Monthly arts column

Jack Vettriano is one of those artists whose work you instantly recognise. He produces paintings that seem to have been around forever. Yet he has only been painting for just under 20 years.

His work is recognisable for many reasons. He has tapped into the mass-marketing money-spinning poster trade, making £15 million a year from sales of reproductions. So it is more than likely that you have seen his work on a wall or a biscuit tin somewhere.

Then there’s his similarity to Edward Hopper in his contrasty colouring, his ‘snapshot’ style and the feeling that you are watching an intensely private moment. Also firing at your recognition sensors are the subjects that Degas, Monet and Renoir made constant use of: ballerinas preparing to go on stage, the middle classes enjoying their leisure time on beaches and lakesides, smoky bars and clubs with clandestine meetings possible at every turn. There’s a bit of Vermeer, too, in the lighting and mood of a woman by a window, subdued and serene in her stillness.

Projected reality

As well as all these reminders of ‘high art’, the paintings reflect something that’s been going on far more recently — Jack Harding of the Ogilvy & Mather advertising agency says: ‘Vettriano’s compositions feature the static poses and glossy production typical of perfume advertising. The absence of any strong personal identity provides a blank space onto which the viewer can project their own identity.’

Vettriano put his art’s popularity down to ‘escapism’ saying, ‘At the end of the working day, we all want to escape somewhere else.’ He claims that his work sells because, ‘it’s romantic, it’s whimsical, it’s accessible. You could say it’s safe’.

Is escapism really ‘safe’, though? Escapism is about stepping aside from one’s personal reality and experiencing someone else’s, usually someone fictional. There are many invitations to escape in Vettriano’s work. Believe that you are wealthy and that others exist to wait on you. Believe that you are sexually attractive and can have anyone do anything you desire, believe that you are glamorous, well-connected, famous. Believe that you live in an age unfettered by modern, technical concerns, where you need never work and where privilege and social power come easily to you. The invitation to men is to look at women and not feel ashamed, whereas women are invited to identify with self-possessed, sexually powerful dames whose faces are sufficiently blank to have you replace your own.

Two-dimensional women

Vettriano’s London dealer, the Portland Gallery, round the corner from the Ritz, has just finished displaying a collection of recent work under the title Love, Devotion and Surrender. Six prints with the same title are being offered as limited editions and share a common theme of male fantasy. Many of the paintings are snapshots of adulterous liaisons where the women’s expressions are hidden or shown in profile. The works that show women on their own suggest that they are on their way in or out of relationships. One is on a public phone, clutching the receiver in frustration while another walks in a stylish winter coat and hat past Battersea power station. The eye that paints these pictures seems to see women as alluring two-dimensional beings, who you could imagine watching and wanting, but not having a chat to while she does the ironing or drags the kids round Tesco.

Truth and lies

When as Christians we encounter any representations that exchange the truth of God for a lie, we need to keep our brains active and our feet ready to flee. Vettriano’s reinterpretations of the truth include ‘adultery is okay as long as it happens in private or in your mind’, ‘you are only worth something if you are wealthy and socially connected’, ‘being glamorous and popular is normal and if you aren’t then you’re socially embarrassing’ and ‘live in your dreams because reality is too boring’. These are obviously not unique to Vettriano’s work. They are untruths that are lobbed at us daily by the media.

Ways of seeing

John Berger, the author of Ways of Seeing, said, ‘Between the experience of living a normal life at this moment on the planet and the public narratives offered to give a sense to that life, the empty space, the gap, is enormous.’

How should we make sense of our lives, then? We are truly privileged to have a narrative that makes sense of living a normal life at this moment on the planet. God’s Word, and the truth that resonates with every area of our lives as we read it, is everything that the media’s public narratives are not. It tells us how to have life, rather than listing what we haven’t got. Instead of enticing us into a mindset of forbidden pleasure and guilt, it leads us to the overflowing fountain of forgiveness in Christ.

Eleanor Margesson

© Evangelicals Now - June 2006
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