Whistler's "Nocturne: Blue and Gold"

Being so involved in the outdoors, I can really appreciate beauty on a visual level. Modern art seems to shy away from this obvious beauty as it isn’t quite as thought provoking or intellectual oriented. However, older artists such as James Whistler created art mainly for art’s sake.

James Whistler was a 19^th century artist whose primary craft was painting. One of his most popular pieces, “Nocturne: Blue and Gold,” is a part of his Nocturne series that focuses (content wise) on night time images of various landscapes. This particular image is of London surrounding the Thames River (Power).

Rachel Power in her Princeton Blog gives her interpretation of the painting’s meaning and Whistlers motivation for doing so. Her belief is that the main idea involving this painting is “bridging the gap between East and West” (Power) and unifying. This view, in my opinion, is a good educated deduction that contains a few imperfections.

Firstly Power begins by describing Whistler’s style of painting. She describes this painting as having a strong resemblance to the Japanese artist Heroshige’s woodblock prints. This similar oil on canvas style of painting leads Power to believe that Whistler intended the work to show and make a connection between western (English) and eastern (Japanese) cultures.

In comparison to Heroshige (one of his similar works given below) it is very apparent that both artists used the same medium for their paintings, a canvas with a strong grain (Shaolin Legacy).

As Power points out in their similarities, these artists also use similar colors. These are colors that don’t seem to clash but instead show harmony – a trait Whistler is trying to express between the two cultures. Similar also is both painting’s way for pulling attention away from objects (the bridge and the trees respectively) and drawing towards the "ground” that is between the faded objects. This also seems to follow the concept of unity as attention is not given to a certain part of the painting but the scene as a whole. Similar to the French artistic style of “nocturne” Whistler is attempting to show beauty plainly through harmonious composition.

One objective I do have to this reasoning concerns Whistler’s background as an artist. Whistler developed a very idealistic stance of creating “art for art’s sake;” meaning one just creates art for nothing besides its aesthetically pleasing function (not for religious/political/idealistic statements). This information seems to contradict what reasons Whistler may have made and what meaning (if an at all) he intended to bestow upon the painting. However, Whistler didn’t necessarily have to follow this policy rigorously and since the painting involves not just cultures but the beauty of each of them (painting styles/dwellings specifically); so Whistler is still fulfilling his role for appreciating art at its face, visual value (Wikipedia).

Power’s main argument is strongly supported by the painting’s composition, but I feel for her argument to be completely sound she needs to include at least some reference to Whistler’s idealistic beliefs on the aesthetics of painting.

Power, Rachel. “Bridging the Culture Gap: Retitling Whistler’s ‘Nocturnes.’” Impressionism & the Making of Modern Art. http://blogs.princeton.edu/wri152-3/rpower/

“Shaolin Legacy.” The Shaolin Society. http://www.shaolin-society.co.uk/shaolin_legacy/images/hiroshige.jpg

“James McNeill Whistler.” Wikipedia. 14 April 2007. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_McNeill_Whistler