Damaged But Not Diminished

Pablo Picasso, The Actor, 1904-05, oil on canvas,

77.2 x 45.4 in. (196.2 x 115.3 cm),

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Last month an accident to an important Picasso painting, The Actor, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York, brought attention to works of art that have been damaged. In the case of the Picasso, a visitor fell against the work causing a six-inch vertical gash in the lower right part of the approximately six by four foot canvas. Most likely, the tear will be difficult to detect once repaired. (See Vogel, Carol, “Questions Over Fixing Torn Picasso, New York Times on the Web, 25 January 2010, Art & Design.)

Is the painting diminished? I think not. The mishap will become a somewhat amusing but cautionary addition to the painting’s history. In a way, the incident fits the interpretation of the painting’s subject.

The work is from Picasso’s romantic Rose Period and depicts a slender acrobat. It was created at the time circus performers were equated with artists. They were marginalized by society, martyrs to their art - victims of mistreatment.

In a similar manner, we can now look at the painting in the Metropolitan Museum as an object that was a victim of a society that was heedless of its protection. The work becomes a momento mori. The occurrance reminds things happen with age whether natural or random. After all, The Actor is over one hundred years old.

Rembrandt van Rijn, The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Jan Deyman, 1656,
oil on canvas, cut down to 39.4 x 52.8 in. (100 x 134 cm),
Amsterdam, Amsterdams Historish Museum

A well-known example of an art work that has been marred by misfortune is Rembrandt’s 1656 The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Jan Deyman. Most of the canvas was destroyed by fire in 1723, leaving only a small section of the central area. But what remains is a powerhouse of conciseness. Painted during the highly prosperous age of the Dutch Republic, this group portrait is a startling realization of interior thought overlaid with moral implication.

The seventeenth-century Dutch had developed numerous professional organizations and lots of civic groups that commissioned portraits of their leaders and members for meeting rooms. Portraiture became the most popular and well-paid artistic category of the period. In this genre as in others, Rembrandt departed from tradition. He did not depict static representations where sitters are lined up one next to the other in unmoving compositions. His portraits have action and meaning far more then faithful representation of those portrayed.

The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp, 1632, oil on canvas,
66.7 x 85.2 in. (169.5 x 216.5 cm), Mauritshuis, The Hague

The Dr. Deyman was his second anatomy scene. In 1632, he had painted The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp, where he dramatically turned the subject into a lesson on mortality, divinity and knowledge. (For an excellent analysis of both anatomy group portraits and more, see Simon Schama’s Rembrandt’s Eyes, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999.)

In what is left of the Dr. Deyman work, we see the surgeon’s hands dissecting the cadaver’s brain. His assistant on the left, shown with a thoughtful gaze, holds the corpse's skullcap. The quite foreshortened corpse is so angled that the viewer has a first hand view into the open stomach cavity. What is one to make of this?

Andrea Mantegna, Dead Christ, c. 1490, tempera on canvas,
26.8 x 31.9 in. (68 x 81 cm), Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan

Orazio Borgianni, The Pietà, c. 1615, oil on canvas,
21.7 x 30.3 in. (55 x 77 cm), Galleria Spada, Rome

Firstly, Rembrandt’s composition is a reference to the Dead Christ by the fifteenth-century Italian master Andrea Mantegna and similar images by Orazio Borgianni, an early seventeenth-century Roman artist.

Rembrandt turned the secular event, the autopsy, into something sacred by making reference to these earlier images. The painting is interpreted as a religious scene. Dr. Deyman hands make a gesture of blessing over the dead while his nearby assistant holds the Eucharistic chalice.

The viewer focuses on the central figures of the canvas that fortunately have survived. The cadaver’s extreme backward and forward extension in pictorial space and the placement of the dissecting table against the outermost front of the picture plane, persuade, as in the Mantegna, that the feet of the deceased extend into real space beyond the picture frame. The viewer is thus present in the image and participates in the event.

Surely this painting is not diminished.

Little Things Mean a Lot

Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen, Crucifixion, 1507,
oil on panel, 37 ½ x 30 ¼ in. (95.3 x 76.8 cm),
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Looking at the Crucifixion panel by Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I was reminded of the 1950’s popular song title, “Little Things Mean a Lot”.

Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen (ca. 1472-1533) was a Netherlandish painter and designer of woodcuts active in the early sixteenth century primarily in Amsterdam. He was a conservative artist. Although not an innovator, he was an able observer with an eye for details. His work has charm and lyricism.

The Metropolitan Museum Crucifixion is a crowded scene. Some fifteen figures, three on horseback, fill the foreground. Soldiers hold their weapons, finely dressed aristocrats stare, the Apostle John helps the fallen Virgin Mary, and Mary Magdalene kneels in prayer before the cross.

Many of those depicted are fashionably garbed as if the narrative gave the painter an opportunity to describe the riches of his contemporaries. The viewer gets caught up with the story – the crucifixion of Jesus and the reactions of those present.



















Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen, Detail of Crucifixion, 1507,
oil on panel, 37 ½ x 30 ¼ in. (95.3 x 76.8 cm),
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York



















Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen, Detail of Crucifixion, 1507,
oil on panel, 37 ½ x 30 ¼ in. (95.3 x 76.8 cm),
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Four relatively small angels, three of which are levitating about Jesus’s upper wounds, seem minor players in this drama. But wait. What are they doing? The angels are filling their chalices with the blood emanating from Jesus’s wounds. By their action, the central doctrine of Catholicism comes into focus – the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. The angels’s chalices that hold the blood allude to the chalice that contains the wine at Catholic Mass. Believers partake in the body and blood of Christ through the consecrated bread and wine and thus share in the sacrifice of the cross. These lovely angels that may seem insignificant are not so.


















Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen, Calvary,
c. 1507-10, oil (?) on panel, 40.9 x 34.6 in. (104 x 88 cm),
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands

I draw your attention to another crucifixion by Jacob Cornelisz in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. This work, entitled Calvary, includes in the background depictions of events that occurred before the crucifixion. The four chalice-holding angels can easily be lost among the forty-plus other characters. Their presence, however, is important.



















Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen, The Adoration of the Christ Child,
c. 1515, oil on panel, 38 3/16 x 30 1/6 in. (97 x 74.9 cm),
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago,

The Art Institute of Chicago’s The Adoration of the Christ Child, attributed to Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen and Workshop, offers a happy encounter.















Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen, Detail of The Adoration of the Christ Child,
c. 1515, oil on panel, 38 3/16 x 30 1/6 in. (97 x 74.9 cm),
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois

The individuated actions of the numerous music-making cherubs exhibit uninhibited joy. You can almost hear this painting!














Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen, Detail of The Adoration of the Christ Child,
c. 1515, oil on panel, 38 3/16 x 30 1/6 in. (97 x 74.9 cm),
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois

There is much going on around the main event but don’t omit a look at the small distant figures that set the scene for the Adoration. These diminutive beings matter.

Happy New Year

Henri Matisse, Dance (I), early 1909, oil on canvas,
8 6 1/2 x 12 9 1/2 in. (259.7 x 390.1 cm),
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Wishing you a joyous 2010.

A Colorful Awakening

Homo sapiens sapiens, 2005
Audio-video installation, video still

Sometimes an experience out of the ordinary awakens our senses. An example would be an amuse-bouche eaten at the onset of a meal which stimulates the palate and leads to the intensification of taste. Similarly a visual sight or sights can alert the mind to the pleasures of seeing. Such was the case for me.

It was the stimuli of works by an audio-video installation artist and the viewing of an indigenous art show that aroused my sensitivity to colors.

First, a little background. This seemed to be the year for the Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist. A major show at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, “Pour Your Body Out (7354 Cubic Meters)”, took place from November 2008 through February 2009. From September to December, Rist’s audio-video installations filled the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki, Finland. Then in October, exhibits of her work opened at the Palace of Arts and the Museum of Image and Sound in São Paulo, Brazil.

I have been an admirer of Rist since her exhibit at Art Basil in 1994. She is a complex artist whose work touches on many themes including gender, sensuality, and sex. Yet, it is her heightened use of color that elicits the strongest response.

In an article about Rist, The New York Times Magazine, November 15, 2009, the artist was quoted talking about the yellow of a piece of lemon on the rim of her drinking glass. She explained that if an artist wished to depict that color yellow in film or photography, it would not be the same – it would be less yellow. This is something she does not want to happen in her work – Rist does not want the yellow to appear less so.



















Pour Your Body Out (7354 Cubic Meters), 2008,
Multichannel audio-video installation,
Installation view, Museum of Modern Art, New York

Thus, her multimedia installations are filled with intense color-saturated imagery. She tries to capture the “real” color of actual things such as the rich red of a ripe apple or the pure blue of a clear sky. When I emerge into light from the darkness of watching one of her videos, the natural hues of objects appear more vivid, more penetrating. The world seems to have gone from black and white to Technicolor. Her work activates my color awareness.














Featherworks, Beauty and Knowledge Exhibit,
3 October to 29 November 2009,
Caixa Cultural São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

A show of indigenous featherwork that took place at the Caixa Cultural São Paulo in São Paulo, Brazil had a similar impact. The exhibit, “Beauty and Knowledge”, was organized by the Museum of Archeology and Ethnology of the University of São Paulo as part of the museum’s 20th anniversary celebrations. This was a unique opportunity to see some ninety rarely displayed feather and fluff artifacts.


















Featherwork, Beauty and Knowledge Exhibit,
3 October to 29 November 2009,
Caixa Cultural São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

The gallery was surprisingly well lit given the light-sensitive material on view and the varied featherworks produced a dazzling spectacle of colors. Again, I was alerted to nature’s intense hues. I thought about the inability of photography, paint, video or film to capture such coloration.

When I left and walked out onto the city streets, the world seemed brighter and more vibrant. My visual palette had once again been stimulated. My responsiveness to colors awakened.

This can happen to you. Continue to look.

Worth a View - A Michelangelo Marble Boy?

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475 – 1564), Young Archer, c. 1490, marble,

overall (wt confirmed): H. 37 x W. 13 1/4 x D. 14 in., 177lb. (94 x 33.7 x 35.6 cm, 80.2867kg)

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York 

Lent by the French State, Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs

Go look at the Young Archer, a marble boy, attributed to Michelangelo at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. On loan from the French Republic, it has received much publicity but underwhelming visits according to my experience and the guard on duty this past Sunday afternoon.

New York University Professor Kathleen Weil-Garris Brandt created quite a stir in 1996 when the New York Times announced her discovery of a lost early work by Michelangelo. It was located right here in New York City at the headquarters of the French Cultural Services in a mansion on Fifth Avenue. The statue, identified as a young archer or cupid, stood above a fountain in the building’s entrance hall. Many rushed to see it but the marble sculpture was in a position that made close examination difficult. Later that year, Professor Brandt published her research in the Burlington Magazine (Vol. 138, No. 1123, Oct., 1996, pp. 644-659). From the beginning, many leading scholars were dubious. Controversy continues.

The statue is now installed where it can easily be studied on the first floor of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the Vélez Blanco Patio. I personally began my viewing by looking down from the Patio’s second floor gallery and from this level was impressed with the details of the statue’s curly hair and the elegant lines of what remains of the body. The figure's arms, lower limbs and a vase needed stability are missing. 

Downstairs, on closer inspection, I felt uncomfortable with the ungainly proportions of the figure’s narrow shoulders and long, thin thighs. I thought the youth’s head rather large relative to the small, well-developed torso. Comparisons to Michelangelo’s early work seemed stretched.

I did appreciate the remarkable modeling of the figure’s head, chest, rib cage and back. Also of note is the rendering of the slight bulge of flesh alongside the outer edges of the baldric as it crosses the figure’s chest. This indication of pressure on flesh is particularly apparent around the belt's back fragment.

In front of the work, an identifying label reads “Attributed to Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564)”. Nearby, explanatory wall panels recount the piece’s history and offer cogent arguments for the attribution.

The jury is still out. For me, the authenticity as a Michelangelo piece is questionable.

Spend time with this work. You may want to form your own opinion.

Matisse and the Antique

Griffin Court, Modern Wing, 2009,
Renzo Piano, Architect
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois

Matisse looked at and thought about classical art. He created works based on antique precedents. The results were radical. I was particularly struck by this on a recent visit to the Art Institute of Chicago's splendid new Modern Wing.

In a third floor gallery are two Matisse bronze statuettes exhibited in a glass vitrine: Thorn Extractor and Woman Leaning on Her Hands. The Thorn Extractor depicts a figure in a startling version of the Spinario pose, a motif representing a seated youth removing a thorn from the sole of his foot. The term Spinario is from the Italian noun spina meaning thorn. I wrote about the Spinario figure in my last blog, “Andrea Riccio Lamp – New to The Metropolitan Museum of Art”, Monday, September 21, 2009.


















Henri Matisse, Thorn Extractor, 1906, bronze,
7 15/16 x 5 ½ x 6 in. (20.3 x 14 x 15.2 cm)
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois

Matisse’s Thorn Extractor is bent over in concentration. The balance and repose of its ancestors are gone as well as the openness of limbs. Matisse’s Extractor is crunched up and awkward. His muscular left leg is straight, flush against the back support; his right leg is drawn up so that its knee almost reaches his right shoulder. It is a strong, dynamic formation with surface facets that animate the bronze as they catch light.












Henri Matisse, Woman Leaning on Her Hands,1905, bronze,
4 ¾ x 9 ¼ x 6 ¾ in. (12.11 x 25.5 x 17.2 cm)
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois

Adjacent is the artist’s Woman Leaning on Her Hands. The figure rises from the floor with outstretched arms. Her horizontal extension contrasts with the Thorn Extractor’s essentially vertical axis.















Henri Matisse, The Geranium, autumn 1906, oil on canvas,
39 ½ x 32 1/8 in. (100.3 x 81. 5 cm)
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois


















Henri Matisse, Thorn Extractor,
Detail of The Geranium

On a nearby wall hangs an early Matisse still-life, The Geranium. Here the painter has included his own sculptures – specifically the two bronze statuettes on view in the glass showcase. The image bursts with light, color and life. Dated 1906, its unconventional nature astonishes.














Installation of works by Henri Matisse, Gallery 391A,
third floor, Modern Wing, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois

This is a wonderful gem of museum installation. Matisse’s original sculptural figures are exhibited next to the artist’s painting in which they are portrayed. All three works were created about the same time. The Thorn Extractor is dated the same year as the painting; the Woman Leaning on Her Hands a year earlier.

The Museum acquired the painting in 1932. The statuettes arrived decades later: the Woman in 1992 and the Thorn Extractor in 2008. The Extractor came as a gift from the Ruth Stanton Family Foundation. I’d like to think that some astute person or persons from this Foundation recognized and seized the fortunate opportunity to complete this painting/bronze statuette juxtaposition – a happy circumstance.

Matisse and the Spinario also reminds us that art talks about art as it redefines and builds on the past. You will recognize more of this as your visual vocabulary increases. Continue to look. The enrichment is there for the seeing.

Andrea Riccio Lamp - New to The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Andrea Briosco, called Riccio, Oil Lamp, ca. 1515-1525,
bronze, 9 5/8 x 8 13/16 x 2 5/8 in.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has acquired an Andrea Riccio (1470-1532) bronze oil lamp that is on display in the Italian Renaissance Bronze Gallery. This is the only surviving Riccio lamp that still has both its lid and legs.

(For more on Riccio, see my blog post on Wednesday, November 26, 2008, “Andrea Riccio at the Frick Collection”.)

The Museum’s new lamp is in the shape of an unrigged sailing vessel. Across its body, cavorting infants form the main frieze which is framed by delicate shells. The lamp rests on slender curving legs whose shapes are echoed by the lid’s handles. On either side of the cover, a playful child sits holding on to the tail of a dolphin-like sea creature. Classical details animate the work as the eye moves from one design element to another. There is movement and rhythm in all manner of decoration. The technique is of the highest quality. This new acquisition joins the other Metropolitan’s Riccio holdings that include the artist’s work, those attributed to his “followers”, “in the manner of” or “workshop of”.

There is a lot more to see in this Italian Renaissance gallery whose objects may be modest in scale but offer much to enjoy. Here are depictions of mythological, secular and religious figures – Venus images as well as saints – inkwells and plaques. The bronzes are small enough to fit nicely on a studio shelf or study desk. Their compact size allows for intimate viewing, examination and comparisons with nearby objects.





















Bartolomeo Bellano, David with the Head of Goliath, ca. 1470-80, bronze

Nearby the Riccio display is a case containing a gilt-bronze statuette of David with the Head of Goliath by Bartholomeo Bellano who was a student of Donatello and Riccio’s teacher.

A bronze Spinario statuette from North Italy dated 1500-1520 can be contrasted with the approximate life-size bronze Spinario attributed to Antonello Gagni, Italy (Sicily) 1507-09, on view in the adjoining Vélez Blanco Patio.





















Attrib. to Antonello Gagini, Spinario, 1507-09, bronze

The Spinario, a depiction of a boy removing a thorn from his foot, was based on a Greek original and copied by the Romans. Very few Roman bronzes survive but a 1st century Roman bronze Spinario did and was one of the first antique sculptures to be coped by Italian Renaissance artists. I like to find representations of the Spinario motif and think about how the artist individualized the theme. Some, following the Roman antique example, show the youth’s left foot crossed over his right thigh; some depict the opposite. Some are lithe elegant youths; some are solid unpretentious boys. You may find your own favorite image to follow.

Go see the new Riccio and spend time with the Italian Renaissance bronzes. The viewing will reward the eye as well as the mind – just what an artist like Riccio intended.