Famous paintings shaped by the concept of time

Painting, an object ontologically fixed in the present, is surprisingly haunted by the issue of time: it is the irremediably passing nature of the moment which gives it its duration. With seriousness, the old Titien represents himself as a man of the past in the Allegory of Prudence: a triple portrait of humans and animals explained by the terms: “From the experience of the past, the present acts prudently, lest it spoil future actions”. The old man is associated with the past and the wolf who devours memory. The future is represented by youth and a dog, loyal to what has been. In the centre is the present, a man rather concerned, illustrated in action by the lion. Despite the iconography which speaks volumes, we perhaps retain more the painting of Titien at the end of his life: on a green oil base, his brush marks the fabric with thick colours as if to illuminate fragile lighting, melting in perfectly with the subject.

In an anxious ambiance of yellowing cataclysm, pupil of Albrecht Dürer, Hans Baldung, delves us into the feeling of finiteness with the Three Ages of Man and Death. The child lies motionless, the young woman, full of vitality is crying: the old lady draws her toward her, already arm in arm with Death. The circular composition – always the same story – is laced in a landscape of desolation. A wonderful evil involves the user with a lengthy stare. On the only ray of sunshine of the painting, stricto sensu, lies rather comically a crucifix as a resolution to this macabre nightmare.

LIKE SOAP BUBBLES

Allegoric dead nature showing the vacuity of humans was very much in fashion in the 17th century. Vanity at the Tessé Museum in Le Mans, attributed to Philippe de Champaigne is a work of art in its genre dispute a simplistic symbolism: a tulip at the start of corruption, a skull, a sandglass. The intensity of the painting is hidden in the precision of its theme. The tulip, a fashionable and very expensive flower at the time, has a leaf falling towards the skull of which the colour is similar to that of the sand in the sandglass, underlining that it is destined to become dust. The background of the painting is dark like the abyss brining everything towards the front, just as the marginally included rough stone. The toothless skull gives the impression of falling on the spectator in a worrying mirror. It is painted at real-life scale. In a century of much more confident Enlightenment, Jean-François de Troy represents Time, Saturn and its scythe, as a friend who unveils the brilliant nudity of truth uncovering lies.

To the left of the painting are the four virtues: strength, placed on the lion, justice with the sword and scales, prudence and its snake, and temperance with a vase in hand. There is a feeling of allegory turning towards nothing. One year later, Chardin, at 35 years old, painted his first painting showing a human with a more incarnate meditation: a young man concentrated on making soap bubbles. Chardin made us feel the tragic conscience of the boy, absorbed in his delicate gesture so far as to forget the tear in his jacket, more so than the symbolism of the bubble.

COUNTING FROM 1 TO 35,327

The much famous drippings of Pollock may appear during meditation on time. With industrial paint strokes sliding to the end of a stick on a fabric placed on the ground, the swings, toing and froing and the hodge-podge of colours remain distinct. Out of a certain transparency, time is like a trace in the painting. On 6th August 2011, Franco-Polish conceptual artist Roman Opalka died at 79 years of age. For 46 years, he would show, using a 0 brush on a black fabric measuring 196 by 135 cm, the passing of time with a numerical countdown, 1, 2, 3… In his first painting of 1965, he counted from 1 to 35,327. In 1972, arriving at the million mark, he added 1% of white to the sombre background of each new painting. From 2008, he painted white on white. At the end of each day, he would take a photo of himself, always in the same situation, to show the ravages of time on a face which would stop counting at 5,569,249. A life, perhaps, more precisely vain and absurd.