Renaissance Portraiture: Propoganda and Photography of the Times

Jackie Wullschlager has an interesting piece in the Financial Times on an exhibition of Renaissance portraiture at the National Gallery in London in cooperation with the Prado Madrid. Looking at oil paintings of faces and figures, it takes some imagination to get out of the current associations and see them as they fit into society of those times:

Humanism and the medium of oil paint were more or less born together. Each enhanced the other as the greatest artists of the day embraced a medium offering un-rivalled scope for depth, naturalism, refinement, psychological complexity. Early likenesses were destined not for the wall but to evoke absent loved ones or – as in Holbein’s treacherously flattering “Anne of Cleves” for Henry VIII – to prepare marriage alliances; once surveyed, or when the subject turned up, they were stored in boxes: thus the small size. In the 16th century, however, their purpose evolved to became more decorative, larger, and more subtly propagandist.

There was no photography, so paintings were the equivalent. I did a quick check in Wikipedia on the history of watercolor painting. Although the earliest examples were ancient, it really began in the Renaissance, yet they were seen as a medium for naturalist work - producing images of wildlife and plants. So oils remained the choice for portraits. I wonder how much economics and time sensitivity played into the smaller image format. Certainly the easy of storing images when someone was around had to be part, much the way we keep snapshots. But also a full-blown large oil portrait would have taken much longer to make and been far more expensive.

One overarching story is the dissemination of portraiture down the social scale. By 1554, satirist Pietro Aretino, whose own sumptuous portrait by Titian hangs in the Palazzo Pitti, lamented that “even tailors and vintners are given life by painters” – and indeed, a highly engaging work is Giovanni Battista Moroni’s courteous “The Tailor”, caught still holding scissors and cloth, to incline his head to listen to us.

I suspect that and the need to create images in shorter periods of time were similarly large driving factors of the format. The article has some real insight and makes me wish I had business taking me to London and dropping me off briefly at the National.

Color-Coordinated Art Buying

The Guardian's Arts Diary has a short piece that is both amusing and distressing at the same time. According to someone from Christie's, well-heeled collectors have some small reasons that guide their choices in large investments into art. They prefer bright, cheerful colors over brown; get confused if you have to plug something in; and want items smaller than the average Park Avenue elevator. Nothing like elevated aesthetics.

Leonard Nimoy's Full Body Project

Wandering in Northampton, Mass. the other day I stepped into the R. Michelson Gallery because I noticed that it had a showing of Leonard Nimoy's photography. The building is an old bank and the photos were in the vault - a collection of images from several of the photographer's topic projects. Some of teh new material is a departure from his typical work and shows a new range for his eye.

In the past, Nimoy has concentrated on studies of the female figure - well lighted, shot, and printed, and certainly imaginative. For example, there are images from his black & white project and the Shekhina (Jewish concept of a female spirit of God) project. But after a point you have to start asking how much more can be done with the perfect body of an actor, dancer, athlete, or model. It's just that so much has been said visually about the subject that finding something new becomes difficult.

Nimoy finally realized this and had a chance to shoot what he calls the full body project: images of large women who are part of a burlesque review. While some of the photos are homages to classic images, I found that the personality of the participants came though with a sparkling strength - far different from his other work. Instead of images of nude bodies, he achieved images of nude women. They aren't classically beautiful, but they are in many ways far more interesting than physical "perfection," and help remind that the very concept is ephemeral. (Just look at the work of Rubens.)

Nimoy is working on a new project - Who Do You Think You Are? - in which he tries getting people to reveal secrets about themselves in front of the camera and show their "other selves." It seems to me that this new direction of more confrontation and exploration of people relates in a way to his background as an actor, where he had to become a vehicle to allow a character not himself to come forth. His latest work is a visual aspect of the same process of discovery and creation.

A New Twist

I'm going to put more effort into this blog but am expanding the scope. Instead of just photography, it will also cover more traditional art forms as I find myself spending a lot more time with a sketchbook and pen/pencil/charcoal in my hand.