Samuel Van Hoogstraten: MAGIC, CLUES AND REVELATIONS IN YOUR REGULAR DAY
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| The Slippers by Samuel Hoogstraten |
If we are lucky to have a day to ourselves, it is so like a painting. Conscious life is framed in the borders of night and sleep, so that what lies in the waking hours are often a series of events, happenings, moments, often triggering a new understanding or insight, within the time frame of a day.
Today, for instance, on waking from darkness, sun poured in from outside, and the gardens were a green carpet, studded with yellow and red tulips, trailing purple climbing violets and velvety viridian bushes and pines. Seeming to writhe in the new bright cerulean blue sky, the ant antennae branches of winter trees.
What I like about Samuel Hoogstraten's painting is the very simpleness of it. It is a painting of nothing. It is a space you would meditate in. It is inviting you to go and live in it. The actual frame is a doorway for you, the viewer, to go inside and sit down. You want to walk over the terra-cotta tiles and snoop around the inner room.
It is very much like a day in a life. It contains simple features: a broom, light coming from the outside, a candle, a painting on the wall, a towel, some slippers.
Taken at a very physical level, it is a daily view, a mundane day, with the repetitive tasks of the day to day. It has the sunlight, rising, filling the picture. It has the mop, the daily tasks to be done, and then the candle, for the coming evening. It is, in its most simple way, a groundhog day... a treadmill day... a routine day.
And yet.... with further meditation and sitting watching, enjoying its physical sense, the feeling of containment and structure and formed created so brilliantly by his sense of perspective, you are mesmerized by the bathing of sunlight on the floor, which seems to bless the very tiles with gold. This very special light has an allusion to spiritual enlightenment, entering the enclosed form, in the same way a medieval painter would show enlightenment by way of gold lines sprouting from the head of a saint or a Buddhist would fill the physical form with enlightenment. Light coming into rooms is often a symbol in paintings, especially when angels bring messages and people are given insights, guidance and use their intuition.
The keys, left in the door, may allude to St Peter, who was entrusted with the keys to heaven and thought by Jesus so rock solid and reliable he carried the knowledge passed on by Jesus.
So, the pureness of the sunlight makes one feel peaceful in the silent room, and yet at the same time as this spiritual presence, the artist makes this visit into this room like a peeping tom or a fly on the wall, also telling of the 'no-good' of the occupant, making the experience objectified at the same time, so that one can take a critical appraisal.
There are clues of misdemeanor and tumult. A pair of slippers are thrown over the floor, as if quickly and thoughtlessly abandoned for outside shoes, with no time for neat arrangement. Contrasting with the plentiful light, the candle, threatening a limited light, and a painting on the wall so similar to the one by Gerard der Borch, of a woman consumed by venial love and vanity, throwing herself away on extra-marital affairs... insinuating that the storms of passion have carried this occupant away, leaving her keys in the door for anyone to take (her reputation at risk)
Obviously, the building of ones love life on purely viceful foundations as this will lead to loss. St Peter, once given the keys, built the church on solid rock, and certainly not on the precarious sand of desire, passion, lust and cravings of human love. Any attachment of this kind will cause pain and karmic suffering.
Is the artist making a moral statement? I don't know. It's just an observation, I think, at how, in each day, we can all be tempted by filling our day with the wasteful contemplations when the really substantial part of the day is the filling the head with meditation and spiritual guidance.
What I like most about Samuel Hoostraten is how all his little clues, once you've mulled them over, make you form your own intuitive story. His other works, the little peep boxes, which show Dutch interiors, using mirrors to help build the perspective, are also totally delightful.
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| Anamorphic Art by Samuel Van Hoogstraten |
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