For each of us, this year has offered an astonishing mixture of emotions and experiences, ranging from the joyous to the deeply tragic, from frustrating to meditative, from despair to renewed hope.
I suddenly realized, however, during a symphony concert that a wonderful artist, the solo violinist, offered a metaphor that made me think. He was playing Mendelsohn‘s Violin Concerto E Minor. Suddenly, as often happens, some of his violin bow strings snapped and hung at the end of his bow.
Yet he continued to play – beautifully – and only at a natural pause did he break off those strings.
To me, this conveyed a possible parallel to much of what happens to us: life snaps in some fashion, but there is still the possibility to continue, succeed, flourish and – in the violinist’s case – to make wonderful music.
I began to think about visual artists and how they deal with adversity: so many, in truth, down the ages.And their tribulations did not hinder them in the creation of artworks that enrich us all. Without going far back in time, we can all name some.
The first artist that came to my mind as I sat listening to the Mendelssohn concert was Francisco Goya. Hugely successful as a portraitist and visual chronicler of the late 18th and early 19th century, he became court painter to the Spanish Crown in 1786. Yet in 1793, an illness left him deaf and often seemingly pessimistic about life. This did not prevent him painting such famed masterpieces as La Maja Desnuda or The Third of May 1808. But as life darkened and became complicated with the Peninsular War and its aftermath, his astonishing series of prints, Los Disparates, Los Caprichos and later, when he was living in Bordeaux, La Tauromaquia, are all testimony to great, enduring art being created in adversity.
Les Rinde el Sueno (Sleep overcomes them), Los Caprichos No. 34, Francisco Goya, first edition 1799, print, (Image courtesy of the Prado Museum, Madrid)
Los Disparates (1864)-No.12 -Disparate Alegre (Merry Folly), print, Francisco Goya, (Image courtesy of the Prado Museum, Madrid)
Much nearer our times, Picasso, when he created Guernica in 1937, was in a way the heir to Goya in that he reacted passionately, innovatively and savagely to the German bombing of the Spanish Basque village of Guernica. He himself did not suffer this adversity but his identification with his fellow Spaniards and their awful plight served to spur him to create a huge canvas that became an iconic image of the 20th century.
Guernica, 1937. Oil on canvas, Pablo Picasso, (Image courtesy of the Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid)
So many artists suffer personal adversities, however, and yet produce amazing art. Think of Frida Kahlo: afflicted with polio as a child, she then suffered a bus accident when she was eighteen. She endured lifelong medical problems and pain as a result, and it was her art that allowed her to go on, exploring questions of existence and identity and producing paintings that are instantly recognizable with their intensity and disturbing, questioning directness.
Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird, 1940, oil on canvas, Frida Kahlo, (Image courtesy of the Harry Ransom Center, Austin,, Texas)
In similar fashion, Vincent Van Gogh, battling his mental demons, produced some of his most famed, memorable and original paintings and drawings when he was interned at the Saint-Paul psychiatric asylum at St. Rémy in South France. In fact, during his entire time in that region, his depression and mental illness did not preclude that he produced a torrent of astonishingly original, passionate and iconic work. Perhaps his mental state actually allowed him to paint and draw such masterpieces.
Wheat Field with Cypresses, oil on canvas, Vincent Van Gogh, 1889
The Starry Night, oil on canvas, 1889, Vincent Van Gogh (Image courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum, New York)
Wheat Field with Cypresses, June 1889, Saint-Rémy, Black chalk and pen, 470 x 620 mm, (Image courtesy of Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam)
In Nazi-occupied France, Henri Matisse was diagnosed in 1941 with duodenal cancer; his operation left him with serious complications and he was chair and bed-bound thereafter. Again adversity became the springboard for enormous creativity. His joyous, colourful paper cut outs or decoupages, which he had explored a little in minor form earlier on, now became his medium since he could no longer paint at an easel. Paper and scissors were his way of continuing his hugely innovative life of drawing and painting. We are left with astonishingly life-reaffirming decoupages, a reminder that adversity does not preclude great creativity.
Henri Matisse, Cheval, cavalier et clown, 1943, maquette pour la planche V du livre Jazz, 1947 (Image courtesy of the Centre Pompidou,, Paris)
Henri Matisse, Nu bleu , decoupage, 1952, (Image courtesy of Fondation Beyeler, Basle)
Henri Matisse cutting out his papers (Image courtesy of La Vanguardia)
I was grateful to that violinist, Frank Peter Zimmerman, for reminding me that even with broken violin strings, beauty can continue. In today’s times of upheavals, changes and adversity, we all need reminders of hope and courage to continue creating and celebrating.