Goblet

Upstate Art Weekend
Piaule Catskill
333 Mossy Hill Rd, Catskill, NY
Saturday, July 23, 12-5 pm

Jesse Bransford
Elisa Soliven

Thomas Cole’s 1833 painting, “The Titan’s Goblet,” imagines an overflowing vessel surrounded by moss on stone and pooling waters, below. In a haze of sunlight, water spills from the fountain’s rims and abundant life has taken hold in its shadow. Tactile elements of an unsaid landscape, an unstated oath, or an unspoken relic are present — absence can be felt, yet nature flourishes, signifying sustenance as well as the passage of time.

It is not unusual for Cole to position the ineffable qualities of nature with allegory and verse. However, "The Titan’s Goblet" is particularly quizzical, for it refrains from allegorical narrative, unlike "The Course of the Empire" or "Expulsion from the Garden of Eden." Recalling vague, distant echoes of the realm of giants (Jotunheim) or the “the green knoll” and “new objects of wonder” in Rip Van Winkle, expectations are ruptured, and an elixir of the unknown flows. In “The Titan’s Goblet,” the expansive is in alliance with the diminutive, and something uncanny and copious is at play. Bound to gravity and unbound from story, the goblet belongs in the realm of fantasy tripping over grace.