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Balzac's Unknown Masterpiece FOREWORD Balzac’s Unknown Masterpiece: spotting the next big thing in art and science Joseph L Goldstein There is no shortage of advice on how to to create a sculpture in memory of the writer, tic skill that she seems to be actually alive. become a creative writer, a creative artist or a whose work by that time had achieved inter- When two younger painters who are great creative scientist. Just in the last decade, hun- national acclaim. To capture Balzac’s genius admirers of Frenhofer’s work finally per- dreds of books and articles have been writ- and the revolutionary nature of his work, suade Frenhofer to let them see the secret ten on the subject, and in hundreds of TED Rodin decided to misbehave and create a canvas, they are appalled and shocked. All lectures, inspired thinkers reveal their secrets revolutionary work of his own: rather than they see is an indecipherable jumble of for creative success. Despite this flood of con- producing a realistic physical likeness of his strange lines and paint. As they stare in hor- temporary advice, my favorite insight on cre- subject, he broke with the sculptural tradi- ror at the work, they mock the older artist ativity goes back over 100 years to the Irish tions of the past and created a semiabstract and conclude that their celebrated hero has playwright and wit Oscar Wilde, who famously figure in which only Balzac’s head remains gone mad. Realizing his failure, Frenhofer proclaimed that “a writer is someone who has visible, with the rest of his body wrapped in abruptly bids farewell to his two friends, taught his mind to misbehave”—an assertion the dressing gown that he wore when writ- burns his painting and mysteriously dies that can be applied to most creative individuals. ing (Fig. 1). Monument to Balzac, completed during the night. The tragedy of Frenhofer— One of the virtues of a misbehaving mind is in 1898, is considered the first truly modern and the brilliance of Balzac—is that the fic- its ability to spot the next big thing— whether sculpture1. tional artist had created the first abstract it be in art or in science. A great example of a Like Balzac’s The Human Comedy, Rodin’s painting, inventing abstract expressionism famous literary figure who passed the Oscar Balzac has stood the test of time. One of the 125 years before Jackson Pollock. Wilde ‘misbehavior test’ with flying colors best descriptions of Rodin’s sculpture is by the is the nineteenth-century novelist Honoré Belgian critic André Fontainas: “Balzac stands Picasso’s response to Balzac’s Unknown de Balzac. In the 1830s, Balzac conceived the with his huge head thrown back, alert like a Masterpiece idea of writing a series of works that would wild animal, drinking in with eyes, nostrils The artistic crisis that Frenhofer faced in describe the sweep and panorama of French and lips and scenting the fever of the human Balzac’s story exerted a profound effect on society in all its splendor and squalor, from the comedy”2. Bronze casts of Balzac are dis- Cezanne, Matisse and Picasso—all three of highest aristocrats and politicians to the low- played in virtually every major museum glob- whom were artists of genius whose master- est swindlers and prostitutes. Over a 16-year ally, and it is one of the most viewed museum piece paintings were so far ahead of their time period, he published a total of 91 novels and sculptures in the world. that few of their contemporaries could recog- short stories, and shortly before his death in nize them as such. Picasso passionately identi- 1850 he organized his 91 works into a multi- Balzac’s Unknown Masterpiece fied with Frenhofer’s failed quest for artistic volume collection that he titled The Human One of Balzac’s most celebrated and intrigu- perfection. In 1931, he produced 13 etchings Comedy. Balzac chose this title to contrast ing stories, The Unknown Masterpiece to be included in the hundredth-anniversary it with Dante’s The Divine Comedy, which (Le Chef-d’oeuvre inconnu), first published reprint of Balzac’s The Unknown Masterpiece. portrayed Hell, Purgatory and Heaven and in 1831 and later integrated into The Human These etchings deal with the theme of the art- had nothing to say about the realism of the Comedy, deals with the subject of creativity ist working with his model. Like Frenhofer’s earthly life that Balzac presented. The Human at its most fundamental level; it tells the tale abstract painting, Picasso’s drawings were Comedy contained many astute insights into of an artist ahead of his time3. The story is kept a closely guarded secret, and when they human behavior. One of the most original and set in seventeenth-century Paris in a studio first appeared in the centenary book, some of popular—and a prime example of his misbe- located at 7 Rue des Grands-Augustins in them looked like a mass of lines and smudges havior—was his discussion about how certain the 6th arrondissement. The plot is simple. of ink, such as the one in Figure 2. The jumble people get ahead in life through advantageous A famous aging artist, named Frenhofer, is of lines here was typical of Picasso’s misbehav- marriages rather than hard work. obsessed with finishing a painting that he ing. Did the morass of lines represent the yarn has been secretly working on for ten years of wool in the model’s hand, or was it meant Rodin’s response to Balzac and one that he claims will be his master- to be Frenhofer’s abstract painting? Today, Fifty years after Balzac’s death, the French piece—a painting that portrays a beautiful Picasso’s 13 Balzac etchings are considered government commissioned Auguste Rodin nude woman with such brilliance and artis- landmarks in the history of engraving. NATURE MEDICINE VOLUME 20 | NUMBER 10 | OCTOBER 2014 iii FOREWORD perfection, and the National Gallery’s invita- Titian represents Frenhofer, and Poussin and tion would provide him a unique opportunity Courbet represent Frenhofer’s two younger to bring his ideas on this work to fruition. artist friends; all three were scanned digitally A brief background on Richard Hamilton from reproductions of their well-known self- will help those not familiar with his career to portraits. The three artists are absorbed in appreciate how he responded to The Unknown deep thought, perplexed by the mysterious Masterpiece. Hamilton is one of the most sensuality of the nude in front of them. A influential British artists of the twentieth notable feature of the montage is the empty century. He is widely regarded as the founder easel that is centrally placed between Poussin of the Pop Art movement in the 1950s; his and Courbet. This H-shaped easel is identical work predates that of Andy Warhol and Roy to the one that Hamilton used in his studio Lichtenstein by several years. One of his and may be meant to represent the specter of early iconic works was a 1956 collage titled Hamilton himself. Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So The reclining nude is perfectly shaped, but Different, So Appealing?, in which he used she appears unreal in her glossy skin: digi- images cut from mass-circulation magazines. tally exact, but artistically artificial. Days after The collage depicts a contemporary Adam and completing his digital montage, Hamilton Eve: a muscleman holding a giant lollipop and died on the eve of his ninetieth birthday. a nude woman on a sofa with a lampshade on His original intention was to use the digital her head are enjoying their living room filled montage as a guide for creating an authen- with all sorts of new consumables, including tic oil painting, which he believed would a television, a vacuum cleaner and a canned achieve Frenhofer’s ideal of living purity that ham on the coffee table. is missing in Hamilton’s pixilated version. As According to the art critic John Russell, fate would have it, Hamilton’s ‘masterpiece’, with this collage Hamilton “single-handedly like that of Frenhofer, will forever remain an laid down the terms within which Pop Art was unknown masterpiece—a bittersweet irony Figure 1 Auguste Rodin, Monument to Balzac. to operate”4. In fact, the first time the word if ever there was one. The empty H-shaped 1897–1898. Bronze. Height, 9 feet, 3 inches. ‘pop’ ever appeared in a painting was when it easel in the digital montage now takes on an Museum of Modern Art, New York. was emblazoned on the lollipop at the center eerie meaning that the misbehaving mind of of Hamilton’s collage. Hamilton may or may not have intended. We Picasso was so haunted by the ghost of If anyone had a misbehaving mind in the will never know. Balzac and by the tragedy of Frenhofer that Oscar Wilde sense, it was Richard Hamilton— in 1937 he moved his studio to a townhouse he was the epitome of British pluck and pro- Spotting the next big thing located at 7 Rue des Grands-Augustins, the found originality. Over a 60-year career, he The misbehaving minds of Balzac, Rodin, exact same building in which The Unknown innovated, experimented and reinvented Picasso, Hamilton and Balzac’s Frenhofer Masterpiece was set 100 years earlier. Soon himself, spotting the next big thing in art endowed each of them with the uncanny abil- after Picasso moved into his new studio, before any of his contemporaries. At age 80, ity to spot the next big thing before anyone German warplanes bombed the Spanish Hamilton taught himself computer graph- else.
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