A Challenge to Zeuxis
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| A Challenge to Zeuxis 1989 |
It has been 3/4 of a year since I posted. It has been a difficult year. But now I can get back to it. I am on a sabbatical, doing research full time for a year. And getting unfinished projects done, one of which is scanning old slides before they fade away. This painting was among them. Yes, it's a painting, not a box. I did a number of boxes full of stuff for my MFA thesis show back in '83. They are stretched canvas on box-shaped frames that I designed and built myself. The frame is carved so the canvas has room to get out of the way and the edges down the deep sides are done in a blind appliqué stitch, so there are no lumps. I then paint the 'box' complete with dents and tears, scribbling, stamps, tape, or whatever has been added to the box since it left the box factory. Whatever it has endured in its supposedly ephemeral life is carefully recorded, along with, of course, the printed advertisements of its original function as a shipping box of some commodity. By 1989 I had given up doing them, but this one attracted my eye because it came from China and I find Chinese characters interesting. (Since then, I have done a year's course in Mandarin.) The characters adorn the box like a traditional Chinese painting, which would also have marks added from later ownership.
I also was attracted to the colors and the fact that it was grapes. In Pliny the Elder's Natural History from the 1st century C.E. there are anecdotes of the painter Zeuxis who painted a still-life of grapes so realistically that whenever it was set outside birds came and pecked at them. One day his friend the painter Parrhasios challenged Zeuxis to a contest to see who could paint the best illusion. Zeuxis put out his painting of grapes and the birds came and pecked at them. So then Zeuxis looked over at Parrhasios's painting, which had a cloth covering most of it, and said to him 'take off the cloth and let's see yours.' Parrhasios answered to Zeuxis 'you may uncover it.' Zeuxis walked over and reached out to remove the cloth, only to find that it was a painted illusion of a cloth. So, the ancient story goes, Parrhasios won because Zeuxis fooled the birds but Parrhasios fooled a person who should know better.
Of course we now know that it is much easier to fool a person than an animal. Our brains are set up to be fooled. Most animals, birds included, cannot read flat images, including reflections, and that's why they fly into windows and break their little necks. My boxes fooled a lot of people, who would then ask why I wasted time painting on a cardboard box when it will just disintegrate after a while. I would then pick up the box and show them that it was a stretched canvas. Some would scream at the sight, because they had been fooled right up to then even a few inches away. The real surprise is that up close they are quite painterly. Once when some were in a group show an irate viewer chewed the gallery director out for ruining the show by leaving boxes of junk in the middle of the floor. (They were on low stands about four inches off the floor.) The director had to pick some up and show the visitor the underside to convince them the boxes were part of the exhibit. People kick them, and poke them, and peak beneath. I had to give up painting them, however, because they take up space like sculpture, and the cats insist they are cat hammocks, which isn't good for the painting.
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