JMW Turner on How to See Magic in the “Real World”

The strange transformation of reality on seeing “Ulysses deriding Polyphemus”

There is a point in a child’s life when he is told that magic is not real and that he is old enough now to be realistic. There are no mermaids in the sea and no giants in the mountains. He is brought to more practical matters by well-meaning parents and teachers who wish to redirect him from fairy tales to school exams. True love, dragons, and demons, the child is told, are all idle inventions to entertain children and simple minded men.

Yet, at the most complex moments of our lives, the myths and fairy tales breathe through the seams of “reality”. We can feel the heat of dragon breath on our necks when we move to a new city and walk down its streets alone at night. We can feel fairies lift our feet just a little higher than they should go when we dance with our first love. When someone we love passes away, we search for their ghosts in abandonned chairs and painfully quiet rooms. When we face our greatest fears and greatest loves, we cannot understand them except in fairy tale terms.

“We have come from God, and inevitably, the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of that light, that true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Indeed, only by myth making, only by becoming a ‘sub-creator’ and ineventing stories, can man aspire to the state of perfection that he knew before the fall. Our myths may be misguided but they steer, however shakily, toward the true harbour, while materialistic ‘progrss’ leads only to a yawning abyss and the Iron Crown of the power of evil.” JRR Tolkein

Many nineteenth century painters adored classical mythology as a subject for their art. Lawrence Alma Tadema, Frederick Leighton and John William Waterhouse are some of the most notable examples. Each painter brought his own philosophy to bear on his representation of these resonant and eternal stories; however, Turner’s painting depicts the story in a way that it seeps into our own world.

Turner’s 1829 painting, Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus, depicts a story from the Odyssey, in which Ulysses and his crew escape the cyclops after having blinded him. The golden ships stand in the black and gold waters of the sea, its white sails fading into the sky. Those who know the story might be confused by this painting because at first glance, it reveals nothing of itself to the viewer.

At a brief first glance, Turner’s painting looks like an ordinary seascape featuring a golden ship with the setting sun. There appear to be mountains in the distance. Then you look at the mountains and see a face, some limbs, shaped fuzzily by the clouds. It is the cyclops of course! In the water in front of the boat, glassy figures made of water glistening in the sunlight look at first like splashes of water. A closer look rewards you with the realisation that they are water nymphs...though that could just be your imagination. Suddenly, to the right, Apollo’s chariot with its horses come into view, carrying the sun back to sleep behind the mountains.

Turner paints the mystical elements of the painting in such a way that the viewer can second guess himself whether or not it is a magical creature or just a figment of his imagination. In this way, the viewer is invited to complete the painting with his imagination: the muscle that has often atrophied in adults and older children. Looking at Turner’s painting, he invites us strengthen this muscle again. Having spent some time in the company of Turner’s painting, the viewer walks away seeing the world through different eyes. Perhaps he’ll always imagine giants in the mountains in the distance, and perhaps whenever he sees splashes of water in the sea he will now think of water nymphs.

By not giving up its mystical elements so easily, Turner’s painting teaches its viewers how to search for the magic in the mundane. There is much more to the world than our material “reality”. Turner constructs a world that dissipates into fog as it travels upward, as though this painting is an impression of a memory burned onto paper. The colours have this effect.

The myth is as real as taxes and careers, perhaps it is more real because it has existed longer and persists deeper than these superficial administrative details of the modern world. A painting like this one by Turner can teach us how to see through that surface to the myths that truly construct our reality.