I have always been fascinated by how conceptions of beauty, particularly of the female form, are visually represented across different art historical epochs. Women in art, surveyed by an inalienably masculine gaze, as John Berger notes, occupy a significant place in art history’s evolution. Their portrayal registers the socio-political attitude of the time of production and permits a comparative analysis of historical periods by visual observation alone. A notable, somewhat clichéd, example is that of Manet’s Olympia examined in the light of her Renaissance predecessors.

Albeit a straightforward way of thinking about several artistic notions, this method of comparing similar subject matter to elicit the circumstances with which artists contended is rare in Maltese modern art history. So is the ahistorical study of artworks, objects, and popular images. Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas project combined all these elements by creating a comparative topography of images arranged thematically instead of chronologically or hierarchically. Teachings from this methodology were introduced to the study of Maltese 20^th century art by Giuseppe Schembri Bonaci and are being developed in ongoing research being carried out by the Modern and Contemporary Art Research Programme in the Department of Art and Art History.

These thoughts came to mind again recently when seeing a lesser-known painting by Willie Apap. Female Undressing by the Window, held in a local private collection, was produced by the artist in 1964, while residing in Rome. A woman, almost nude with the exception of scanty black underpants, is visible from behind framed by a window opening, caught in the exact moment that she is about to get dressed. Her hair is tied up into a high bun, revealing the length of her back, and suggesting some manner of labour or exertion. The crumpled bed sheets on the left side of her body, a motif enlarged and repeated in The Window of 1965, hint at the possible nature of her activity. Occupying the right side of the composition, and contrasting the heavy, coarse blue and neutral colour scheme of the painting, is a pot of flowering geraniums, an indication that the work was painted in the summertime. The painting forms part of a series of voyeuristic views of the artist watching, and being seduced, by quasi-naked women inhabiting domestic interiors.

A number of things are striking about this particular image; it was painted in the same year as The Descent from the Cross, Apap’s most iconic and enigmatic work that confronts the crisis of faith and identity in the independence years, and those leading up to his untimely death. It was also produced during the same time span as Esprit Barthet’s emblematic portrait of Marì tal-Bajd, an image that captures continuous attention because of its allegorical allusions to a type of Maltese persona, that of the authentic rural worker. A reproduction of her image can be seen in Pjazza Jean de Valette, adorning the industrial covering marking the infrastructural work underway at MUŻA.

Apap’s city woman, unlike Marì, is ascribed an urban identity, not solely because of her physical setting, but mainly because of how she is portrayed. Her erotic stance and availability to the outside world exploit a link with beauty that is rather archaic, a tradition of representing females in the history of art that is associated with the image of the muses. Apap adapted this trope to the present, giving a precise record of time, the summer of 1964, and contemporary dress. The rendition of the woman’s body, however, bears the mark of eternal beauty.

Barthet’s village egg-seller is likewise a symbol of something lasting. Her direct relationship with nature portrayed in the image; her crusty, weathered skin, soiled fingernails, and disgruntled glance, one that expresses distaste for the idleness that art requires for its conception and production, is a visual retort to the mechanised system of human labour. Marì is a reminder that the past is still present, that certain ways of being resist the aggressive and all-encompassing force of progress.

Although positing entirely different visions of contemporary reality, Apap and Barthet’s women both act as deliberations on the passing of time and our relationship with its multiple manifestations. The Roman nude is in the process of putting on previously discarded clothing, signalling the recent past and imminent future. She is moving, living, and hence also transient. Austere and sturdy, Barthet’s Marì is firmly rooted to her role in society. She is recognisable to all, and her defiance is unwavering. With her back turned in disregard of the artist who depicts her, Apap’s woman seen from the window may, at any second, disappear into the dark depths of the apartment she is in. Still, her image recalls an artistic lineage that transcends chronological particulars.

Art from the modern era is replete with a disparity of ideologies and perspectives that elicit a diversity of approaches to the condition of perennial and accelerated change. It must be ‘of the present’, a demand too-often made of artists active in the 20^th century. The purpose of art to combine fleeting qualities with permanent ones, advocated by Charles Baudelaire in the mid-19^th century, is one that should be pursued in both art and its historicisation. Apap unwittingly explored this idea in his painting. Both artists offer the viewer a snapshot of a historically-significant time that reaches back into social and artistic memory.