The Art of Martijn Caspar Swart: Making Light in the Dark
We all like a good tragic comedy. Think Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet, Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, or even Napoleon Dynamite; the characters are charming, bumbling, virtuous, and flawed. We see ourselves in them.
Tragicomedies are neither tragedies or comedies, but have elements of both. The tragic story may have comedy throughout to lighten the mood or it may be a serious drama with a happy ending. It is suffering and catharsis combined. The origins of the literary genre date back millennia, from ancient Greek tragedians such as Euripides and Homer.
Martijn Caspar Swart’s exhibition of narrative paintings Myths & Legends at Figure Ground Art Gallery in Seattle opening July 7 draws on the rich tradition of tragicomedy from the ancient Greeks, Roman poet Ovid, and Shakespeare. The stories in the paintings reference archetypal characters, their flaws, and their victories. There are characters in emotionally ambiguous states, often the bittersweet. They are timeless, classic, and relevant today. Centuries from now audiences will still pull meaning from these paintings.
Swart has a soft spot for Dionysus, the god of wine, harvest, fertility, ecstasy, festivity, and theatre who embraces the chaotic, rather than the Apollonian need for order and structure. Swart feels that we can better understand our own emotions and relationships with others through these stories of opposing characters.
One of the largest paintings in the exhibition is Bride of Bacchus (Bacchus is the Roman name for Dionysus). Ariadne, the princess from Crete, is abandoned by Theseus after she helps him get through the labyrinth to slay the Minotaur. She is left broken-hearted and stranded on the island of Naxos, but suddenly a procession of satyrs, maenads, nymphs, drunken demigods, and wild animals approaches. At the head of the assembly rides Dionysus; when they lock eyes it is love at first sight and soon they are wed.
As a gift to Ariadne, Dionysus places her royal crown in the heavens as the constellation Corona Borealis. This painting captures Ariadne in these conflicting states of heartbroken sorrow and ecstatic love. The story has two very different endings: in one telling she is praised on Mount Olympus and offered immortality among the gods, while in another she is killed by the goddess Artemis after the marriage goes badly. Swart gives us both; Ariadne caught in bittersweet limbo between love and loss, immortality and death.
Another large painting referencing the bittersweet is Hymn to Khloris, where we find the very pregnant Flora (Flora is the more commonly known Roman name for the Greek Khloris), goddess of Spring and fertility, seated in her temple, surrounded by admiring sunflowers. She will bear Zephyros’ son Karpos (meaning ‘Fruit’). Flora protects her pregnant belly with one hand, while the other reveals a key to Nature’s secrets. Nature runs in cycles, and so with birth must come death; we see the boatman Charon in the background, poised to ferry souls to the afterlife across the river. While celebrating the glory of Flora, this image is also a vanitas painting, representing the fleeting nature of life.
Swart’s painting style has developed over many years of study. He was born in the Hague in Holland and immigrated to the US at the age of six. While growing up he took every painting class he could and taught himself some, before moving to Seattle to study at Juliette Aristedes’ atelier. After that he spent a few months in Norway studying with the famed painter Odd Nerdrum, whose distinct style rubbed off on Swart. We can see something of Nerdrum in Flora’s face above.
Allegory of Painting and Poetry is a direct homage to Nerdrum, as the setting and pose are borrowed from a Nerdrum painting but the figures exemplify Swart’s own style. The personifications of Poetry and Painting lovingly embrace and intertwine. They portray how the two arts are inextricably linked; they confer and lean on one another, bringing light to a dark world.
Visitors to the gallery are greeted at the door by a dramatic painting of Cleopatra, the greatest queen of Egypt, who was immortalized by Shakespeare and a thousand others since her reign. Towards her end, Cleopatra indulged in a passionate love affair with Marc Antony, the rebellious Roman general. When the Roman army invaded Egypt Cleopatra heard rumors that Antony had committed suicide and immediately called for poisonous snakes to be smuggled to her in a basket of figs. As she put the death-dealing fangs to her breast, so too did her attendants. With her, the whole of the Egyptian empire would fall.
The most dramatic painting in the show is Prometheus Bound, another large and imposing depiction of Greek myth. Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to humans, a crime fitting a punishment worse than death. Prometheus was chained to a rock high up on a mountain top and every day a great eagle would swoop down and devour his liver as he lay naked and helpless. Every night the liver grew back and come morning the demon bird would return. Here Prometheus is writhing in eternal pain. Some stories find Heracles on his journeys coming up to the mountain top and freeing Prometheus from his punishment.
In some ways the life of an artist is like that of Prometheus; artists bring us light to an otherwise dark world. They open up our minds to possibilities and help reveal things we may never have seen before. They bring us culture, and we return the favour by rejecting their work, or worse, ignoring it. Yet the artist gets up again in the morning and keeps plugging away at a task that seems inane; hence the comedy in the tragedy.
So why do artists keep on? Why bother? Swart’s painting Tomorrow’s Pilgrim provides us with an answer: hope. It’s a self-portrait of the artist embarking on a journey, holding the light in what is otherwise dark and unknown. We humans struggle to find insight and meaning on our path to self-discovery. We seek to find identity, perhaps a destination that can never be reached, but there is hope.
Myths and Legends opens at Figure Ground Art Gallery in Pioneer Square Seattle on July 7th, 2022. Viewing by appointment during July. Purchases can also be made online in the gallery store.
Jen Brown is a narrative painter, curator, and art historian working in Portland, OR. She has a Master’s degree in Art History and a diploma in Curatorial Studies. Her work may be seen on her website, Instagram or on Medium (Artist Jen Brown). She writes daily about narrative painting on Instagram or at narrativepainting.net.
