by Chantal Tseng

A Withering Winston Battles the Soul of a Portrait

“All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.”

― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

In Season One, Episode #9 of The Crown, Winston Churchill is getting his portrait done by Modernist artist Graham Sutherland, commissioned by Parliament in honor of his 80th birthday. The year is 1954, the day is November 30th and the legendary Prime Minister is on the verge of retirement.

John Lithgow brilliantly plays the part of Winston Churchill in The Crown

He and Sutherland chat during their sittings and engage in light conversation. Churchill feels like he has found some common ground with Sutherland, being an avid painter of landscapes himself, and starts to feel somewhat comforted that he won’t be depicted too harshly in the man’s brushstrokes, as in the manner of a bullfrog. 

“There are plenty of things in history that are best left in the shadows. Accurate knowledge does not improve people’s lives. The objective does not necessarily surpass the subjective, you know. Reality does not necessarily extinguish the fantasy.”

― Haruki Murakami, Killing Commendatore 

Or rather he hopes this to be the case. Simultaneously, he fears that the painter will be unduly harsh. Sutherland manages to get Churchill to open up about his own paintings. In particular, we learn about a disturbing connection to a long ago personal tragedy. We begin to understand that Churchill has never truly understood how his particular preoccupation with painting a specific pond carried a deeper note for him. Sutherland plucks that tiny bit of reality straight from his mind, it seems. Like a sleeping goldfish, shimmering vaguely through the light refracting from the leaves of trees, suddenly blinking into consciousness.

“Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.”

― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

It’s a humbling experience as the Prime Minister begins to understand that Sutherland is tapping into more than just his iconic character. He is attempting to reveal a bit of his soul as a mere man rather than wholly memorialized as an accomplished British legend. We see that Churchill is deeply burdened by his old age, failing health and less than successful last bouts of diplomacy during employment. His diminishing abilities compounded with his insecurity and vulnerability in front of the painter start to forebode a poor experiment in trust and expectation. For the truth is a crumbling wall of unpleasant geriatric realness that the whole of the world save one had already acknowledged. His denial could not possibly survive the unveiling. 

“I found it odd somehow. There were times it felt like my soul was being stolen from me.”

― Haruki Murakami, Killing Commendatore

He feels betrayed as he comments that the painting is so modernist. The nuance understood here is that rather than memorialized in the manner of traditional portraiture (think about all the wig wearing royals and old presidents) he is caught on canvas as closer to his authentic vulnerable self. When the portrait is unveiled to the public, an old shrunken man cast in sepia tones with half tragic eyes, he is no longer able to control his own story, his own denial. He vehemently hates the work, even though he does in fact see the artistry of truth in it. His wife, Clementine, likely in an act of loyalty and hopeful perseverance, makes a point of destroying the painting later, privately, burning it into oblivion. Too many people had kept on requesting a viewing. Its destiny, after all, had been slated as a preservation of history. It is deemed a loss to said history that the portrait no longer exists. It is also debatable just how unflattering or how true to form the final piece brought to life. There are, of course, pictures of the portrait so we can all stare and theorize internally from our computers.

By Graham Sutherland, 1954

“Paintings are strange things: as they near the end they acquire their own will, their own viewpoint, even their own powers of speech. They tell the artist when they are done…”

― Haruki Murakami, Killing Commendatore

In conjuring contemporary portraiture, (via photography) one naturally thinks of the selfie and portrait-mode. With our smartphones and other gadgets of technical wonder, a selfie can be taken a multitude of times, erased and re-taken again until we find the view that flatters us best. I wonder if there is a word to describe the mild unease we feel when someone else snaps our photo and thereby has the power to release our non-approved, unedited visage to the world. It is a very modern courtesy we extend to our friends, getting the okay to publish, delete or edit. I almost wish the saying “Oh, don’t broadcast a withering Winston” were a thing. The dedication to honest portraiture in social media is not exactly trending. And when a candid photo is published, the goal of the publisher is likely one of critique or not so subtle slander. Imagine a photo of a seemingly dignified public official getting caught in that perfect awkward moment, as a gust of wind mischievously tickles the spaces between toupee and temple.

“Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.”

― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

When I studied studio art, I never really dabbled in portraiture. It’s intense. Also, I’m an introvert who probably couldn’t tell you the color of some of my closest friends’ eyes. A failing for sure. Beyond that, I have to admit I love the idea that someone else, even possibly a stranger, often has the keen awareness of providing a realism that an individual has no grasp of. Other people truly see us in a way we can never see ourselves. But also, our ability as people to discern faces, to recognize the smallest details and see a whole human and character is uniquely fascinating. A dedicated portrait artist truly accomplishes something exquisite in the documentation of our humanity when they capture an earnest visage. 

“Look deep enough into any person and you will find something shining within. My job was to uncover this and, if the surface is fogged up (which was more than the case), polish it with a cloth to make it shine again. Otherwise the darker side would naturally reveal itself in the portrait.”― Haruki Murakami, Killing Commendatore

“So dark that when you turn off the flashlight it feels like you can grab the darkness with your hands.” (P.252, “Killing Commendatore”)
1.5 oz. Nardini Amaro, .5 oz. blood orange-ginger shrub, 1 oz. Pu’erh tea
by Chantal Tseng

And Out of the Stormy Seas

Ken Jeong is having a moment. I should mention that I’m a bit of a fan. 

“Medicine really matured me as a person because, as a physician, you’re obviously dealing with life and death issues, issues much more serious than what we’re talking about in entertainment. You can’t get more serious than life and death. And if you can handle that, you can handle anything.” – Dr. Ken Jeong

I’ve been thinking about the folks out there who might actually be thriving during this Pandemic. And, I am happy to be thinking about it. I can’t say I know many personally, however. 

“There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath…”

― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale

https://centerforfiction.org/essays/moby-dick-and-in-the-heart-of-the-sea/

Most of the people I know in my industry are in dire straits. Many who run businesses are on the verge of closure, already closed or still in the process of opening a place from before the initial lock-down and therefore struggling to reorient and retool a business plan that will scarcely hope to succeed in the now let alone later. Essentially, all are bleeding money, resources and are slowly approaching a level of debt that requires the point of no return decision. 

“…that one most perilous and long voyage ended, only begins a second; and a second ended, only begins a third, and so on, for ever and for aye. Such is the endlessness, yea, the intolerableness of all earthly effort.”

― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale

Other folks are a mixed bag of layoffs, juggling shared living spaces with roommates or loved ones who make questionable decisions, dealing with homeschooling pressures and general political divisive stress in addition to mourning the loss of friends, family and fellow Americans.

“There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness.”

― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale

Artwork by Eric Rewitzer, 3 Fish Studios. www.3fishstudios.com

Of course, there are certainly also individuals whose main inconvenience is the missing of going to bars and restaurants with friends and the natural empathy towards knowing that their favorite places are dying a slow slow death, akin to a sinking vessel. One in which just as a leaky hole gets fixed, another begins to form and multiply at the highly inconvenient rate of faster than one can say Mississippi or Tallahassee or “life is not very supercalifragilisticexpialidocious right now.”

“…and Heaven have mercy on us all – Presbyterians and Pagans alike – for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.”

― Herman Melville, Moby Dick

.75 oz. Rhum Agricole, .75 oz. Aquavit,
.75 oz. grapefruit, .5 oz. (1:1) honey syrup
with cinnamon and singed rosemary

And as we steer straight into the maelstrom of the colder months here in D.C., into the more familiar but formerly less-scary flu-season, I keep thinking about this work from Edgar Allan Poe, “A Descent into the Maelstrom.” It is narrated by a very salty survivor and has darkly tailored dreadful lines as such: “…but in the next moment I cursed myself for being so great a fool as to dream of hope at all.”
BUT ALSO, I channel that one Shakespeare start-of-phrase from “Richard III.” It has been tainting my brainwaves: “Now is the winter of our discontent…” This is mostly because the future truly feels much more ominous than hopeful. Our at-large decisions of biting off more than we can chew to begin with happen to be pieces of a large infected COVID-19 pie that everyone keeps passing around the table like it’s already Thanksgiving in 2021.

And then a ray of light: Korean American comic actor and genuine family man Dr. Ken Jeong. He is thriving during this pandemic and I love it.

PARK CITY, UT – JANUARY 27: Actor Ken Jeong of “Advantageous” pose for a portrait at the Village at the Lift Presented by McDonald’s McCafe during the 2015 Sundance Film Festival on January 27, 2015 in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Larry Busacca/Getty Images)

In the before-times, and continuing into the ongoing season, his most recent gig has been one of the celebrity panelists on the hit show “The Masked Singer.” Let that sink in for a skosh. A show where it is absurdly cool to wear a mask is killing it with a fairly representative diverse cast including BIPOC hosts and panelists. Really famous and talented icons go covert with exquisite disguises, perform songs and give us hints to see if we can figure out who they are in real life. The original idea came from a Korean show called “King of the Masked Singer,” which apparently Jeong’s mother is a big fan of. And just recently, due to the success of the show, Ken has been given the reigns to host his own new show “I Can See Your Voice.” It’s another Korean spin-off game show where contestants, everyday folks who all have relatable stories for needing some extra finances, can win money if they can correctly guess who is a bad or good singer based on lip-syncing. And guess what else is in the works with yet-again-Ken? “The Masked Dancer” promises to keep us going debuting right after Christmas. Naturally, with the cancellation of concert venues and live performances, celebrity performers happen to have a lot of free time and I can only imagine that they might even be vying to get into the line up of these masked performances. This, of course, makes these shows even more laden with talent and draw. It’s not like most of America is not already glued to our television shows…oh wait. It seems the timing is quite good for Dr. Ken Jeong.

Honestly, it is nice to see the rise of a truly less than typical star, Asian-American no less, known for his antics of being a bitter physician with a dark comic edge, an effeminate mobster-gangster, a general clown about town and someone who can survive and thrive in the deep end of a pool filled to the brim of being the butt of everyone’s jokes. That takes serious character, and maybe the rest of the country and dare I say world, should learn from him, even if he is a Dodgers fan.