BROWN STUDY OF THE BLUES
” … the most perfect synthesis of profound thought and poetic wistfulness is acheived when true humour is deepened by melancholy; or, to express it the opposite way, when true melancholy is transifgured by humour — when a man who at a superficial glance one would judge to be a comic, fashionable melancholic is really a melancholic in the tragic sense, save that he is wise enough to mock at his own Weltschmerz in public and thus to forge an armour for his sensitivity.” Klibansky, Panofsky and Saxl (1964) Saturn and Melancholy, p. 235.
Watteau’s Pierrot might be such an intertwining of melancholy and humour. Known also as the “Gilles,” Pierrot in the images of Watteau, become the iconic melancholic clown. In pantomines and at fêtes Pierrot represented a kind of ‘metaphysical melancholy,’ often with white face and red mouth, a caricature of a ‘happy’ face, veiling a sad visage. Pierrot-Watteau inspired the Romantic group of Théophile Gautier, Gérard de Nerval and Charles Baudelaire. Yet Pierrot-Watteau morphed in their hands, gradually changing to the more tragic figure of Pierrot-Lunaire - the pierrot of the moonlight. The mask began to give way to reveal a skull beneath … et in arcadia ego?
The melancholy clown is resurrected in Ugo Rondinone’s conceptual art. Like Pierrot, Rondinone uses the mask of the clown as both an antidote and a platform for melancholy. In her critique of Rondinone’s clown pieces, Christine Ross highlights how it is the ‘not being seen’ that becomes the hook for the role of the clown in art. This not being seen resonates, perhaps, with the psychasthenia of Roger Caillois?
