In 1778, at the end of a long career as writer, critic and political
activist, Voltaire was portrayed by the sculptor Houdon. Enthroned on a
simple but elegantly decorated chair, Voltaire personifies the eighteenth
century as the age of Enlightenment. With a quizzical smile and penetrating
gaze, the image radiates skepticism and common sense. We see a venerable
elder, free from irrational fears, superstitions and passions, whose flowing
robes equate him with the philosophers of Greek and Roman antiquity.
Yet if this image can be used to typify eighteenth-century enlightenment, so can another famous portrait from the very end of the century. Goya’s The Sleep of Reason produces Monsters seems like the antithesis of Houdon’s sculpture; instead of meeting our eyes this man buries his face in his arms, while owls, bats and a staring lynx suggest the irrational visions that trouble his sleep. But it would be wrong to see him as Voltaire’s opposite – his reason may be asleep at the moment, but when he wakes he will take up the crayon that one of the owls is offering him and use reason to encompass the irrational by portraying it, for this is the artist Goya himself. Fantasy, whether in the form of irrationality or creative imagination, is as much a part of the eighteenth century as reason. Voltaire himself was a far more complex and passionate individual than the calm sage portrayed by Houdon. Again and again in the art of the century we see reason and fantasy, common sense and folly, order and disorder confronting one another. The complexities and contradictions of the eighteenth-century spirit will be explored this spring in the exhibition Reason and Fantasy in an Age of Enlightenment. In an image from Hogarth’s Harlot’s Progress, scientific progress is represented by a pair of quack physicians, quarrelling over the merits of their prescriptions while the patient dies. In Piranesi’s view of the Palazzo Barberini a grand Roman palace is rendered with crystalline precision, but it is surrounded by urban squalor: straggling trees, architectural trash (admittedly trash on the grand scale, including a shattered Egyptian obelisk) and human beggars and vagabonds. During the fall semester of 2001 a graduate seminar directed by Professor Mary Sheriff of the UNC-CH Art Department studied eighteenth-century art, with special reference to the Museum’s collection and this exhibition. Their research included such topics as grotesque and arabesque motifs in ornament design, the different forms of illusion created by artists and by actors, expressiveness in figures when the face is invisible, and the response of European artists to the art of other cultures. The 2002 meeting of the Southeastern American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, which will take place at the University from February 28 through March 3, also provided a welcome stimulus for the current exhibition. Fifteen examples of eighteenth-century painting and sculpture are on permanent display in the Museum galleries, but the timing of this meeting and the exhibition gave an opportunity to show off the hidden riches of the Museum’s eighteenth-century holdings, much of which is in the form of prints and drawings. The Museum’s collection has been enriched by a number of recent purchases made with the exhibition in mind, and will be supplemented by a group of illustrated books from the University’s Rare Book Collection. Timothy Riggs |
