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Le Philosophe
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Jacques Villon (1875-1964), Le Philosophe, 1930, French. Oil on canvas. 100.6x80.9 cm. Courtesy of The Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY (http://www.brooklynart.org); gift of Gerda Stein.
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The oldest of the Duchamp artist-brothers, Jacques Villon (née Gaston Duchamp) (1875-1963) is probably the least well-known of the three. Yet it is he who has been the most enduring, perhaps even the greatest. (Raymond, a sculptor, had his career cut short when he was killed in 1918 during World War I; Marcel cut his own career short, also in 1918, when he virtually ceased painting to devote his life to chess [JAMA cover, May 6, 1998].)
Because he gave at least as much attention to the theory behind the art as to the making of the work itself, Villon has often been called "the painter's painter." It was he who studied the science behind the color and the mathematics of the line. It was he who studied Leonardo's writings because Leonardo was not only an artist but a scientist as well. And it was Villon who named his group's first exhibition Salon de la Section d'Or in homage to the ancient Greeks. It is not surprising, then, to read in Villon's notes that whereas he had once believed that painting was merely a reaction to an image either before the painter's eyes or in his mind, he now, after a lifetime of painting, believed that painting belonged more properly to the domain of philosophy. "We paint to discover ourselves, to explain our deepest nature." (Reflections on painting. In: Feininger L. Jacques Villon . Boston, Mass: Institute of Contemporary Art; c 1949. Exhibition catalog.) Whether Le Philosophe (cover) relates to this concept or is simply an interesting coincidence is impossible to know, and probably unimportant as well. The painting is interesting in its own right.
This strange and ambiguous composition is all light and form and darkness. The pieces are fitted together like a giant mosaic or an unfinished stained glass window. Stopped, fractured, broken, the light directs the eye in as many directions as there are lines. The muted palette—whites that are more grays and browns than whites, puffy greens and blues, dark browns, hidden reds, and prominent beiges—only adds to the mystery. But it is the figure that poses the greatest enigma. That it is a philosopher we know from the title, but is it man or woman, beast or human, devil or god? With an outstretched leg that terminates in a cloven hoof, a rudimentary hand, shorthand breasts (identified by two V's that echo the inverted V's of the background mountains), a hairless face and a wide brow, it sits on a massive throne, imperturbable as a god, wrapped in the greens and blues that are the mountains and seas.
Though it is modern in execution, the painting has somewhat of a medieval flavor. The human body was often divided into regions to reflect the various regions of the cosmos: lower, middle, and upper. In the nether regions dwelt man's basest instincts; the middle regions were neutral, and to them belonged whatever made man human, for example, the hands that allowed man to till the soil, to suckle children, and to craft cathedrals; and in the upper regions dwelt reason and intellect, which made man nearly a god.
Other speculations are also possible. The seated figure and the robe that has fallen from the shoulder gives the work a certain classical flavor, as though this could be a Greek or a Roman philosopher. The right-angled triangle in the figure's left hand is also suggestive. It was, for example, the sixth-century Greek philosopher Pythagoras who is credited with having been the first to demonstrated Euclid's famous proposition 47 concerning the square on the hypotenuse. And it is to the circle of Pythagoras that credit for the concept of the Golden Mean, from which Villon named his Salon de la Section d'Or, is usually given. But these are speculations only. Villon was a painter, not a commentator. When he did comment, as in his Reflections, it was in a philosophical mode.
Villon's own philosophy of life was based on nature. Always, no matter what the subject of his painting, he saw man in his relationship to and as an integral part of nature. As such, no matter how great man's triumphs, whether in art, science, technology—or philosophy—he saw that they would always be limited by his capacities. "We are like a man before a mirror," he wrote, "who lifts himself up to dominate his reflection, but his own image rises to his own height." No matter how hard he tries, the image always reflects his action, making it forever impossible for him to rise above it or to dominate it. "That is the drama," he said. "We cannot rise above ourselves." But, he added, man "cannot admit this. He stamps, he rages, he distorts his appearance in the hope of releasing an image which corresponds to his pretensions, but all in vain." In the end man is man, not god. Still, Villon's final image for man is a hopeful one. If a man plants a field of potatoes, he writes, because he hopes to find gold at harvest time, he will probably not find gold when he digs them up. But he will have a good crop of potatoes.
"How many beacons illuminate a century?" he asks. Surely the question is rhetorical. His own work is already one that does.
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M. Therese Southgate, MD
JAMA. 1998;280:210.
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