I am afraid, I was born to do this.
Conviction and bravery are not choices for me and people like me.
“Why do you like Joan of Arc so much?” my roommate asked me the other day. I think I said something along the lines of my being an Arnold Palmer of genetic Catholic Guilt and Transsexualism as a response, but that answer barely scratches the surface of the issue. Why do I like Joan of Arc so much? My brain was on fire when I was sixteen, I have fucked up bangs, I wear men’s clothes, sweet mother I cannot weave, I long for an effortless and unquestioned androgyny (although perhaps something which arguably led to your execution is not quite effortless, but I digress). I wish I was wearing armor most days.
Being concise about something I don’t necessarily understand is difficult, so instead I am going to oscillate between one formal analysis of my own personal place of worship, which is wherever the Met has placed Joan of Arc by Jules Bastien-Lepage, and another of my own experiences of and relating to it and her. The language I employ throughout this text is meant to reach out to you, viewer, and coax you into understanding this painting similar to the way I understand it. I am trying to convey a sense of seeing and understanding the world as larger than yourself while simultaneously acknowledging that you can and should become a new self through intense change (if need be).
Looming over the visitors of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in the 19th century galleries of European and American painting & sculpture, there is a painting which stands over six feet tall; a portal into 15th-century France through the lens of artist Jules Bastien-Lepage. Last Winter Joan of Arc was among the first pieces any museum-goer saw upon entering these galleries: It had been situated in the long, navy blue hallway and sat directly in front of a bench during my last visit to the museum with a friend. Lepage’s 150 year-old brushstrokes invited guests to sit amongst the foliage and watch as the saint hears voices from heaven for the very first time, simultaneously now and then, here and not. Mirror and Not. Today, Joan lies further in the wing. Discovering Lepage’s painting is now akin to walking in on a private moment, and sitting on this new bench opposite has been contextualized as something of an act of voyeurism. When I took a new friend to see my favorite painting in the Met, I felt as though I was showing them the scene of a brutal murder I had committed — this moment was suddenly and entirely not mine to share. There is a distinct illusion of transgression which had not been achieved in the previous locale, and it is elevated through Lepage’s employment of techniques of and relating to the closed-form composition and symbolism which had cemented the painting as an inviting otherworldly portal in the mind’s eye.
Joan of Arc depicts the moment in which Joan first hears the voices of saints and Archangel Michael in her Lorraine home. Her face features a blank, youthful, and surprised stare as she listens intently. She looks wind-swept and raw, somehow both wise and inexperienced. Her left hand absentmindedly fidgets with a leaf on a nearby branch. Determination and naivety alike are conveyed by the ways Lepage portrayed her expressing herself. Bastien-Lepage is from the same province in France, and it shows. The white cottage in the background closely resembles Joan’s actual childhood home, no matter if the yard in the painting is a tad busier than hers was and how unlikely it is that her roof was ever angled in that manner. The yard depicted is filled with trees and bushes, a cool-toned green palette is complemented by yellows and browns with blueish-gray undertones. Behind Joan there is a task left unfinished, and her stool is tipped over in a rush to stand and take in the moment.
The textures employed vary throughout the piece. Joan and the divine figures are rendered smoothly, but the strokes become painterly and accentuate the composition in order to aid the audience’s perception of narrative within Lepage’s painting. The composition of Joan of Arc is structured as to guide the viewer’s eye through the piece from Joan, the central figure, to the saints, and then back to Joan again. The trees to the left and right of the frame mirror and interact with the figures in order to force one to travel from the foreground where the saint stands stunned and into the background where her divine inspirations, abandoned chores, home, and the horizon lie. The specific journey which the eye embarks upon when faced with Joan of Arc can be explicitly mapped with the fibonacci angle if one treats the points of the painting outlined above as though they are dots for connecting. The composition exists within the frame not in a limiting sense, but a freeing one. It feels as though the trees could extend into the realm of the viewer and the Met could be filled with forest. In other, more visceral words: you understand that Joan is hearing the most important sound she ever will and when you learn that she abandoned all responsibilities for the sake of it, you pay it no mind. Sacrifice is necessary for conviction. You step inside the painting with her, if only in your mind.
Joan of Arc contains clear examples of optic and haptic objectivism for a multitude of reasons. Lepage’s linear composition and brushstrokes which mimic the focus of one’s eye in tandem with the sheer scale of Joan of Arc draw the viewer into the tree-filled environment. Joan is the most detailed part of the painting, haptic, flesh-like, and nearly breathing. Her body stands tall and straight, indicative of her stoicism. You could almost reach out and touch her. She is followed closely by the sylph-figured saints and archangel, who are rendered with a similar and yet coarser texture to hers, and they blend into the impressionistic background due to the painterly execution on Lepage’s part. Leaves and bricks are conveyed to the eye through only a few brushstrokes, and the texture becomes rougher and rougher as one travels through the piece and into the background. It would have been an incredibly difficult feat of technical skill for Lepage to have achieved that rough texture without overshadowing the smooth (or, smoother) skin of those figures strewn throughout the composition.
More than that, a main hallmark of optic objectivism is the internal journey an artist takes a viewer on. It is about the lies they tell whomever is looking at their work. That is to say, optical illusions are a subset of lies.
The internal journey that I go on every time I see Joan of Arc always reminds me of painting in the way it winds, however most things remind me of painting so this is not remarkable, really. That being said, I think every trans person feels akin to a martyr at some point in their life. Maybe that would not be the first descriptor they would use, but severed from the religious context there is the reality that the definition “one who is willing and ready to die for the framework through which they see and interact with the world” fits both the transsexual and the martyr. To interact with the world while actively rejecting the foundations of how your peers do so is tantamount to being a one-person army waging war by existing every day. Eventually the psychological turmoil makes one feel as though they are on fire.
Returning to the composition of an internal journey: I always begin inside Joan and end inside myself. The piece begins with Joan’s face and then expands into the background, the biblical figures, the sky, and then the abandoned chore in the background of the painting. While the viewer may not pause here, I will. This chore was likely of or relating to textile work due to the responsibilities of young women at this time, and it’s abandonment could be perceived as a rejection of femininity and housework in the name of France and God. Then, fittingly, the eye traces the plants and dirt on the ground and returns to Joan, and around to the viewer again. The work is nearly in their space; but what does this phenomenon actually entail for the viewer? Please understand I can only describe the abstract for so long before it becomes a map of my brain. The viewer, you, are situated in front of a mirror. The mirror is this painting. Looking at Joan, you see in her the struggles of a person which wholly transcend gender due to her androgyny: sainthood discriminates only in that you must die in order to achieve it. You are struck by her conviction, her relative calmness. The way her life seems to have naturally led to this moment in which she becomes the savior of France. There are things discarded in the background; a life lost represented by a task abandoned. But to say that this life was lost is to ignore the fact that Joan was ready, willing, and able to abandon it. She both saw and had a potentiality for the mundane as well as the great.
Paintings of Joan of Arc hearing the voices, e.g. Thirion, etc., are rarely as grounded as this one. There are usually swirling clouds and grand angels whose limbs contour the composition, and one is never faced with the reality that Joan lived before this moment in any way, shape, or form. What sets Lepage’s depiction apart from so many others is the fact that the haptic forestry and it’s hidden figures cement a sacrifice that all can at the very least appreciate, and at most understand. When you sacrificed your girlhood/childhood, were you this steadfast? Would you say you have conviction? Are you sure of yourself? In my own experience, maturing is often about understanding the fact that there will always be potential for death and regret. Shave your head and have fun with it now, years later you will look at yourself with kindness and make a comment on how stupid you looked. This will be because you learned something of yourself in this change.
Joan said; “I am not afraid, I was born to do this.”
This painting came about during a long period of turmoil for France. The 19th century was spent dealing with the political fallout from various republics, movements, and economic issues. Joan of Arc was simultaneously a Christian symbol, a nationalistic symbol, and a figure within the canon of mythic women who died young and brutally – the other notable figure within this category is Ophelia, who was depicted by many Pre-Raphealites as a calm and beautiful young woman (in spite of her tendency to yell and sing at and about vegetables and birds in the canon of Hamlet). This piece takes many notes from the Pre-Raphaelites, such as the blank and prophetic expression on Joan’s face, the greenery, and slightly intense saturation. This in mind, the Pre-Raphaelite movement was definitively situated in London and this painting is incredibly French in subject matter.
What I am trying to say is; this painting, born of turmoil, propaganda, and painting techniques which were only fashionable to a select few in comparison to ones utilized by artists such as Eugène Thirion, forces the viewer to see Joan of Arc as a whole person rather than a mere mythic figure: this understanding of Joan creates the aforementioned feeling of being a voyeur intruding upon her. In combination, these factors cause an internal struggle with one’s own conviction or lack thereof. Looking at Joan causes guilt for the ways in which you have failed to have her best qualities in your own life, or, conversely, the ways in which you have succeeded. France and the Catholic Church may take pride in Joan of Arc now, but she was tried, convicted, and executed in a Catholic France.
When I see this painting, I see a person who is moving forward understanding that while she is young, she needs to follow the path which has been set out for her. Even if it kills her. I am haunted by questions of “Are you sure?” and silent, seemingly tolerant refusals on my family’s part to even utter the name of the hormones I am on. By phone calls to old lovers, and people who would now smile at me in the street as though they owe me no apology. By conversations with idiots, fools, and those with a fetish for cruelty. Conviction and bravery are not choices for me and people like me. This guilt is not a choice for us, but an inheritance. I am afraid, I was born to do this.
ur writing & analysis is fantastic as always