| |
Michelangelo, Vasari and their Contemporaries: Drawings from the Uffizi at the Morgan Library
Now
that the dollar has tanked, it is a treat to get even a whiff of
something genuinely Italian.
The current show of Italian Renaissance drawings at the
Morgan (Michelangelo, Vasari and their Contemporaries: Drawings
from the Uffizi) is more than a brief breeze.
Displaying nearly eighty drawings, it is focused on the
sixteenth-century in Florence when Medici patronage was at its
height. The major
undertaking at the time was the redecoration of the Palazzo
Vecchio. The Medici had made the building their court and put
Georgio Vasari in charge. So
now, when Vasari was not making value judgments about other
artists, he was busy decorating, and planning to decorate, the
walls of the Medici palazzo.
Vasari shows himelf to be the stylistic definition of a
Mannerist artist. His
drawings can be over-wrought, with casts of thousands in the
tradition of a Cecil B. DeMille movie, if you will excuse the
anachronistic comparison. Of
course the commission for the public rooms in the Palazzo
Vecchio would call for illustrations of military victories and
personal triumphs. Large
armies and casts of thousands are certainly in order.
Vasari shows that he is up to the task as he creates
great chaotic battles that would have stirred the pride of
Cosimo I.
Seen as a whole, the
exhibition contains examples of all the basic drawing types:
studies of details, studies of whole compositions, finished
presentation pieces, and cartoons marked for transfer to larger
works. Furthermore,
it gives us an overview of the depth of talent available to the
Medici. There are
some, such as Giovanni Battista Naldini, who are not known to
those outside the specialized field of sixteenth-century
Florence, but who demonstrate a talent with chalk as good as any
better known artist.
Florence would remain the bastion of linear definition
rather than colorism. Drawing
was always an essential element in composition among her artists
with an alla prima approach strongly discouraged.
Colorism in drawing was limited to the use of red and
black chalk in combination.
In fact some of the earliest examples of the trois
crayons technique can be seen here in the work of the above-
mentioned Naldini. An
ultra-detailed portrait in red chalk, attributed to Bronzino, is
finished enough to have been a presentation work or a final
study for a commissioned oil.
A name to remember,
perhaps even for future reference, is Baccio Bandanelli
(1493-1560).* It is Bandanelli’s two-figured sculpture of
Hercules and Cacus that stands as a pendant to Michelangelo’s
David in front of the Palazzo Vecchio to this day.
Primarily working as a sculptor, Bandanelli was seen
“in the tradition of” Michelangelo and, in some ways, even
his drawing style is like that of the older artist. He thinks as a sculptor and draws as if creating chisel marks
on the sheet of paper; the closer together the lines, the darker
the shadow, the deeper the cut.
On a double-sided sheet here is a pen and ink study for a
two-figured statue and his observations of some heads and arms.
On the wall near-by is an Ecce Homo for a relief
sculpture and a drawing of a standing figure of Hercules done in
red chalk.
Another exhibition,
Draftsmen of the Medici Court, selections from the Morgan’s
collection of drawings from the same era, opened after I visited
the show of Uffizi drawings.
That just provides another reason to return for a second
visit before the Italian drawings go back to Florence when the
Uffizi show closes on the 20th of April.
Also up at the Morgan is an exhibition of Irving Penn’s
photographs, a show that seems to be a pleasant stroll through
recent history by way of the view-finder of this brilliant
portrait photographer. How
do you get people to relax when they know you are staring at
them for posterity? Can
you ever get someone to “just
be yourself” under such conditions?
Penn would seem to have done it.
Alexander Calder looks about as impish as he should, to
judge by his mobile sculptures, and Saul Steinberg is
inseparable from his line drawings.
The Morgan Library and Museum is a constant reminder of
how fortunate we are as art-loving denizens of New York City.
A museum collection of this ilk, a treasure anywhere
else, can get lost in the shuffle in New York.
Now, with their new galleries, a welcoming atrium, and a
grand modern twenty-first-century entrance, even the old
exhibition space looks new. This spring’s exhibitions are a wonderful gift to us all.
*Concurrent with the show at the Morgan, the Louvre in
Paris has its collection of Bandanelli drawings on display.
Perhaps Bandanelli is getting his due at long last.
Penn photos
until April 13
Uffizi drawings until April 20
Draftsmen for the Medici Court until May 11
The Morgan
Library and Museum is at Madison and 36th St., closed
Mondays.
For further
information go to www.morganlibrary.org
The new Nineteenth Century Painting Galleries at the Met
The new
nineteenth-century art galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of
Art seem to have received universal accolades from the critics.
The galleries are greatly expanded and we now get to see
many long-closeted works of nineteenth-century painting.
For example, we now discover that the Met owns thirty-two
Corots, all displayed in one of the larger galleries.
Courbet also gets his own gallery with ten paintings, no
doubt soon to be part of the landmark exhibition arriving in
March.
But when I first
visited these newly installed rooms I admit to feeling lost.
All the accustomed spaces were reconfigured, almost none
of the paintings were in the same place and by the tenth room I
was completely befuddled; nothing made sense any more. Have I become so set in my ways that I cannot see the wisdom
of this new installation?
In point of fact, the installation is well thought out
and brilliantly conceived given the need to keep the Annenberg
collection in tact, as well as to accommodate the curatorial
decision to incorporate American expatriate painting, and an
example of late nineteenth-century interior design.
All of this is only clear once you have in hand the floor
plan for the galleries, available at the information desk on the
ground floor and in the Great Hall.
Only then can you see how far you can go in a
straight-line chronology and when it is that you have to start
to double back on your trail.
Without the floor plan you can easily glide from Courbet
to Bonnard to Picasso without so much as a glance at Manet or
Cezanne.
Let me suggest a way to decipher the new lay-out,
a path you may be able to follow on the floor plan that I
have scanned onto the site.
I hope this will help to ease the potential confusion
because you should visit these galleries and be able to enjoy
this wonderful collection.
A
glance at the floor plan shows that there are three entries to
the galleries, chosen as if there are three approaches to the
art of this era: one through Neo-classicism and Romanticism (the
line versus color dichotomy), one through Academicism, and the
third that jumps directly into Impressionism where most of the
public seems happiest to begin (and often, to end).
My
inclination is to go towards Ingres and Delacroix and proceed to
the back of the galleries, turn right and move unerringly
towards Courbet at the center.
You can continue in the Realist vein with Fin-de-Siècle
art, but now you need to back up into the Courbet gallery and
exit through a different doorway into American Painting.
This is where a visitor’s progress becomes less clear.
In places where you need to double back on yourself, I
have suggested routes A and B (thus 10A is Fin-de-Siècle and
10B is American Painting while 12A is Bouguerreau/Cabanal and
12B Degas and Manet).
A
brief walk-through will permit me to share with you, some of the
paintings that are new to me and may also be unfamiliar to you.
Let’s begin in the first gallery, dedicated to
Delacroix and Ingres, where you will find the former’s
painting of The Abduction of Rebecca, full of the
movement, color, and passion of this scene of rape.
It hangs next to a charming, brilliantly controlled, and
intimate, rendering of Delacroix’s dear “aunt”
Madame Henri François Riesener.
By her glance, less formal than Ingres’ husband and
wife portraits on the other side of the room, Delacroix has made
her speak to us.
This
is also in contrast to the portrait of the Comtesse de la Tour-Maubourg
by Théodore Chassériau, a student of Ingres, that hangs next
to the entryway. The
student has deviated ever so slightly from the master in his use
of some painterly passages but the veil of psychological
distance seems in tact.
The
next gallery is filled with new arrivals, among them a small
jewel-like William Blake painting of Gabriel appearing to
Zacharias. The
room seems a chronological hodge-podge covering the entire
nineteenth century. But,
no matter, it’s nice to see the pre-Raphaelites get their due,
and what a treat to see two Constable oil sketches next to the
familiar Salisbury Cathedral.
The
third room on this trajectory is filled with Corots that attest
to the undying popularity of realist landscape.
Almost hidden in a corner are two small nudes (in
landscapes, of course). Small
enough to be hidden at home too, these depictions of the
reclining and available female form, could be sold for the
private enjoyment of the male patron.
In
the fourth room, avoiding the term Orientalism, the Met has
grouped paintings of the “European Vision of North Africa”.
Most are of the picture post-card type, the interior of a
mosque, a street scene in Smyrna, a man and woman in what would
be considered exotic dress.
This was a popular theme for the nineteenth-century
connoisseur.
Following on this are three small rooms of oil sketches
that deserve your attention but probably not during your first
visit through the new installation.
Then you come to a small room with some important
examples of Barbizon painting: six Millets and four Daumiers
hang here, where the Met has juxtaposed two small secular
pictures of a mother and child almost asking you to compare the
way the two artists approach a similar subject.
The
next gallery is a much larger room filled with Courbets and home
to the large Bonheur painting of The Horse Fair.
This room is the turning point in the journey towards the
second half of the century and as you already know I suggest
continuing straight ahead into the gallery for Fin-de-Siècle
art where you will find some wonderful images of high society in
London and Paris and some landscapes that, (perhaps no one will
notice) don’t really belong here but for their dates of
1880’s and 1905.
Double
back through the Courbet gallery and move into the room of
paintings by American expats (Sargent, Whistler) and the
French-trained Eakins. Five
of the seven paintings are full-length standing portraits. Perhaps they were chosen to relate to the full-length
non-portrait Manets in the next gallery, to which they make an
interesting comparison.
A small detour here will take you to the Wisteria Room,
an Art Nouveau interior acquired by the museum some forty years
ago, but which I never remember on exhibition.
You will probably think that the room is stunning,
particularly if you have an appreciation for that curvilinear,
organically oriented art.
Your
course has now taken you to the level of the second entryway to
the galleries and you should really go out into the sculpture
gallery that runs the length of the nineteenth century
installation. Here
you will find the stalwarts of the then current, and accepted,
style of academic Salon painting at mid-century.
The history paintings of Puvis de Chavannes, that are
small-scale finished studies for his large scale public
commissions, and the noble peasants of Bastien-Lepage applauded
for their technical display. It is after you look at them and at
the Cabanal and the Winterhalters that you have a context for
the Degas and Manet paintings in the large gallery (12B).
Equally important are the three galleries with Degas’
paintings, pastels, and sculpture as well as other examples of
pastel painting in the late century.
All
of this has prepared you for the Annenberg Collection, nine
galleries that focus on the new art of the second half of the
century, the developing interest in light, in modern subject
matter, in a new technique for applying paint on canvas.
There are no real surprises here but now that there is
room to hang all these works, you are struck by the depth of the
collection and the intelligence of the collector’s choices.
At
the far corner of the installation are three galleries that take
the visitor to the end of the nineteenth century: the paintings
of Bonnard and Vuillard, a collection of Symbolist painters
(from Klimt to Maurice Denis) and finally Matisse and Picasso to
lead you, through a fire-wall (is this symbolic?), into the galleries dedicated to
Modern Art.
It is
an exhilarating permanent exhibition and, once deciphered, a joy
to behold. You can
visit parts or, given a couple of hours, the whole, and either
way be assured of seeing exemplary examples of
nineteenth-century European art.
You just need a floor plan and you’ll be fine.
J.M.W.Turner as seen by Simon Schama: a different perspective
The essay by Simon Schama
in the Sept. 24, 2007 issue of The New Yorker demonstrates the difference
between an historian and an art historian.
Or perhaps, it is the difference between that historian and this art historian. Fortunately, the article is subtitled
“Turner and the drama of history” or I could be even more critical of Mr.
Schama’s analysis of Turner’s work.
The premise of the essay seems to
be that, overwhelmed by the modernity of Turner’s technique, we have lost sight
of his subject matter. Certainly no
serious student of Turner’s work has lost that focus. The artist himself won’t permit it. He constantly attached lines of text, of poetry (his and others)
to the walls next to his pictures. He
was determined, above all, to make “landscape into art”, to use the title of
Kenneth Clark’s writings on the subject.
By hook or by crook he would raise the lowly landscape to the pinnacle
upon which sat history painting. How
can we forget?
Schama the historian notes that the
young Turner “tramped the countryside sketching or painting in watercolors”
when art historians like Ian Warrell hold that Turner did not work in
watercolors en pleine aire.
Schama says that Turner traveled relentlessly (Rome, Venice, France, the
Alps) yet “…the ultimate subject was always the history of Britain…” Well, yes, but don’t leave us there without
an example to support this broad generalization. Some broad generalizations, like this one, happen to be true but
for if you don’t make the reasons clear they come off like so much
hyperbole. We need to be told that a
painting of Venice, or a depiction of ancient Rome, is meant to be related to
the history of England.
Our essayist also discusses what he
cites as Turner’s painting of “The Battle of Trafalgar”. Does Schama know that Turner painted more
than one canvas with the subject of the battle of Trafalgar? Citing the full title would distinguish The
Battle of Trafalgar, as Seen from the Mizen Starboard Shrouds of the Victory
from The Battle of Trafalgar, 21 October 1805. If you know both images you might surmise that Schama is
discussing the first picture, the one that focuses less on the battle and more
on the death of Admiral Nelson. But, if
he means to discuss Turner in the context of history painting, why doesn’t
Schama talk about Turner’s use of Benjamin West’s picture of The Death of
Nelson? And for that matter let’s
mention, in the context of Shama’s drama of history, how both artists conflated
Nelson’s mortal wound on the deck and his death below decks.
In his discussion of Turner’s more
generalized disasters, shipwrecks and the like, Schama posits that the artist’s
painting of figures was not incompetent as charged by some, but “a
self-conscious repudiation of the classical tradition”. That seems an exaggeration for an artist who
painted classical temples with such attention to detail. Has Shama never heard of staffage,
those stock figures added for the animation of landscape paintings. Claude Lorraine used them, the Dutch used
them, and Turner uses them throughout his oeuvre.
It is true that, in his day, Turner
was criticized for being too rough and lacking a refined manner, of painting
with strokes that were not well calibrated, that were too broad and
sweeping. Perhaps Schama means to
imitate the artist’s style. But that
would be too clever by far. Try as I
might, I do not understand what Schama is doing. Is he discussing the art, or the history, or Turner’s use of
history? The essay is such a jumble,
that just as with the paintings, the subject can get lost in the bravura
technique. The difference is that
Turner is arresting and Turner always makes sense.
Art in
New York - Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum
Is
Feminist still a curse word?
Do we avow that women are equal to men?
Will the ERA finally pass when it’s renamed the
Women’s Equality Amendment?
All of this unsettled business remains when, over the
horizon, riding into town to give forum to women’s issues (as
expressed by artistic means) comes Elizabeth A. Sackler the
benefactor of the new Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn
Museum. To judge by the audience, and
at least one of the panelists, at a Feminist Art symposium at
the end of March, her gift is not without its detractors.
Perhaps some people just have trouble taking a gift
horse.
Others find that it is due time
that the art of women had a venue.
But,
the establishment of the center does raise some provocative
issues, without evident response.
- Is
there A Feminist Art?
- Can
feminist art have a place in the white-male institution call
a museum?
- Is
feminist art only painted by women?
- Can
this art become part of the art historical dialogue?
- Does
it want to be part of that dialogue?
While
these questions come to mind, it soon becomes obvious that we
are not going to get an answer; no received wisdom is
forthcoming. On the
other hand, it seems essential, and almost obvious, that we
begin a dialogue. That’s
exactly what happens in the newly installed exhibition on the
fourth floor of the Brooklyn Museum.
The
permanent anchor of the Center for Feminist Art is Judy
Chicago’s The
Dinner Party (1974-79). The
huge triangular table, baronial (or I should say baronessial) in
dimension, was first exhibited here in 1980, in the course of
its inaugural tour. Now
it has a home here, it’s own space, dramatic lighting, and an
impressive didactic lead-in.
Like
works of the medieval and Renaissance periods, the content of
this work bears equal importance with its style.
The message of woman’s importance is repeated with each
place setting, dedicated to a woman whom, we eventually realize,
has been mostly ignored. History
is written by the victors and men have done the writing.
Judy Chicago makes that plain to see and she uses
women’s work to do it.
The
whole piece depends on work traditionally associated with women,
from the basic idea of a dinner party (an event most frequently
orchestrated and produced by women) to the woven banners,
the embroidered tablecloth to the decorated pottery
of each place setting. This
is a huge collaborative effort “dedicated’ to 1,038 real and
mythic women. My
hope is that it will be visited by boys and men too.
The
exhibitions in the other galleries, outside of this
installation, are meant to be temporary shows that pertain to
feminist art. In
this opening installation there is a large gallery given over to
Women Ceramicists. It’s
a wonderful, if too succinct, survey of workers in clay.
Among the Native American tribes the greatest, most
innovative potters have been the women.
The scope of their work is barely hinted at here with a
mere two cases of work on exhibit.
Be sure to look for Helen Shupla’s large, black-glazed
melon bowl. It’s
a knock-out, as is the Betty Woodman piece, her Still-Life Vase
#10 from 1990. The
Woodman retrospective at the Met in 2006 was one of the
highlights of the exhibition year.
The
larger exhibition is “Global Feminisms; international feminist
art at the turn of the century”.
It is set out almost in contra-distinction to the Dinner
Party as if to show that we’ve come a long way baby.
The works are divided into four topical themes: Life
Cycles, Identities, Politics and Emotions.
This is not a romp.
These are sobering works that you will find convey strong
messages through powerful imagery.
The
ones you will remember are the ones that are the strongest.
I’m still horrified by the video of the beautiful
female torso as it is mutilated by barbed wire formed into a
hula hoop and twirled around a pair of slender hips.
Ouch. It’s worse than the medieval flagellants because it’s
here and it’s now. You
will also remember the photo of the young Arab boy that is
really a self-portrait of the artist as a young man, brazenly
provocative and erotic.
You’ll
also become aware that some of this seems very self-indulgent,
self-reverential. Maybe the old cliché is true and if we don’t love
ourselves nobody will love us.
Is that what women want?
It’s
a show definitely worth seeing.
There’s one caveat however.
The museum has installed audio recordings accessible by
cell-phone. You
just dial the given phone number, enter the key code, and you
hear information that pertains to the exhibition or to a
particular piece on view. It’s
a fine idea but the commentary is either a reiteration of the
didactic label on the wall, or a statement by the artist that is
not at all helpful in understanding the work.
I gave up after three tries.
The technology is great but there has to be a more
edifying dialogue available to make it worth our while.
Just
the idea of a Center for Feminist Art is superb and what the
Brooklyn Museum has given us in this opening foray is terrific.
You’ve got to go see for yourself but go early or go
during the week. It’s
already crowded on week-ends.
Brooklyn
Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn
Hrs: Wed-Fri
10-5; Sat/Sun 11-6
Sugg.
Contribution $8, 62 and older $4
Eastern
Parkway stop on the West Side IRT- 2 or 3 trains.
Return to Home Page
|
