Rembrandt,Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer
Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY
portraying an inner meaning
The idea of rhetoric is that an orator speaks in public to an audience, but with Rembrandt one does not sense that the painting is a highly public statement. When John Stuart Mill wrote in the early 19th century that "eloquence is to be heard, poetry is to be overheard", he might almost have had Rembrandt's paintings in mind. We seem to happen upon an event and eavesdrop a little, observing something private and confidential. The painting has long carried a title that identifies the bearded man in floppy hat with gold chain slung from shoulder to hip, as the Greek philosopher Artistotle, who greatly admired the blind poet Homer. The face on the medallion hanging from his chain is Alexander the Great, Aristotle most famous pupil.
excerpted from Baroque & Rococo, Vernon Hyde Minor
I was first drawn to this painting because of the mystical dialogue between the eyes of Aristotle and the un-seeing Homer. Not to mention the fact that the painting was wrong in every sense of the word, with Aristotle in an ostentatious outfit and gaudy gold chain around him. Undoubtedly, Rembrandt was projecting himself in the image of Aristotle; if Aristotle was the philosopher-teacher who lost the favour of Alexander the Great, Rembrandt was the artist who was estranged from his patrons and contemporaries by the time he painted this.
I've a friend who believes all films are just a selfish production of directors, but i believe the beauty of art laid in the very roots of self absorption in a private world projected to a larger existence, be it films, paintings, writings, sculptures. Art has always been a private love affair of the artist and his creation, and great works of art merely love affairs made public.If you watch a romantic movie and swoon, you are but a voyeur in the literal sense, caught up in the romance that is of someone else's concotion, but it is art, because it appeals to universal emotions that cut across time, space and era. And this painting does precisely that, except that the time, space and era has been laid out literally, so in-your-face that anyone who knows Aristotle, Homer and Alexander will be amused.