DOI article:
Clegg, Elizabeth: "The white doors" and "the glass roof": the interiors of Hammershøi and Spilliaert: Musée d'Orsay, Paris 17 XI 1997-1 III 1998, Musée-Galerie de la Seita Paris 18 XII 1997-28 II 1998
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.48915#0241
236
Elizabeth Clegg
1. Yilhelm Hammersh0i, “The White Doors”
(sometimes exhibited as “The Open Doors”),
ca. 1905. OH on canvas, 52 x 60 cm.
Davids Samling, Copenhagen
1. Vilhelm Hammershpi, ,,Białe Drzwi”
(wystawiane także jako „Otwarte Drzwi”), około 1905.
Ol., pł., 52 x 60 cm. Davids Samling, Kopenhaga
meaningful subjects. Of greatest importance to
Hammershpi was the apartment on the first floor
at 30 Strandgade, a 17th-century house with interiors
remodelled in the late 18th century, where he lived with
his wife Ida from 1898 to 1909. Recorded in around 60
canvases, this became the dominant subject, of his
oeuvre (ill. 1). The equivalent in Spilliaerfs case was
the home he shared with his parents, at 2 rue de la
Chapelle, where the bottles and mirrors, emblems of his
father’s professions (parfumeur to the court of Leopold
II and high-class coiffeur), insisted on the seductive and
deceptive ąualities of both reflection and transparency.
Above all in the period 1904-9 these were to assume as
crucial a role in Spilliaerfs alarmingly spectral self-
portraits as in his disorienting interiors (ill. 2).
Even taking account of such similarities, however,
attention to the distinguishing characteristics of the
interiors of Hammershpi and Spilliaert soon leaves one
rather astonished that they should ever have been
considered comparable. Somewhat ironically, the
aspects of Hammersh0i’s work emphasized by this
exercise have much morę in common with the ąualities
noted or acclaimed by his first foreign supporters (nonę
of whbm was aware of Spilliaert) than with those most
enthusiastically invoked in International commentary
today.
Hammershpfs interiors are famously devoid of full-
blooded human presence (the addition of a markedly
static seated or standing back-view female figurę, posed
by Ida, invariably appears motivated as much by formal
as by sentimental or narrative reąuirements). For their
period, moreover, they are, improbably, sparsely
furnished and, on some occasions - notably in The
White Doors (ill. 1) and in the series of window pictures
started in 1900 - they are altogether emptied of
furniture or other transportable objects.
While Spilliaert himself is usually the only human
figurę to appear now and again in his own interiors, the
objects that freąuently clutter them prove to have an
inconveniently vigorous life of their own: they are as
different in this respect as can be imagined from the
long-tamed chairs, sofas and sideboards or the recurrent
favourite punch bowl so precisely posed by
Hammershpi. In Spilliaerfs interiors we often have the
impression that the artist has relinąuished any such
control: seemingly minor background details (above all
in the 2nd November pictures) emerge to disturb our
eąuanimity as we recognize their fateful significance;
the spikey leaves of potted plants intrude with an almost
malevolent unexpectedness at the edges of several
compositions; the indeterminate, seemingly organie
forms assumed by gilt mouldings shift and slither in the
subdued light; and, everywhere, mirrors (conspicuously
absent from Hammershpfs painted world) prompt us to
doubt and revise our first assumptions regarding the
placing and interrelation of walls, Windows, lamps and
yet other mirrors (ill. 2).
While Spilliaerfs interiors invariably contain so
much morę than those of Hammershpi, not least in terms
of sheer psychic energy, they paradoxically seem to
occupy very much less real space. Hammershpfs
insistence on the position of each room, or seąuence of
these, within the overall architectural structure ensures
that we imaginatively enter his pictures as stable,
emphatically three-dimensional entities. This is perhaps
the defining characteristic of The White Doors (ill. 1) -
which, significantly, has acąuired the alternative, morę
symbolic title The Open Doors - with its passage from
one side of the house (lit by Windows looking on to
Strandgade) to the sunnier far side (overlooking the
inner courtyard).
In the single Open Door to be found in the Spilliaert
exhibition, a charcoal drawing of ca. 1904, we are
altogether deterred from imaginatively progressing into
the dark space beyond, which remains as uncertain in its
proportions as in its contents. Uncertainty, however,
pervades even the most sharply delineated of
Spilliaerfs interiors. As epitomized in the very title
of The Glass Roof (ill. 2), the architectural aspect of
Spilliaerfs subjects often attains a perilous degree
of self-contradiction. Deft cropping here ensures an
emphasis on the skylight that is as oppressive as
Hammershpi’s focus on the alignment of his
floorboards (ill. 1) is beckoning. The manifest
lifelessness of the illumination entering Spilliaerfs
gloomy chamber and the distracting view of the grey
faęades soaring above it reveal as doubly impractical
a feature already imbued with inappropriate fragility.
Elizabeth Clegg
1. Yilhelm Hammersh0i, “The White Doors”
(sometimes exhibited as “The Open Doors”),
ca. 1905. OH on canvas, 52 x 60 cm.
Davids Samling, Copenhagen
1. Vilhelm Hammershpi, ,,Białe Drzwi”
(wystawiane także jako „Otwarte Drzwi”), około 1905.
Ol., pł., 52 x 60 cm. Davids Samling, Kopenhaga
meaningful subjects. Of greatest importance to
Hammershpi was the apartment on the first floor
at 30 Strandgade, a 17th-century house with interiors
remodelled in the late 18th century, where he lived with
his wife Ida from 1898 to 1909. Recorded in around 60
canvases, this became the dominant subject, of his
oeuvre (ill. 1). The equivalent in Spilliaerfs case was
the home he shared with his parents, at 2 rue de la
Chapelle, where the bottles and mirrors, emblems of his
father’s professions (parfumeur to the court of Leopold
II and high-class coiffeur), insisted on the seductive and
deceptive ąualities of both reflection and transparency.
Above all in the period 1904-9 these were to assume as
crucial a role in Spilliaerfs alarmingly spectral self-
portraits as in his disorienting interiors (ill. 2).
Even taking account of such similarities, however,
attention to the distinguishing characteristics of the
interiors of Hammershpi and Spilliaert soon leaves one
rather astonished that they should ever have been
considered comparable. Somewhat ironically, the
aspects of Hammersh0i’s work emphasized by this
exercise have much morę in common with the ąualities
noted or acclaimed by his first foreign supporters (nonę
of whbm was aware of Spilliaert) than with those most
enthusiastically invoked in International commentary
today.
Hammershpfs interiors are famously devoid of full-
blooded human presence (the addition of a markedly
static seated or standing back-view female figurę, posed
by Ida, invariably appears motivated as much by formal
as by sentimental or narrative reąuirements). For their
period, moreover, they are, improbably, sparsely
furnished and, on some occasions - notably in The
White Doors (ill. 1) and in the series of window pictures
started in 1900 - they are altogether emptied of
furniture or other transportable objects.
While Spilliaert himself is usually the only human
figurę to appear now and again in his own interiors, the
objects that freąuently clutter them prove to have an
inconveniently vigorous life of their own: they are as
different in this respect as can be imagined from the
long-tamed chairs, sofas and sideboards or the recurrent
favourite punch bowl so precisely posed by
Hammershpi. In Spilliaerfs interiors we often have the
impression that the artist has relinąuished any such
control: seemingly minor background details (above all
in the 2nd November pictures) emerge to disturb our
eąuanimity as we recognize their fateful significance;
the spikey leaves of potted plants intrude with an almost
malevolent unexpectedness at the edges of several
compositions; the indeterminate, seemingly organie
forms assumed by gilt mouldings shift and slither in the
subdued light; and, everywhere, mirrors (conspicuously
absent from Hammershpfs painted world) prompt us to
doubt and revise our first assumptions regarding the
placing and interrelation of walls, Windows, lamps and
yet other mirrors (ill. 2).
While Spilliaerfs interiors invariably contain so
much morę than those of Hammershpi, not least in terms
of sheer psychic energy, they paradoxically seem to
occupy very much less real space. Hammershpfs
insistence on the position of each room, or seąuence of
these, within the overall architectural structure ensures
that we imaginatively enter his pictures as stable,
emphatically three-dimensional entities. This is perhaps
the defining characteristic of The White Doors (ill. 1) -
which, significantly, has acąuired the alternative, morę
symbolic title The Open Doors - with its passage from
one side of the house (lit by Windows looking on to
Strandgade) to the sunnier far side (overlooking the
inner courtyard).
In the single Open Door to be found in the Spilliaert
exhibition, a charcoal drawing of ca. 1904, we are
altogether deterred from imaginatively progressing into
the dark space beyond, which remains as uncertain in its
proportions as in its contents. Uncertainty, however,
pervades even the most sharply delineated of
Spilliaerfs interiors. As epitomized in the very title
of The Glass Roof (ill. 2), the architectural aspect of
Spilliaerfs subjects often attains a perilous degree
of self-contradiction. Deft cropping here ensures an
emphasis on the skylight that is as oppressive as
Hammershpi’s focus on the alignment of his
floorboards (ill. 1) is beckoning. The manifest
lifelessness of the illumination entering Spilliaerfs
gloomy chamber and the distracting view of the grey
faęades soaring above it reveal as doubly impractical
a feature already imbued with inappropriate fragility.