Three dogs
at a party
on a boat
at night.
I’ve been reading Go Dog Go to my son lately. It's his favorite book of the moment. I’ve been thinking about this picture.
Related to the Latin mensis and the Greek men, and the Latin mentiri meaning measure, our word “moon” is created of quantification and frequency. While it is one of our greatest measuring devices, it also pervades our elan vital. And, perhaps these two purposes are more similar than at first they appear. It measures. It also oversees. It seems to me, for this reason, moons are everywhere in our art. So where do we start? Here are a few moons in art.
at a party
on a boat
at night.
I’ve been reading Go Dog Go to my son lately. It's his favorite book of the moment. I’ve been thinking about this picture.
Related to the Latin mensis and the Greek men, and the Latin mentiri meaning measure, our word “moon” is created of quantification and frequency. While it is one of our greatest measuring devices, it also pervades our elan vital. And, perhaps these two purposes are more similar than at first they appear. It measures. It also oversees. It seems to me, for this reason, moons are everywhere in our art. So where do we start? Here are a few moons in art.
In John McNeill Whistler’s Nocturne, Blue and Gold, the orange/gold moon is a bit of design. It tangents the hazy horizon and offsets the understated monochrome composition.
Andrew Wyeth also uses the moon compositionally. The small moon in the upper left of Spring balances a bit of white snow in the upper right. It also adds depth to the picture, as the other elements in the landscape are relatively close to the viewer in this scene.
In other paintings Wyeth uses the moon as a light source. In his excellent Night Sleeper the moonlight illuminates a white barn in the landscape, and slivers of moonlight define window frames and a dog sleeping on a sack. As a younger artist, I didn’t like this painting. I preferred Wyeth’s bleaker scenes, and his gritty, splashy water colors. But, this painting has grown on me. It’s a bit whimsical, and oddly composed. It feels like three paintings. Each window is its own picture. There’s a classic 18th century Pennsylvania barn out one window. Out the other is a silver stream in a perfectly minimal landscape. It’s a picture that feels like a dream. The juxtaposed moments puzzle together and feel completely natural.
Henri Rousseau also uses the moon as a light source. The Sleeping Gypsy has similarities to Wyeths Night Sleeper. The moon lights the scene brightly, and the gypsie‘s sack clothes remind me of the bag where Wyeth’s dog rests his head. The oddly placed elements in this composition make it feel like another dream you can't quite describe.
Rousseau’s Carnival Evening is an excellent moonlit scene. The moonlight filters through the trees to light a couple in carnival garb. There’s an odd structure tucked into the right side of the picture on the edge of the woods. The figures are lit more brilliantly than the rest of the landscape, and the architecture of the building seems beyond logic. Here is an epitome vision of the dreamily surreal.
In Man and Woman Contemplating the Moon, Casper David Friedrich’s moon is part of the narrative. Here the scene is romantic rather than surreal. Once again moonlight filters through the trees toward a couple in the woods. They are silhouetted against the sky. You can step into the moment. There is magic in contemplating the cosmos with your hand on a loved one's shoulder.
Francisco Goya makes the magic of the moon sinister in the Witch's Sabbath. This picture is painterly and brusque. Here the moon tells us it’s night more than it lights the scene. The witches gather around a cartoonishly disquieting goat as clumsy bats flap around his head. This is one of Goya’s many paintings of witches, the wicked, and the fiendish. There’s plenty here to make you double take. The melting faced figures offer babies and skeletal children to this nefarious coven. The roiling landscape appears to be either dead gray hills or an agitated gray sea. The moon is a dirty dash of white that hovers lazily above.
J.M.W. Turner is a painter who is known for making landscapes roil, but Moonlight, a Study at Millbank is one of his calmer pictures. This composition is similar to Whistler’s Nocturne Blue and Gold. Turner’s glowing moon is the focal point in this monotone picture. Its light glints off the water, and silhouettes the boats and horizon. The foreshortened reflection of moonlight on the water’s surface provides an avenue you can walk along into the picture. It's a line of perspective.
When I was in art school, I had the opportunity to watch Vincent Desiderio paint, and listen to his eloquent musings on painting, painters, art, and life. He related moonilght’s reflection on water, as in Turner's painting, to the lines of convergence in one point perspective. With this kind of perspective, the vanishing point is determined by connecting the artist's eye line to a point of convergence on the horizon. Desiderio described this line of sight as a direct path from the eye of the artist to the eye of god, or “the ineffable one.” This line is unique to the point at which each artist stands. Similarly, the direction of moonlight's reflection on water is unique for each one of us. It travels directly to each individual wherever they are standing. There are as many different reflections as there are people standing and looking. A well built artwork allows you to step into the artist’s point of view; the artist’s connection with infinity.
Alan Watts, the interpreter of zen culture, said, “when the moon rises, all bodies of water instantly reflect the moon.” Odilon Redon says it well with his lithograph, À Edgar Poe (À l’horizon l’Ange des Certitudes, et dans le ciel sombre, un regard intérrogateur)
The moonlight provides practical visual structure in the picture, and it also provides the narrative of infinity. The moon measures, and oversees.
In his song Shore Leave, Tom Waits tells a similar sentiment. His language, while poetic, is couched in a down and out, homely attitude:
And I had a cold one at the dragon
With some filipino floor show
And talked baseball with a lieutenant
Over a singapore sling
And I wondered how the same moon outside
Over this chinatown fair
Could look down on illinois
And find you there
And, well, who can forget Cookie Monster’s moon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3U3Sby4zko
The moonlight provides practical visual structure in the picture, and it also provides the narrative of infinity. The moon measures, and oversees.
In his song Shore Leave, Tom Waits tells a similar sentiment. His language, while poetic, is couched in a down and out, homely attitude:
And I had a cold one at the dragon
With some filipino floor show
And talked baseball with a lieutenant
Over a singapore sling
And I wondered how the same moon outside
Over this chinatown fair
Could look down on illinois
And find you there
And, well, who can forget Cookie Monster’s moon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3U3Sby4zko
Soon enough it all comes back together. There is a scene in It's a Wonderful Life when George Bailey is courting his love interest, Mary. He takes a walk, and finds himself at her house. On seeing his arrival she places a drawing she made onto her easel. It is a cartoon of George, and he’s lassoing the moon with a rope. George is a young man with big dreams. When he sees the drawing, George sees his life lay itself out before him. He’s terrified and in love. He realizes his love is reciprocated, and he realizes this love will overpower everything he's ever considered doing. They kiss passionately.
Circumstances have brought me to settle back in my hometown. It wasn’t necessarily a goal I had as a young man.Still, I'm happy. I’m married to the love of my life, and it seems like we keep having babies. When I was a kid I didn't like the scene of George, Mary, and her drawing. I don't think I fully knew what it meant. There was too much kissy stuff, and frankly his fear of future regret made me scared and worried. Now I love this scene, and I can't watch it without tearing up.
Circumstances have brought me to settle back in my hometown. It wasn’t necessarily a goal I had as a young man.Still, I'm happy. I’m married to the love of my life, and it seems like we keep having babies. When I was a kid I didn't like the scene of George, Mary, and her drawing. I don't think I fully knew what it meant. There was too much kissy stuff, and frankly his fear of future regret made me scared and worried. Now I love this scene, and I can't watch it without tearing up.
On one poster for the Broadway show, Crazy for You, two lovebirds sit with arms around each other by the arch of a crescent moon. It's a great show with Gershwin music, and plenty of comedy. There's a dreamy song near the end called Nice Work If You Can Get It. When I'm feeling down, especially if I can't sleep at night, I listen to Nice Work If You Can Get It. It reminds me how much I love my family, and then I’m walking on the moon.
| My most resent moon painting. |  Day Moon and Coming Dark, oil on panel, 28x17.5 currently at www.robertlangestudios.com |