from the way Velázquez saw meaning in the forms, textures, colors and relations of objects, and here, in a boy and an old woman.

Continued, Part B ... Click here

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