Caravaggio Archives - A Flash Of Darkness

On day 6 of our trip from Vancouver to Tijuana we awoke in San Francisco. From there we would continue down the coast to our stop for the night at Pismo Beach – a small city between San Francisco and LA. We started the day by not going to Lombard Street. I had seen it, and Ted was now a local, leaving only Nick wanting to drive on the crookedest street in the world. When quizzed Nick on how he keen he was to go, given the traffic was likely to be heavy, he seemed a little diffident, so we skipped it. As Nick started to complain about this omission, not visiting Lombard Street become one of the highlights of the trip for Ted and I.

After a brief visit to see Ted’s home and family in leafy Palo Alto, Ted took us to the best coffee shop in the area, the ZombieRunner Cafe & Running Store on South California Ave, just off El Camino Real. Close by was the dive bar he typically visits on a Friday night – Antonio’s Nut House (sadly now closed, and the last of its kind in the affluent city). In one corner is an animated ape in a cage, which Ted claimed never to have noticed before, despite his many visits.

Carmel-by-the-Sea

From Palo Alto we headed to Santa Cruz to pick up Highway 1, and in an hour from there we were in Carmel-by-the-Sea on the Monterey Peninsular. It is a beautiful town, and much loved by artists. There are around 100 galleries in Carmel, many of which can be found along one road – Ocean Avenue.

Our first stop was the Mission Ranch. This nineteenth century ranch was restored by the former Mayor of Carmel, Clint Eastwood, and is now a hotel and restaurant. We had planned to have lunch there, but finding the restaurant closed we headed to the old Spanish Mission of San Carlos Borromeo del río Carmelo.

The Mission

Carmel Mission was founded in 1770 and is one of the oldest of California’s 21 missions. These are all located on or near El Camino Real, a road named in honor of the Spanish monarchy which provided the finance for expeditions to California. It is also the only Spanish mission in California that has its original bell and bell tower.

It has been carefully restored and today it is both an active parish church and a museum. I was pleased to find a small statue and two paintings so beautifully lit in chiaroscuro fashion it would surely have found favour with Caravaggio, the orignal master of darkness and light. I took the shot shown here with my Leica Q, and was glad of its fast f1.7 lens, which operated in the gloom at only ISO 1,600 with the aperture wide open.

Being hungry by that time, we searched for somewhere to eat and were fortunate to come across to Tree House Cafe. Here you can dine on a combination of dishes from the Mediterranean, Greece and Thailand on a beautiful rooftop veranda.

Detour on Route 1

After lunch we got back onto route 1, eager to see Big Sur and to enjoy the views of the coast down to Pismo Beach. We stopped at the spectacular Bixby Canyon Bridge for me to take a few shots, though sadly the light was not great.

Just south of the bridge we found the road was closed due to a landslide. It was only then that we remembered that our friend James had mentioned landslides back in Portland, Sure enough, when we examined our much annotated map, James had routed us inland to avoid exactly what we were going to do next – drive all the way back up the Monterey Peninsular before taking Route 101 to avoid the landslide.

Unwilling to give up, Ted scoured the map for another route, and eventually came up with a small dotted line that crossed the mountains that separated coastal Route 1 from inland Route 101. Nick was skeptical of our Chevy Suburban’s off-road abilities, and we debated it for a while. I settled the matter by declaring the dotted line a goat track, and quite impassible. With the matter settled and no other options, we turned around and headed north. ‘Did I mention we need to be in Mexico by Friday?’ asked Ted once again.

On to Pismo Beach

With the detour it was dark when we arrived at Pismo Beach, once famed for an abundance of clams. Back in 1957 in an episode of Bugs Bunny, the eponymous rabbit and traveling companion Daffy Duck emerge from a tunnel, into what Bugs believed to be Pismo Beach with ‘all the clams we can eat.’ The clams are much diminished in numbers now, but there is still an annual festival in their honour, and the city claims to be the clam chowder capital of the world. A large clam statue at the southern end of Price Street ensures no visitor can miss the association.

The Pismo Beach Disaster

Soon after I returned to the UK from the trip I was watching the US crime drama Ray Donovan, when I was startled to hear Bunchy, Ray’s brother exclaim ‘Jesus, I moved my fucking family back from Pismo Beach for you, Ray!’ It’s also been mentioned in Futurama, Robot Chicken and the movie Clueless, which references the fictional Pismo Beach Disaster.

At night the back streets reminded me somewhat of Brighton in the UK – my second favourite seaside town after Deal, in Kent. We checked in at the very pleasant Inn by the Pier, and stopped for a quick pre dinner sharpener at the bar. Asking about the local hotspots our charming barmaid, Bobby, told us that wherever we went sooner or later we would end up at Harry’s. Everyone did. It sounded like destiny.

Dinner before Destiny

Not wishing to meet our destiny on an empty stomach we went for dinner at the nearby Oyster Loft at which we made a second enquiry about where we go for drinks afterwards. We were curious to be directed to the city of San Luis Obispo, some 20 minutes drive away. The courteous and professional staff there at the Oyster Loft also advised us that on no account should we visit Harry’s, which was 5 minutes walk away in Pismo Beach. I took a look at our options online; San Luis Obispo’s best known landmark appeared to be bubble gum alley – a narrow walkway with walls coated in used gum. In local news a female resident had just been sentenced to 8 years in jail for slashing her boyfriend’s throat with a box cutter. By way of contrast Harry’s Beach Bar and Night Club looked innocuous enough. We decided to go to Harry’s.

Death in Tijuana

Harry’s was not the worst bar I’ve ever been to by any stretch of the imagination, but I couldn’t recommend it. It was large and noisy and filled with older crowd whose careworn features and less than pristine dress gave the appearance that they had endured what we call in the UK ‘a hard paper round’. The charm that any good dive bar has was completely absent.

It was my round and I approached the bar. The woman next to me had drunk herself to the point of insensibility. She muttered to herself and swayed alarmingly on her stool so I moved to avoid a collision. A tall man to her right steadied her and started to take control of the situation, enquiring how she was going to get home and whether he could help her into a taxi. He seemed genuinely concerned and helpful. Surrounded by people who seemed likely to be considerably less noble than this, I silently gave thanks for his good citizenship.

I brought the round of beers to where Nick and Ted were standing. They had fallen in with a group that appeared less villainous that the rest of Harry’s guests and were discussing our forthcoming trip to Tijuana. ‘Don’t don’t do it man’, offered the largest person in the party, who was an ex US Marine. ‘Don’t go to Tijuana. I was there recently and I saw a man get kicked almost to death by school children’.

This alarming anecdote from an ex military type was only sightly worse than what we had heard all week. From Vancouver to Pismo Beach we were told that a trip to Tijuana meant we would almost certainly be robbed and were likely to encounter much worse – in this case a violent end at the hands of school children. This was to be the case until we reached San Diego and got some more balanced, first hand advice. Ted was phlegmatic about it. ‘As long as we remember the Spanish for help, we’ll be fine’ was his assessment.

Beyond Caravaggio

Beyond Caravaggio was the name of a Caravaggio inspired exhibition at the National Gallery exhibition in 2016 that examined the influence of one of art’s true originals, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610). Whilst the exhibition focused on his influence via the Caravaggisti and later painters, Caravaggio’s influence reaches well into to the present day; his use of everyday subjects and of dramatic lighting are cited as an influence on directors like Scorsese and Tarantino, photographers such as Nan Goldin and David LaChapelle and contemporary artists like Jenny Saville and Mat Collishaw.

For me, Caravaggio is a source of inspiration, directly through his work and indirectly through those he has influenced. One of the most important to me of those he has he influenced is Cindy Sherman, who is the subject of another exhibition inspired article on this site: Cindy Sherman – Star of the Films That Never Were. Sherman much admired Caravaggio’s ability to convey psychological depth in his subjects. She felt that “the interplay of light and shadow in his paintings resonates with the complex layers of identity that I seek to explore in my photographs.”

A Real Baroque and Roller

Caravaggio lived a short, turbulent life that was celebrated and notorious in equal measure. He was orphaned to the plague as a boy of six. At 11 he apprenticed in Milan but left in haste after wounding a police officer. At 21 he moved to Rome and gained fame with the success of his first public commissions, but he was regularly in court and jailed on several occasions. He was known for his drinking and whoring as well his brawling. His powerful supporters helped smooth things over with the authorities but there was only so much they could do to contain a man overflowing with violence. According to the German art historian Joachim von Sandrart (1606–88) Caravaggio spend his time in Rome “in the company of his young friends, mostly brash, swaggering fellows—painters and swordsmen—who lived by the motto nec spe, nec metu, ‘without hope, without fear.’” He was, as Time Out once noted, a real Baroque and Roller.

In 1606 he had a death sentence pronounced against him by the Pope after he killed a well known pimp in a knife fight. He spent the rest of his life on the run in fear of his life in Malta, Naples and Sicily. He slept in this clothes and always had his dagger to hand. His art, unsurprisingly, became darker and he was horribly mutilated by his enemies when they caught up with him in Naples in 1609. It is likely that they inflicted a sfregio (facial wound), as a visible sign of revenge. He died, still on the run, in 1610 aged 38.

Extreme Chiaroscuro

Pont del Bisbe Barcelona — Strongly contrasting light in Barcelona

Caravaggio’s technique is both distinctive and innovative. He is most famous for his dramatic use of light, an extreme variant of chiaroscuro, using dark shadows to produce strong contrasts between light and dark with an incredible tonal range. With this he captured form and added drama to his scenes in a way that no one before him had accomplished. The scenes he painted were spot lit from above; he once had a run in with a landlord for breaking a ceiling to let in light. It is so modern looking that David Hockney has referred to it as ‘Hollywood lighting’. There are claims by Italian researchers that his chiaroscuro is based on a form of photographic technique – the suggestion is that Caravaggio projecting the image of his subjects onto canvas using a lens and mirror and that he treated the canvas with a light-sensitive substance made from crushed fireflies, in order to fix the image. This hypothesis remains unproven.

A new kind of naturalism

Caravaggio combined dramatic lighting with a new kind of naturalism – painting people from the streets directly from life, and with incredible levels of often dirty hyper-realism created without drawing beforehand. He populated biblical scenes with prostitutes, beggars and thieves, bringing the sacred and the gutter together as he did so and polarising opinion. He also applied the same level of detail and realism to objects as to the people in his paintings. Great emphasis can be seen in the still life on the table in front of Christ at the ‘The Supper at Emmaus’ (1601), for example. It was this combination of dramatic lighting and realism that created the dramatic pictorial and narrative power he became renowned for.

My Favourite Caravaggio

The Taking of Christ is my favourite work by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio . Painted at the height of his fame, The Taking of Christ is a high contrast, dramatic treatment of the biblical story of betrayal. It is set in the dark space of the garden of Gethsemane, lit by the moon and by a lantern held by a figure who peers in from the edge of the scene. This is Caravaggio himself. The painting offers a flash bulb moment of three soldiers in black contemporary armour, their faces largely hidden, who have come with Judas to seize Christ – one of them grasping his throat with a mailed fist. The brutality of the soldiers is in contrast with the calm and meek Christ, who offers no resistance, whilst St. John the Evangelist flees in anguish. It is dense, mysterious and incredibly dramatic.

Favourites From His Followers

The London Beyond Caravaggio exhibition offered many delights from the Caravaggisti and later followers, but two works stood out for me. The first was Christ displaying his Wounds by Giovanni Antonio Galli (nicknamed Lo Spadarino because his father was a sword smith). This painting is as hyper real is it is strange. A pale Jesus, lit by light that appears to come from nowhere, and naked except for his shroud, holds the wound on this side apart with hands holed by nails. He makes direct eye contact with us with an expression that is full of accusation.

The second is the The Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew by Jusepe de Ribera. Saint Bartholomew’s executioner sharpens his knife in preparation of the flaying his about to perform – the knife and steel forming a symbolic cross. Bartholomew stretches out his arms to heaven, creating a powerful diagonal, his face lit by grace as well as light. The executioner’s expression is inscrutable, which makes the painting more disturbing.

Caravaggio’s Influence on Photography

Caravaggio’s influence on photography is evident in the works of photographers who sought to capture the same sense of drama and realism seen in his paintings. Another photographer I admire, Bill Brandt, known for the drama black-and-white images, acknowledged Caravaggio’s impact on his work, describing his use of light and shadow as “a revelation.” I feel exactly the same way.

Caravaggio’s influence on photography is not limited to his technique; his illumination of the gritty realities of life influenced photographers like Diane Arbus and Nan Goldin, who sought to capture the raw and unfiltered aspects of how we live.

Caravaggio and Film

Those who make moving pictures have also found inspiration in Caravaggio’s work. Filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino have both acknowledged Caravaggio’s influence. Scorsese, in particular, has frequently cited the painter’s use of light and shadow as a significant influence on his cinematography, saying, “Caravaggio’s paintings have a cinematic quality; they tell a story through visuals, and I’ve always been drawn to that narrative power.”

Caravaggio’s influence is not confined to directors; production designers and cinematographers also draw inspiration from his compositions. The interplay between light and shadow in Caravaggio’s paintings finds its counterpart in the carefully crafted lighting of films, creating a visual language that conveys emotion and enhances the story.

Caravaggio Around The World

Caravaggio’s masterpieces are dispersed throughout the world’s most renowned art institutions. Here’s a short list, including some the names of the most notable works: The Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy (Medusa); The Vatican Museums Pinacoteca, Vatican City (The Supper at Emmaus); The Borghese Gallery, Rome (David with the Head of Goliath); The Louvre, Paris (Death of the Virgin); The National Gallery, London (Supper at Emmaus – another version); The Metropolitan Museum, New York (The Musicians) and The Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg (Judith Beheading Holofernes). I’d like to see them all.

Tag: Caravaggio

From San Francisco to Pismo Beach