Old Masters
 Thomas Dormandy
 (Associate Reviewer - Dr. Alma Bond)
 2001 New York University Press
  ISBN: 1852852909


Great Artists in Old Age -- Donatello, Titian, Hals, Turner, Renoir & Munch, & a surprisingly large number of artists lived to be over 75. Some of their finest & most distinctive works, including Michelangelo's last Pieta, Goya's Black paintings & Monet's Water Lilies were done in old age.

Whether experimenting with new approaches, adopting new techniques, responding to changed circumstances & debilities, or reacting to the approach of death, the intensity of the late work of many of the greatest artists is striking. Childhood genius has often been studied but, astonishingly, this is the first book to draw attention to a considerably more important artistic phenomenon. Old Masters establishes beyond doubt the frequency with which elderly painters & sculptors reached new heights in their 70s & 80s & suggests why & how they did so.

Associate Reviewer Dr. Bond writes:
Old Masters: Great Artists in Old Age by Thomas Dormandy, is a highly original book, which seems to have something for everyone. People who like biography, those interested in the lives of great artists, history buffs, individuals who are curious about biological aging, & those hardy souls who wish to learn how & why some people live longer than others, should find a storehouse of treasures in this book. The author, who is a physician specializing in biological aging as well as a successful artist, has written in a style easily read by intelligent lay readers. He also has a delightfully subtle sense of humor which added greatly to this reader's pleasure.

The major portion of the book, goes deeply into the lives, loves, & work of 10 artists, in order to understand the source of their late-life creativity. Since the meaning of “old” is elusive & often changes according to period & place, the author included only long-lived artists of the first rank, who died no younger than the age of 75. He has excluded artists who were still alive, & those who died after 1955.

Each biography is a tour de force, & when read in conjunction with the works of the various artists on the Internet, a visual as well as an intellectual treat. The author takes us through the lives & productivity of each artist, & demonstrates how his work had changed & grown in his later years.

Perhaps the words of Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849), a Japanese artist known mostly for his magnificent “Views of Fuji,” will best explain the philosophy of this book. “Although I had produced numerous designs by my 50th year, none of my work done before my 70th is really worth counting. At the age of 73 I have come to understand the true forms of animals, insects and fish and the nature of plants and trees. Consequently, by the age of 86 I will have made more and more progress, and at 90 I will have got significantly closer to the essence of art. At the age of 100 I will have reached a magnificent level and at 110 each dot and each line will be alive.” He also wrote, “If Heaven will grant me but 10 more years, I promise to be a truly great artist. I have only just learnt how to hold a brush properly. Even with 5 more years...” Perhaps it was Hokusai's will to live & grow that accounted in part for the fact that he alone of all the artists in this book, lived to the age of 89.

Jacopo Robusti Tintoretto (1518-1594) seems to have had other factors that accounted for his remarkable creativity in old age. He was the last in a line of long-lived artists whose lives spanned 160 years, the golden age of Venetian art. In contrast to the stereotype of an artist who has to starve in a garret in order to be able to paint, he had a long & happy marriage, & was a devout Christian with a regularly paid stipend.

An astute businessman, he also was supremely confident of his talents. With him, carnal pleasures abounded as seen in his “Last Supper” which was not a frugal, take-away meal in the tradition of Leonardo da Vinci's dull painting in an institutional dining-hall. “The foreground is a riot. A sideboard groans under dishes which suggest a banquet. Male and female servants scurry around. Dogs sniff at baskets of food. Bottles of wine stand in readiness on the marble-tiled floor. The Apostles sit, stand, pray, exclaim in wonderment and recoil overcome with emotion. Christ stands two-thirds up the table just off-centre, a diminutive figure compared to the bulk of the servant attending to a gigantic tureen...The profanity of the setting only serves to intensify the mystery of the sacrament.”

Another artist who loved the good life was Frans Hals (1580-1666). “His unblended brush strokes and his slapdash execution, clear reflections of a wanton and feckless character” were regularly held up as warnings to students. Nevertheless, his “feckless character” didn't seem to hurt his art, nor cut short his long & successful life. According to Dormandy: “No great painter ever took such obvious delight in his artistry or displayed his skill with such swank. Hals wielded a cheerful brush,” & in his old age his brush did not fumble, nor did he lose any of his sureness of touch.

Although the Hals industry had been in full swing for a century, it took President Eisenhower to catapult Hals into one of the most popular painters ever. When the president was discovered by an enterprising Washington Post journalist to be painting “The Laughing Cavalier” by numbers, it triggered off the biggest painting boom in history.

Francisco Goya (1746-1828) is known as a “painters' painter,” He remains the most liberating artist of the modern age, as well as a great purveyor of horror. He was 75 when he painted a battle scene entitled “3 May 1808” which once seen, can never be forgotten. Military force has always been represented by stylized repetition, in contrast to the disorderly huddle of the victims. In Goya's painting, “the victors are perfectly aligned, totally disciplined, without a flicker of individual human interest -- and deadly. The victims lie about like sacks of rubbish, defeated and futile.” But not, in Goya's incandescent vision, completely futile. The death of the man whose white shirt ignites the scene is both a crucifixion & a resurrection. The message is not specifically Christian or even religious. “It is a universal affirmation of the ultimate triumph of the individual against all the odds over dehumanized evil.” In the light of the Terrorist attacks on the United States, this painting should be imprinted in the minds of every American.

One painter who did not come into his own until old age was Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825). He had always been preoccupied with public duties, with exacting masters to please, & historic moments to commemorate. In the exile of his last years, he found himself with no sermons to preach. To his surprise, this came as a great relief. “I had a good summer,” he wrote his son. “I enjoyed painting.” He had never used colors & graceful lines to better effect.

What makes the paintings of his old age an inspiration is the sense of inner conviction they portray. An artist can paint well only what he feels. What David understood & painted only in his old age were the simple emotions of the sadness of parting, young love, the joys of a happy marriage, the bliss of young motherhood, as well as the pleasures of casual conquest. To dramatize these truthfully requires as much artistry as the portrayal of heroic virtue. This great truth did not dawn on David until he reached his senior years.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) was another artist in love with life, who had a wonderfully happy marriage. Although he was already crippled at 60 by a painful & relentlessly progressing illness, he continued to grow in his work & in his life.

Perhaps the secret of his phenomenal success is that he had no ideological hang-ups, & refused to adjust his style of life & painting to suit his dealers. Despite being a physical burden on those around him, he engendered deep love in them. It was not until his final years that he completely fulfilled himself, as he created a different world that was entirely his own.

Another late starter was Aristide Maillol (1861-1944) who exhibited his first important sculpture when he was 41. He was 73 when he met Dina Vierny, a young woman of “untamed and yet well-bred beauty.” He understood immediately that at last he had found his ideal of feminine beauty. She then became the model for his last & greatest creations. He died at a decade later.

Dormandy comments that one does not usually consider the death of an 83 year-old artist as “untimely,” but Maillol in his last sculptures seemed to be on the threshold of a new & exciting phase.

Although Edvard Munch (1863-1944) was known for his genius in expressing repressed sexuality & deep psychological insights he coped with a new ghost, that of growing old, differently from his peers. As in earlier periods of his life, Munch handled his fears by painting them.

In his senior years he created masterpieces which documented the loneliness of old age. His self portrait: “Between Bed and Clock,” shows the artist confronting his last ghost, only a slight bowing of the trouser legs is an instant marker of old age. Yet who but Munch would have thought of painting it? Departing life is part of the human condition, Munch shows us that hemmed in as we are between the clock & the bed, we have no choice.

Dormandy gives many reasons why creativity flourishes during the old age of artists: more free time to create, improved financial conditions, the pressure of the fleeting moment, the sense of liberation that comes to many great artists in their last decades, & the commitment to truth. But most of all, he believes that old age brings about a slow & mysterious realignment of inner forces which he calls “the mainsprings of creation,” & because they are difficult to trace & impossible to quantify, they are usually ignored. Dormandy says it is these unknown forces that are more important in the lives of most long-lived artists than all the external circumstances put together.

More from Thomas Dormandy: The White Death: A History of Tuberculosis which was shortlisted for the Aventis Prize. He was also eInterviewed by The Editor. Thomas Dormandy has written over 200 scientific papers & books, & recipient of numerous scientific & medical honours. The mechanism of biological aging has been one of his main research interests. He has also had several successful one-man exhibitions of his art.
(10/28/01)

Dr. Alma Bond
2001©Alma Bond
A RebeccasReads.Com Sr. Associate Reviewer

A RebeccasReads author featured in Authors & Books

Reviewer's Bio:
Dr. Alma Halbert Bond is the author of ten published books, including:
The Deadly Jigsaw Puzzle;
The Tree That Could Fly;
Tales Of Psychology (2004);
I Married Dr. Jekyll And Woke Up Mrs. Hyde (2000);
The Autobiography Of Maria Callas, A Novel (1998);
On Becoming A Grandparent: A Diary of Family Discovery (1994);
Who Killed Virginia Woolf? A Psychobiography (1998);
Profiles of Key West (1996).

She recently recorded her new manuscript, Old Age Is A Terminal Illness, as an audio book.

She is also the author of a just published children's picture book called The Tree That Could Fly.

Dr. Bond teaches Psychology & Writing online at WriterSchool.