Some of the greatest works of our culture, including those from literature and painting, can inspire our admiration, but also leave us feeling a sense of mystery and ambiguity about their underlying meanings. For instance, despite their incisive insights into human nature, what are we to finally make of Shakespeare’s Macbeth or Hamlet? After lifetimes of questioning and the deepest contemplation of these plays, we can still find nuances of meaning at every new and thoughtful encounter with these dramas.
The art of suspenseful ambiguity has also been expressed by a Swiss-French artist, Felix Vallotton, in his painting from 1899, La Visite or The Visit. In this picture, we are presented with an interior from a seemingly respectable and well-furnished bourgeois home. The male figure is attired in a suit, while the female is wearing a fine overcoat and fashionable hat. Since the painting is titled The Visit, perhaps this is a scene of domestic harmony. Perhaps. But let’s start asking ourselves some questions.
The art of ambiguity
Take a good look and ask yourself, is someone on the way in or about to leave? Is the woman being welcomed with love or is she being restrained by the male’s power? We’re led to ask a central question: what is the emotion that’s driving the man’s tight grasp of the woman? Why is the woman leaning back so far? Does her posture indicate that she is offering physical resistance? Or is she simply swooning in a romantic gesture of love?
Why does the section of carpet on which they’re standing have the pattern of a jagged crevice opening up, looking very much like a violent earthquake? Why do two other sections of the carpet look like a grate or perhaps shadows of prison bars?
On the floral carpet in front of the sofa, there is a cushion on the floor. Presumably, it should be on the sofa. How did the cushion come to be on the floor and what does that mean? At the left of the picture on the table, is that a segment of a sheet of paper? Perhaps it’s a letter from one to the other, expressing some kind of sentiments – welcome or unwelcome?
Why is the door to the bedroom open? Have they already been in there? Or is the man trying to prevail upon the woman to enter the bedroom?
From all of these questions and their possible answers, there arises the great overarching question: is The Visit a painting expressing a vision of a romantic liaison or is it a scene of sexual predation? Perhaps the artist himself was feeling the same kinds of ambiguities and uncertainties about his own picture as he created it. We just don’t know. We are left with our own thoughts and interpretations, which may well change as we ‘revisit’ this intriguing painting again and again.
As in Macbeth, we don’t know if Lady Macbeth really did faint when the blood-soaked horrors of King Duncan’s murder were being vividly recounted or whether she cold-bloodedly pretended in order to divert attention away from her nervously babbling and murderous husband. And in Hamlet, just how genuinely mad or calculatingly sane was the Prince of Denmark when he embarked upon his regime of cruel and outrageous behaviour? Again, we don’t definitively know.
Nevertheless, it’s important to ask all of those intriguing questions about great artefacts of our culture, including The Visit. Look again. Think again. Feel again. Construct your own interpretation or narrative, while also making allowance for the elements that challenge your evolving narrative. You may well be in for a lifetime of fascinating ambiguity.
The painter of The Visit, Felix Edouard Vallotton, was born in 1865 in Lausanne, Switzerland, to a French-speaking family. He moved to Paris at the age of 16 to pursue his ambition of being an artist. He became a French citizen and worked in France until his death in 1925.
The Visit can be viewed at the excellent Kunsthaus Zurich in Switzerland.
By Brad Allan, writer and wine tasting host in Melbourne, Australia and frequent visitor to France…
