Score Another Accomplishment for Da Vinci
He was one of the driving artistic forces of the Italian Renaissance, an influence on all art that came after, an engineer and scientist, inventor, someone capable of drawing with one hand while writing a treatise backwards with the other, and ... the father of evolution?
Not quite, but apparently
Leonardo Da Vinci was so convinced of the close relations between apes, monkeys, and men that he didn't consider it a point that needed argument:
He explicitly says "apes, monkeys and the like" are not merely related to humans but indeed "almost of the same species". In other words, Leonardo, writing simply on the basis of his own observations more than 500 years ago, says pretty much the same thing the modern science writer Jared Diamond, on the basis of DNA evidence, argues in his book The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee. Nor is this a stray observation. Leonardo says it again, in a note on internal anatomy: "Describe the various forms of the intestines of the human species (delle spetie umana), of apes and suchlike. Then, in what way the leonine species differ ... "
Next thing you know, someone will find somewhere in his notebooks descriptions of the calculus, quantum physics, velcro, and the smoothie.
Labels: art, Da Vinci, engineering, evolution, science
Korean Renaissance Exhibit
I haven't seen it yet, but hope to travel down to Manhattan to take in the
Metropolitan Museum's Art of the Korean Resaissance. (Be sure to click on the multimedia link that has 11 images of objects in the exhibit.) The more usual association of Renaissance is European, but apparently the time from the 15th to 17th centuries was a period of artistic experimentation. Unfortunately, a series of invasions wiped out most examples of the work, as might have happened had such tribes as the Franks and Visigoths invaded Europe after DaVinci, Dürer, and Dante had finished their work. You can find
more information on the exhibit here.
Also be sure to look at the
special exhibits page of the Met's web site. It looks as though there are some other displays that would provide some interesting contrasts, including drawings from Raphael to Renoir, arts of the Ming Dynasty, and early Buddhist manuscript painting
Labels: art, visual arts
Some Interesting Colored Pencil Techniques
I was noodling on the web, trying to find some sites that covered using colored pencils. (I'm expanding beyond graphite/charcoal/ink.) Surprisingly, to me at least, I found some
interesting techniques on Crayola's site. I'm particularly taken with the idea of impressing a set of lines into some thick paper and then rubbing over the surface with a colored pencil (obviously doesn't have to be Crayola). I think you'd have to avoid the standard CP advice of keeping the tip really sharp and, instead, using the side of the pencil. I could also see this working with pastels.
Labels: art, colored pencils, drawing, technique
Genius and Popularity
The Guardian has an interesting article on whether
U.K. art schools have a culture of celebrity -- if institutions and instructors are encouraging the thought among students that they will be launched into success upon graduation. "Yes," says some established artists, and "No," reply the schools.
It's an interesting read, particularly when you consider that the economy is going south and that money going into collections may well drop, and individuals and institutions both feel an unpleasant tightness about the wallet. But I think that the question of celebrity and success is off from the real question: Who gets to wear the mantle of genius?
As a culture, we often assume that there is a meritocracy in all endeavors, and that the ones at the top are, by nature and work, the best. It's an approach that you could likely trace back to the Enlightenment and has appeared in many forms, whether the Social Darwinism of the 19th century or various forms of institutionalized racism that explained the dominant group's ascendancy as a combination of nature and application of self.
But that attitude is actually a form of rationalization. To accept that one is in a privileged position though pure dumb luck is to admit two things simultaneously: that one's advantage is unjust, coming at the expense of others who might be more deserving, and that one's luck could just as easily turn sour. A moneyed person, basking in his or her "superior understanding of life," can easily park a fortune with the likes of Bernard Madoff and become destitute as a result.
Rationalization of position within society extends into the arts, which have their own hierarchies and power structures. Those who matriculate from the various academies then apply for positions and assignments from the guardians of culture: the various people who taught them. The cycle extends itself and true artistic merit becomes that which fits in. I've seen some visual artists and writers argue that true genius always bubbles up, but I think that is wishful thinking.
Genius is often under appreciated. Bach's musical interests were in areas already on the wane in his time, and he was considered a second-tier composer, though a cracking good authority on the construction of pipe organs. It took a hundred years for his music to be resurrected, and it took a Felix Mendelssohn to do so. Herman Melville was written off by the critics during his lifetime to the extent that on his death, there was only a single newspaper obituary. Van Gogh? No one would buy his paintings. And yet each of these geniuses now outshines many contemporaries who were considered the major talents in their lifetimes. And these are a few of the examples of which we know. How many greats died too young, or utterly lacked in the art of self-promotion?
The great lie told in schools and in society is that those who are best will be known. Clearly that isn't the case. We are lucky as a people to have a hint of who might possess greatness in our own times, and the possibility of misjudging is high. The true way to work in the arts is through humility. None of us can ever really know how the future might treat us, or whether success is a matter of luck and having enough in common with those in power. All anyone can do is work hard, trying to understand the nature of what we do and honor it. Everything else is a distraction and a crap shoot. Or, as Ecclesiastes succinctly puts it, all is vanity.
Labels: art, education, fame
The Turner Prize - Bastion of Maleness
The
Turner Prize is given out annually to a British visual artist under the age of 50. It is a Very Big Deal in that country and raises a fair amount of controversy. One of the issues is whether the
prize is dominated by men.
I am by no means a "feminist." Nor do I subscribe to the automatic assumption that men do terrible things to women while women are blameless and never injure men. At the same time, I'd prefer to examine a charge before I react. So I went to look at the list of Turner winners over the years.
That list is, to my eye, overwhelmingly male. I'm not suggesting at all that there must be awards ruled by gender parity. But you have to wonder the state of the judges and the decision process. Since the award started in 1984, with no prize given in 1990, there have been three women who won, versus 21 men. I would be suspicious of a perfect 50-50 split, but seven to one? Are male artists really that much better than female? Not from what I've seen in photography, painting, sculpture, video, and other art forms.
There have also been only three years in which the majority of judges were women (though not the same three years as when womeen won). I know that critics, curators, and academics are supposed to be above gender bias, but I think it becomes something that is culturally and even biologically hard-wired. For example, I'm a writer, and I enjoy the work of many writers. But I probably have a closer affinity in general to the work of male writers because they have a tone and approach closer to my own inclinations. I suspect the same might be true in any craft. (Consider your own social circle and how men and women often divide on gender lines over some types of popular entertainment.) If the committee stays generally dominated by male sensibilities, then I wouldn't be surprised if the prize continued to be awarded more often to men. That is wrong and also foolish.
To be fair, I understand that putting together a panel of experts can be difficult. I once moderated a panel on narrative non-fiction at a writing conference and was accused of gender bias because all of the panelists were men. As it happened, I asked a number of leading publications if they could send a representative, and those happened to be the people available. But when that happens 70 percent of the time, you must wonder whether it continues to be accident.
Labels: art, awards, bias, Britain, gender, Turner, visual arts
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.
Labels: art, painting, portraiture, Renaissance
Comic Art Museums and Believing Someone Else's Press
The Guardian reported on a
new German museum of comic art. In it, the writer accepted a claim that it was the first museum devoted to comics in the world. That's the problem of beleiving what you read. San Francisco
has had one since 1987; there is a
cartoon art museum in Florida and two in New York City; and the
National Cartoon Museum opened in 1974 under the name the International Museum of Comic Art. I knew offhand about the one in San Francisco, and about 20 seconds of searching the web revealed these others. There may well be others. It was sloppy work to assume that because someone claims something to be original that it is.
Labels: art, articles, comics, museums
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.
Labels: aesthetics, art, collectors
Indian Art Buyers Take to Photography
According to this story from IANS (Indo-Asian News Service),
art collectors in India are starting to hold photography in higher regard:
Classical art photographer Aniruddha Mukherjee feels that photography as an art stands out because it captures 'time and space' and yet transcends both at the same time through abstract touches, play of light and intelligent studies in colour.
'There are very interesting things happening in photography in India. A group of photographers (Atul Bhalla for instance) are adding experimental layers to their photographs to make it more attractive to buyers as collectors' items. They are going beyond conventional photography,' Mukherjee said.
Although most of the sources in the story are either photographers or sellers of photography - which would make them all people with axes to grind - Mukherjee is interesting because he started as a portait painter, but found that the cost of all the labor going into a portrait was "a bit too steep" for most buyers. However, a portrait photographer can still get a "classical portrait" while charging a lot less. Another source in the story, photographer Ajay Rajgharia, noted that photographs are a tenth the price of a painting. And so, photography still remains the literal poor cousin of canvas.
Labels: art, India, market
Big International Photography Show in New York
If you're near New York and want to catch some of the best in art photography this weekend, head to the Association of International Photography Art Dealer (
>AIPAD) show, running from today through Sunday. As
New York Art News notes:
More than 75 of the world’s leading fine art photography galleries will present a wide range of museum quality work by contemporary, modern and 19th century masters at the Park Avenue Armory at 67th Street and Park Avenue in New York City.
Admission is $25 a day or $35 for the run of the show, and you get a catalog (which itself would cost $25,
if you weren't attending). Show hours are 11AM to 7PM today, 11 to 8PM Friday and Saturday, and 11 to 6PM Sunday.
Labels: art, exhibitions
Put Down That T-Shirt
In proof that admission to M.I.T. doesn't keep someone from being stupid,
an undergraduate nearly got herself shot for looking like a walking bomb:
Star Simpson, 19, was wearing a black hooded sweatshirt and approached an airport employee in Terminal C at 8 a.m. to inquire about an incoming flight from Oakland, according to Major Scott Pare of the State Police. She was holding a lump of what looked like putty in her hands. The employee asked about the plastic circuit board on her chest, and Simpson walked away without responding, Pare said.
It was Playdough in her hand and "art" on her sweatshirt. Maybe being surrounded by machine gun-toting police had a beneficial effect on her education.
Labels: art, bomb, hoax, Logan, M.I.T., student
