This is my favourite fantasy picture - as much as you can ever have a genuine favourite piece of art, book, film, song, etc. It's John Howe's painting of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and it's been my home desktop wallpaper for a long time. I never get tired of looking at it.
I think partly this is just because the landscape is reminiscent of the kind of landscapes which I love and am often hiking or camping in: brooding, desolate moors. It feels like a stylised, approximation of somewhere wild in the British Isles, and if you like that sort of thing, the picture resonates.
I like the way Gawain's shield stands out - the stark white pentangle against black, set against the muted and predominantly green background. To me it's visually but also conceptually striking: the Green Knight is part of nature, almost as one with the background; the knight Sir Gawain is most certainly not.
I also love how Howe refuses to grandstand, which is a hallmark of his work in general: there's no melodrama. Rather the opposite. Sir Gawain looks almost nonchalant as he chats to the Green Knight. Something is going on, of course, but at the same time, it's not a big deal in the grand scheme of things - the world is as it is and always will be, whatever happens. In that sense the atmosphere of the painting reminds me of Bruegel's Landscape with the Fall of Icarus in the way it renders a profound myth humble.
This is reinforced by the horse over there in the bottom left corner. I love that horse. It has no interest in Green Knights, beheadings, struggles for power, broken promises. It's cold and lonely and all it wants is shelter. The painting is as much as, if not more, about the horse than anything else. An animal at the whim of man, dragged along on a quest, but still with its own quiet animal concerns. The picture says a lot about man and nature, and seems to my mind to reconsider how that theme is treated in the original poem, which of course contrasts the chaos of nature with the orderliness of human chivalry. The picture shows man as an interloper in the natural order of things, and his presence is ambiguous rather than ordering: the viewer's sympathy is not so much with the knight but with his poor old horse.
Oh...thats a horse...I thought it was a red cloaked dwarf with an ax sneaking around behing the giant while the warrior distracts the giant.
ReplyDeleteIf more art criticism was written this way I'd probably read a lot more art criticism.
ReplyDeleteThat IS an awesome painting.
ReplyDeleteHave you seen Black Angel? What you said about brooding, mist-covered moors reminded me of that film, for the most part because that's where it was filmed. Have a look.
ReplyDeleteI will watch it properly later but looks interesting - thanks.
DeleteIt's a very nice painting, but there's something about it that bugs me. (What? Art subjective? Never!) Maybe it's the pentangle, which seems like a somewhat odd choice of heraldry. But I think mainly it's the fact that the image falls into a broader category of contemporary fantasy art that really rubs me the wrong way: the positioning of the "hero" as teeeeeeeny-tiny as compared to the "monster" figure.
ReplyDeleteThere's probably a whole entry Zak S. could write here, but I find it interesting that in older heroic art you tend to see the monster about the same size as the hero, or maybe slightly bigger. Nowadays, it's approaching ludicrous levels, to the point where you think, "The weapon that hero is wielding isn't even big enough to cut through that creature's skin..." Aside from that sort of anal-retentive nitpicking, though, it also just bugs me on a symbolic level. What are we saying about our heroes when we reduce them to the size of gnats? That doesn't make it more heroic in my eyes.
However, having said that, I do agree with your assessments of what makes this image so compelling. Gawaine's relaxed, conversational pose. The grazing horse. The "green knight" being essentially a nature elemental. Just would've liked to see the latter a bit smaller...
The pentangle is from the poem, if I remember correctly. I can't remember exactly why but there is a certain symbolism associated with it.
DeleteI get what you're saying about the Green Knight. Not sure why Howe made him that size, but I don't mind it.
The pentacle represents the five Christian virtues that Gawain demonstrates throughout the poem. They are trouthe, felawschip and....it's been a while since undergrad and I don't remember the rest.
DeleteYou'll notice the pentacle is far more prominent in the painting than Gawain himself is - I think that's a significant choice.
I'm not familiar with the arthurian version, but, in Brirciu's feast, the older irish version of the story (starring Cu-Chulainn as the main hero), Cu-roi is actually depicted as shaggy-looking green giant churl.
DeleteI suppose, if the arthurian green knight isn't depicted as an actual giant, that Howe might have taken inspiration in the irish version of the story.
ha! i was gonna comment and say 'oh this reminds me so strongly of that gandalf painting i adore...' and then i reread the name of the painter and thought: 'well yes INDEED.'
ReplyDeletejohn howe's gandalf: http://www.john-howe.com/portfolio/gallery/data/media/21/GandalfTheGrey.jpg
i've nothing to say about the painting at present, other than that it was the cover image of the single-volume LotR that i read in 10th grade, and that it produces in me an extraordinary feeling of melancholy resolution, of agelessness and deep time and that whole civilizational business with the stiff upper lip that my dad (b. lancashire 1934) would at times talk about.