Steven Levine on Facebook yesterday, contemplating Poussin’s The Adoration of the Golden Calf (1633-34) at the National Gallery in London:
(#1) [SL:] Those golden idol worshipping Israelites were pretty hot. I didn’t learn this in Hebrew school
Note: Poussin’s canvases are mostly huge — far too large to be appreciated properly in reproductions like the ones I’m giving you — and sprawling, crowded with characters (voluptuous women and studly men plus, where appropriate, adorable cherubs) in motion in an assortment of encounters, the whole scene illustrating some biblical or mythological theme, set in a wild natural landscape under a dramatic sky. (The celebration of the picturesque famously characterizes the Romantic movement in the arts, but in Poussin it flourished in the Baroque.)
Now: notes on Poussin; then on his religious painting on the Golden Calf theme in #1; then on to a mythological painting, Acis and Galatea; to a mythological painting in which six different encounters on a single theme (metamorphosis into a flower) are gathered together: The Empire of Flora; and, finally, to a mythological painting focused on sheer physicality: Bacchanale.
Then I will digress to Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party, evoked for me by Poussin’s character-packed canvases. Then from Poussin’s surname, I drift to the tasty French dish poussin, and from this young chicken (typically roasted), I drift further to other chickens, young men considered as desirable sexual objects. Which brings us back to those steamy Israelites worshipping the Golden Calf. It’s the curse — or gift — of the associative mind.
