At the end of The Metropolitan Museum of Art's The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini show there is a marble head by Antonio Rizzo of the Doge Christoforo Moro that is one of the most striking works of art I have seen since I saw the Chardin pastel of an old man sleeping in their pastel show last summer. I wish I knew more about marble to explain why this marble is slightly yellow and yet to perfect effect for this creased, aged face. Rizzo, who was utterly unfamiliar to me before, uses the natural lines of the stone to produce the lifelines in the face of the Doge. I would return to the show just to spend more time looking at this one head, which was once attached to the rest of a statue of the Doge, kneeling at one of the three altars of S. Marco that Rizzo was commissioned by the Doge to produce.
The show is extensive and for the casual viewer so many portraits can seem a bit repetitive, but that is all the more reason to wander, moving towards any one that strikes your eye. The first room includes several women by Botticelli, which I had expected and was the reason that I intended to see the show. Botticelli's Zipporah is the reason that Swann, in Proust's Swann in Love, becomes enamored of Odette de Crecy. The way she holds her head bring Swann into immediate contact with the blond beauties of Botticelli's pre-Savonarola days. Though we are all familiar with Birth of Venus, I wanted to familiarize myself with more of his work to imprint the style of his women which could then inform my reading of Swann's desire. As Venus has no shoulders, neither do any of these other women, is one among a number of other trite facts that I discovered in looking at his ladies.
For women, beauty was a sign of virtue and the pressure was thus great to be exquisite. The ladies are largely painted in profile, boxed by walls and ceiling, or a window, within the frame. It gives an extraordinary sense of constraint that given the absolute stillness of all these portraits begins to feel a bit claustrophobic. The men had no need of such beauty though their vanity also had them request artists to minimize their flaws, according to a few of the placards about particular paintings. How they know this remains unclear to me, but we shall assume/hope that this is not sheer fabrication. Such concerns about physical representation for posterity seems likely after all.
A 1475 portrait of an unknown man believed to be by Antonio Crevalcore struck my eye precisely because of its ornate details, including a red internal frame with colored, marbled sections in each half section, an utterly phony background scene, a book and a gold ring with a red stone that looks just like one I have. The painting was so rich in ornament that it naturally stood out in contrast to the other more staid portraits of important men looking serious with monotone backgrounds. My companion mentioned that she rather missed among these the type of portrait that displays some secret feature or characteristic of the sitter. Indeed they were all diligent commission portraits by artists who well knew who was paying the bill. But, just then we rounded into another room where we discovered a painting of a very interesting looking man whom we discovered was the doctor Battista Fiero of the painter, Lorenza Costa. He has a knowing look in his eye, as well he might since he treated the painter for syphilis.
There are of course marvelous works by famous artists that are worthy of appreciation and study. There are paintings and drawings, medals and metalpoint (which I discovered I enjoy a great deal and more on that some day), but of course the whole thing is faces. So if you want a good look at the faces of the financiers, religious leaders, and aristocrats who made the Italian Renaissance the foundational period that influenced the modern world, this show is well worth a wander. And if you could care less about the history or the name-brand artists, then before the show closes on March 18, 2012 go stare at these men and women with Oscar Wilde in mind: "A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her fiction."
Showing posts with label Oscar Wilde. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Oscar Wilde. Show all posts
Details in Reading
While reading Oscar Wilde's The Critic as Artist again, I started paying attention to another layer of detail in the text. This is normal upon multiple readings but since the text largely presents an argument in dialogue form between confident Gilbert and bewildered Ernest, I surprised myself by approaching it as a more literary text where character details can illuminate what is said, where monologues are not simply a dissemination of ideas but also a stylistic choice that provides subtler forms of the ideas on display.
As such, at the beginning of part 2, I noticed–for the first time, truly, though I have now read this four times or so–that Gilbert and Ernest have just finished a fine meal of ortolans before now continuing with their conversation on criticism. This second half will focus on the morality of art and criticism, with Gilbert judging that all art is immoral and important for that reason. But back to ortolans...
Ortolans, I discovered, are a rare, small songbird from France that have been a delicacy along the lines of foie gras. The birds are captured alive and kept in small dark boxes, with some descriptions stating that their eyes are to be removed. The darkness leads them to gorge themselves on the food provided: millet, grapes and figs. When they are three to four times their natural size, they are drowned in Armagnac. They are cooked in an oven for no more than six to eight minutes. But it is the eating of them that strikes the most repulsive picture.
First, apparently, you would cover your head with a linen napkin so that none of the aromas fade in the air. You then place the bird, whole, on your tongue with the head hanging out between your lips. This allows the fat from the bird to flow down your throat while also allowing the heat to disperse. Then the diner is supposed to bite off the head, discard and take as long as fifteen minutes to delicately chew the whole bird, bones, organs, all.
The French outlawed ortolans in 1999, because they are an endangered species, not because the French are skittish about their cuisine. The French ex-President, François Mitterand, ordered ortolans (as well as foie gras and oysters) as a part of his last feast in the week before he died; he ate two of them. I gather from the manner by which they are prepared and eaten that I am to understand how truly decadent Gilbert is in his aesthetic pleasures, his moral sense ignored in favor of bountiful sensual experiences. Nothing else in Wilde's text shows Gilbert's decadence so strongly, though his ideas are certainly suggestive, all of which makes this small feast, as it turns out, an important detail to reading the ideology underlying this Wilde text. So be it, I still think the text is wonderful and agree with large parts of it–to be discussed at another time.
While researching the ortolans, I came across this website: http://www.coldbacon.com/food/ortolan.html and can not identify the picture, which is not captioned or referenced. I can not find it any of my Miró searches and would welcome any information about this funny looking bird in the painting.
As such, at the beginning of part 2, I noticed–for the first time, truly, though I have now read this four times or so–that Gilbert and Ernest have just finished a fine meal of ortolans before now continuing with their conversation on criticism. This second half will focus on the morality of art and criticism, with Gilbert judging that all art is immoral and important for that reason. But back to ortolans...
Ortolans, I discovered, are a rare, small songbird from France that have been a delicacy along the lines of foie gras. The birds are captured alive and kept in small dark boxes, with some descriptions stating that their eyes are to be removed. The darkness leads them to gorge themselves on the food provided: millet, grapes and figs. When they are three to four times their natural size, they are drowned in Armagnac. They are cooked in an oven for no more than six to eight minutes. But it is the eating of them that strikes the most repulsive picture.
First, apparently, you would cover your head with a linen napkin so that none of the aromas fade in the air. You then place the bird, whole, on your tongue with the head hanging out between your lips. This allows the fat from the bird to flow down your throat while also allowing the heat to disperse. Then the diner is supposed to bite off the head, discard and take as long as fifteen minutes to delicately chew the whole bird, bones, organs, all.
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| Picture taken from the cookingwithlittlebuddy.com blog, with thanks for his information on Anthony Bourdain's dinner |
While researching the ortolans, I came across this website: http://www.coldbacon.com/food/ortolan.html and can not identify the picture, which is not captioned or referenced. I can not find it any of my Miró searches and would welcome any information about this funny looking bird in the painting.
Let's Talk Around since not About
In a discussion with Kenneth Koch, John Ashberry said: It's rather hard to be a good artist and also be able to explain intelligently what your art is about. In fact, the worse your art is the easier it is to talk about it.
I can certainly agree that discussing what one's own art is about might be difficult, but I think we ought to be careful not to misread this statement as suggesting that one ought not to be able to discuss one's art. This is extremely difficult, and makes many uncomfortable, but an artist ought to be able to help guide people to elements by which they can begin a relationship with the work.
Why not just let people see it and appreciate it (or not) for themselves?
Well, that certainly would be nice. Unfortunately, especially today, we live in a world where we expect to be assisted. That has, even more unfortunately, created an environment in which people do not believe we can understand art and demand someone to tell us about it. Anyone can, and there are gallerists and curators who will, but why not let the artist at least provide some introductory remarks on which to help the viewer set sail–note that I did not suggest the artist talk about the art itself, so much as talk around it, talk about interesting things to consider alongside it, talk about anything that might allow someone who is afraid of art to begin to consider it alone.
So long as we continue to propagate the myth that artists are unintelligent and unintelligible beings of another realm, we will continue to have an audience for art that believes it must learn a foreign language in order to understand what it sees. Artists are trained to produce image-based productions (whether of a lasting or momentary-performative variety) and can equally be encouraged (or even taught) to speak for themselves. John Ashberry was an eloquent art critic who attended to art with care and compassion (even if he claimed in an interview in the Paris Review never to have been interested in producing art criticism but fell into it to make money). He has, however and even, been notably inspired by art, as in Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror for which he won the Pulitzer Prize as well as the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Thank you, Parmigianino!
Not speaking about a work of art may even be important for the work of art to stand on its own, and develop its own life, apart from the artist. As Oscar Wilde said, a work of art "may be marred, and indeed often is so, by an excess of intellectual intention on the part of the artist. For when the work is finished it has, as it were, an independent life of its own, and may deliver a message far other than that whcih was put into its lips to say." If the artist knows the meaning of the work of art, and can state it, that meaning may limit how the work can impact. But not speaking about the intention of the work does not negate talking about art, albeit indirectly, because in fact, it is that very indirection that begins to open up for the common viewer the great realm of art, and learn to step sideways out of the dominating elements of the immediate to see something from a different, perhaps convex, point of view.
I can certainly agree that discussing what one's own art is about might be difficult, but I think we ought to be careful not to misread this statement as suggesting that one ought not to be able to discuss one's art. This is extremely difficult, and makes many uncomfortable, but an artist ought to be able to help guide people to elements by which they can begin a relationship with the work.
Why not just let people see it and appreciate it (or not) for themselves?
Well, that certainly would be nice. Unfortunately, especially today, we live in a world where we expect to be assisted. That has, even more unfortunately, created an environment in which people do not believe we can understand art and demand someone to tell us about it. Anyone can, and there are gallerists and curators who will, but why not let the artist at least provide some introductory remarks on which to help the viewer set sail–note that I did not suggest the artist talk about the art itself, so much as talk around it, talk about interesting things to consider alongside it, talk about anything that might allow someone who is afraid of art to begin to consider it alone.
So long as we continue to propagate the myth that artists are unintelligent and unintelligible beings of another realm, we will continue to have an audience for art that believes it must learn a foreign language in order to understand what it sees. Artists are trained to produce image-based productions (whether of a lasting or momentary-performative variety) and can equally be encouraged (or even taught) to speak for themselves. John Ashberry was an eloquent art critic who attended to art with care and compassion (even if he claimed in an interview in the Paris Review never to have been interested in producing art criticism but fell into it to make money). He has, however and even, been notably inspired by art, as in Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror for which he won the Pulitzer Prize as well as the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Thank you, Parmigianino!
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| Parmigianino, Self Portrait at the Mirror, c 1524 |
The Importance of Being
The production currently on Broadway of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest has some flaws, which mostly did not keep me from laughing. The script is too good. Wilde is too wonderful.
I have a list of people whose works and efforts seem incomparable to any of my own and so work, and work, and work. How did Wilde write so much, have so much fun, so much demand and well? One of the reasons that I have been quiet is because I have a million notes on talks I have attended, works that I have seen, but have not had the time to write them up. Notes, however, must always be drafted immediately after being taken, otherwise they remain a jumble of meaningless words, undecipherable far quicker than my imagination can fathom.
Despite all that, I took today off to recover, because there are many ways of being, none of which mean a thing if being exhausted is the only state of being. And so I, like John Worthing, understand the importance of being something other than the state we dash about seeming.
I have a list of people whose works and efforts seem incomparable to any of my own and so work, and work, and work. How did Wilde write so much, have so much fun, so much demand and well? One of the reasons that I have been quiet is because I have a million notes on talks I have attended, works that I have seen, but have not had the time to write them up. Notes, however, must always be drafted immediately after being taken, otherwise they remain a jumble of meaningless words, undecipherable far quicker than my imagination can fathom.
Despite all that, I took today off to recover, because there are many ways of being, none of which mean a thing if being exhausted is the only state of being. And so I, like John Worthing, understand the importance of being something other than the state we dash about seeming.
Sunsets
On the bus from Seattle to Vancouver, I had the good fortune to sit in the front row and watch the countryside, so different from the East Coast I am accustomed to seeing. On either side, there were huge pine trees, on the right hand side growing among the rocky terrain. Occasionally, we sped past a waterfall and I, the blase city girl, found myself gasping in delight.
The bus rounded a bend, and suddenly the large sky reappeared in so many shades of yellow, pink, orange, green, purple, with white and gray and navy clouds. I stopped reading for a while to enjoy the simple picture presented by the sun setting. Which is when, the conductor suddenly said: "If you painted it just like that, no one would believe it was real".
She is right in part because it was so pretty. But it also made me think that she should put it in those terms. I was struck, again and only because it was in such an unexpected context, that there is an expectation of truthfulness in art. Now of course, if it is too realistically painted, the questions can become, why bother? There is photography. But if it does not correlate to the viewer's personal vision of reality than the picture deceives. Interestingly, and as the bus conductor so rightly pointed out, if it is realistic it is least likely to accepted as such.
Oscar Wilde once joked that Turner invented sunsets, meaning of course that we would never recover from the influence of his pictures of sunsets. Certainly, the vivid colors of his paintings seem the epitome of the sunset, and a sunset must somehow be as orange to be accepted as glorious. We can't escape the influence of others. They are there in the fragile neural connections of our mind. Traveling, however, can sometimes shift the comfortable state we have cultivated and a simple remark can lead to new thoughts.
I never notice sunsets at home because I am too busy, or so I thought. I am not sure that I see it that way now. Traveling today reminded me that I don't need to (not) see things the way I have, or others do. But if I want to keep seeing things for myself, then I will likely have to stay open to a surprise. A surprise that may scintillate but is as likely to disenchant, because a truly personal vision is not always a pretty one.
The bus rounded a bend, and suddenly the large sky reappeared in so many shades of yellow, pink, orange, green, purple, with white and gray and navy clouds. I stopped reading for a while to enjoy the simple picture presented by the sun setting. Which is when, the conductor suddenly said: "If you painted it just like that, no one would believe it was real".
She is right in part because it was so pretty. But it also made me think that she should put it in those terms. I was struck, again and only because it was in such an unexpected context, that there is an expectation of truthfulness in art. Now of course, if it is too realistically painted, the questions can become, why bother? There is photography. But if it does not correlate to the viewer's personal vision of reality than the picture deceives. Interestingly, and as the bus conductor so rightly pointed out, if it is realistic it is least likely to accepted as such.
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| Turner Sunset c. 1830-5 |
I never notice sunsets at home because I am too busy, or so I thought. I am not sure that I see it that way now. Traveling today reminded me that I don't need to (not) see things the way I have, or others do. But if I want to keep seeing things for myself, then I will likely have to stay open to a surprise. A surprise that may scintillate but is as likely to disenchant, because a truly personal vision is not always a pretty one.
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