I recently visited some art galleries in Paris, and it struck me how, in the work of artists, where the impressionists, realists or the romanticists, relationship issues were common subject matter for artists, including their own personal issues.
The French painter, Courbet, for example, of his painting The Wounded Man (1854), wrote (in a letter to his friend Champfleury), “My mind is very sad, my soul very empty, my liver and heart devoured by bitterness” Courbet painted The Wounded Man upon learning of the marriage of his former partner to another man. To do so, Courbet actually reworked a painting he had completed earlier, in 1844, and which showed him laying beneath a tree with his lover. The reworked The Wounded Man has his lover removed, and shows him, alone, under the same tree, and bearing a chest wound.
The same theme can be seen in Belgian painter, Alfred Stevens’ work, ‘The Break-Up Letter’ (1867), which shows an elegant young lady, withdrawing from a social event behind a wall, reflecting on the contents of a letter she had just received, and which she is seen holding at her side.
I reflected that this is not life imitating art, it is life captured in art. Anyone who has been through relationship trauma is walking around with a canvas, containing their own trauma, in their mind’s eye. For these artists, they found an outlet, on the canvas and in splashes of paint, for that pain and trauma.
So what does it mean for those of us going through a relationship breakdown? I think it means that trauma and pain needs an outlet. That outlet will be something different for everyone – some will write a diary or journal their experiences; some will ventilate it to a counsellor or therapist; and others will draw on their experience to create the ‘art’ of the future – poems, paintings, short stories, plays. The important thing is to process it. While family lawyers can help you with the legal aspects of your separation, it is up to you to choose how you will release your own unique experience from within.
