The RoboCop and Art History!

Happy New Year to all!

I know its been a while since my last post and I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday.

I was just going through my inbox and noticed an unread newsletter from my art-history daily subscription. The newsletter contained an interview with the RoboCop himself, Mr. Peter Weller! Now, I saw RoboCop when I was little but I used to watch Peter Weller's show on the history channel, Engineering an Empire...the show was so informative and interesting! There was an episode discussing Rome and he mentioned his interest in art history and his pursuit in the academic field. I always thought it was exciting how the RoboCop was studying art history! I would love to attend one of his lectures as he his now finishing up his PhD at UCLA. Well, enough of my babble...here's the article!

http://blogs.getty.edu/iris/actor-peter-weller-discusses-renaissance-florence-and-answers-your-questions/

"The Ghent Altarpiece" and online viewing

Hello All,

Its been a while since my last post. I found this article about a website which allows viewers to get up close and personal to Van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece (read here). As an enthusiast of Northern European works, I couldn't help but share! The site is called Closer to Van Eyck and it allows visitors to zoom in and out of the work without getting the pixelation which usually follows zooming in. It also includes various modes of x-ray and infrared modes of viewing. These options allow one to see the under drawing usually associated with works from this period.

Ghent Altarpiece, Jan van Eyck, Oil on Wood, 1432.

 While visiting this website, I couldn't help but think of how the internet is used to educate the masses and what it allows us to do. Sites such as this as well as the Google Art Project, which I have posted on before, allows art lovers and art historians to get nice and cozy with our favourite works, something not even the best art historians get to experience. However, this mode of viewing doesn't allow one to "feel" the work, something else I have written about.

Most of the works I have seen have been online, rarely experiencing them in person. My favourite site is probably Vatican.va. There's a virtual tour of the Vatican and Saint Peter's and, for those who have an iPad (shameless plug!) allows one to rotate and swivel ones view of specific areas. Using such a site on this specific type of viewing device is almost like being able to touch the work. It feels as though that great distance between my couch in Toronto and Rome is removed and I am able to get up close and personal with my favourite works. Though I "ooo and aww" at these sites, I know I am missing the actual experience of standing before such perfection and genius!


This is only furthered when one gets to experience a work in person. My one and only trip to London, England allowed me to see some of my favourite works in person. And though I wasn't able to get so close to the Turners or Constables as I would be able to online, there is something about standing in front of the actual painting. It becomes real. It is no longer a piece of work that I have studied and zoomed in and out of online but something that's real. You can feel the movement of the brush strokes rather than plainly seeing them on a screen.

I am in no way stating that these sites are a bad idea, quite the opposite. It allows people like me and, I am sure some those who will read this, the opportunity to get personal with an artwork we will probably never see in person. But I think it is important to note that viewing it online is nothing like viewing it in person. It is an excellent educational tool and fantastic for research purposes. And though it brings us closer, there is still a distance that one is aware of which only makes that longing to see it in its flesh even worse!

My piece of advice is to view these sites as often as possible and be aware of all future sites which bring art to those who are interested. Art is not the most accessible source of education or entertainment and sites like these bring works to life and allow it to be accessible.

Happy viewing!

Restoration of Le Brun's Versailles Ceiling Paintings

I recently joined this online newspaper called Historical Fiction. Basically it's a community of history enthusiasts and writers who post stories and articles they have found. There are quite a few interesting reads and my pile of articles to be read is growing at a steady pace! Here's one about the restoration of the ceiling paintings at Versailles. I am jealous of restorers, I am pretty sure if I ever got that close to a painting I'd be bumrushed by a security guard! They get to touch these works and be part of their history. Imagine! http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2070471/Versailles-Restorers-bring-new-life-17th-century-art-French-palace.html

The MET's Christmas Tree

Happy Friday!
I know it's been a while. I came across this article about the MET's Christmas tree and I thought I would repost the article here. The photos are beautiful and the use of Baroque figurines is thrilling! Wish I could see it in person.

http://hyperallergic.com/42591/metropolitan-museum-christmas-tree/

I love Hyperallergic! They always have insightful and fun articles about the art world, some of which I try to repost here.

Enjoy the article and I hope everyone has a restful and enjoyable holiday!!

"Spiral Jetty" up for grabs!

I've been following this story for a few weeks, if not more, and more news has surfaced which seems to have complicated the problem. Here are the two articles I read today concerning the lease issues concerning Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty.

Hyperallergic:
http://hyperallergic.com/31787/spiral-jetty-updates/

Etsy:
http://www.etsy.com/blog/en/2011/who-owns-spiral-jetty/


And for fun, a video excerpt from Robert Smithson's film about the Spiral Jetty from YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCfm95GyZt4&feature=related

The Magic of London's V&A and National Gallery.

Hello All,

It has been a while since my last post and I must say quite a bit has happened. I am preparing myself for the application process to graduate school and have just returned from London, England. I know, London! I've never traveled and this was my very first plane ride! Exciting, to say the least!

The museums in London, as I am sure you are all well aware, are free...completely and totally free. I couldn't ask for anything more. I know these galleries have an extensive collection but their specific contents was not something I have a great knowledge of.  Needless to say, I found myself pleasantly surprised.


My trip to the Victoria and Albert Museum was fantastic. After making my way through the gallery, in a bit of a daze, I happened across a Bernini...I know, a Bernini! I flipped, literally. As I made my way through the sculpture atrium, I came across the work from behind, not really attuned to what it was.

I thought to myself " this is way Baroque is so brilliant. Look at the movement and weightlessness of the fabric." And then it happened. I turned the corner, face to face with the front of the sculpture and the name literally leaped off the plaque....BERNINI! I had lost my mom in the midst of the tourist crowd and was, therefore, alone, freaking out. It was a Bernini, a real Bernini. 

To be honest, it feels like a dream. I know I stood in front of it for quite a while as people came and went, but I don't feel like I actually saw it. The beauty of the V&A is you're allowed to take pictures, so I do have some physical evidence of my Bernini experience! Here are some of the many photos I took of the work:

 My trip to the National Gallery was a bit more surreal than the V&A. You're thinking how? Well, I was prepared to see Turner and Constable and others but not Caravaggio. I made my way through the maze of galleries looking for English favourites and excited to see their greatness in person. I turned into one gallery and there it was Supper at Emmaus.

Caravaggio's Supper at Emmaus, 1600, Oil on Canvas. Image from Wikipedia.

Again, my heart racing (I should probably have this checked out!) and I glided towards the work. I clutched the strap of my bag as I stood before it in utter amazement. I had to contain myself as I almost cried standing so close the painting. You can never prepare yourself for the actual work. You see it a great number of times in text books and online but in person it's completely different. It's as though its alive and real. The work is so much more dramatic in person. The extreme contrast between light and dark, positive and negative space is so much more jarring and fantastic than when you see it on a page of a book. You can see brushstrokes and the dabbing and mixture of paint on the canvas allowing one to feel the presence of the artist. I was standing before an actual Caravaggio. I could smell the oil paint and the quickness of some of his strokes. I was in awe, to say the least.

Turner and Constable was just icing on the cake. Rain, Steam, and Speed always ends up on a slide carousel but to be honest I've never grown sick of it.

J.M.W Turner's Rain, Steam, and Speed. 1844. Oil on Canvas. Image from Wikipedia.

 It's massive in person and so colourful and dramatic. I fell in love all over again with Turner. There were about 5 or 6 works, giving the artist half of the space in the gallery. On the other side was Constable's Hay Wain which, I suppose, is in stark contrast to the quick and ease of Turner's brushwork.

John Constable's The Hay Wain. 1821. Oil on Canvas. Image from http://www.backtoclassics.com/gallery/johnconstable/thehay-wain/

 Constable is so detailed and concise, varying his brushwork from minimal, barely visible strokes, to long, wide strokes. However, there is never a quickness in his work. You stand before it and know this took time, patience, and motivation. Turner, on the other hand, is quick. You can feel his concentration and rhythm when you look at the work. You can feel the artist quickly applying paint, in long, sweeping strokes. It was pure magic!

New Artemisia Gentileschi discovered

 
http://hyperallergic.com/17393/newartemisia-gentileschi/

Great article. Love how un-academic it is!
Enjoy :D

Caravaggio and the National Gallery in Ottawa

Happy Sunday to all.

I cannot believe I have not posted about this before. This June the National Gallery in Ottawa will be host to a show entitled "Caravaggio and his Followers in Rome." The show runs from June 17 to September 11 (happy birthday to me!!!) and will display ten of the artist's works as well as fifty by the Caravaggisiti. Among one of these works is Caravaggio's The Ecstasy of Saint Francis which is one of my very favourites.

The Ecstasy of Saint Francis, Caravaggio, c.1595

Curated by art historian, Sebastian Schütze, author of Caravaggio: The Complete Works and professor at the University of Vienna, has said that the show will include a work which is disputed to be by the hand of Caravaggio but refuses to name the work. Upon hearing of this my heart quickly skipped a beat as I quickly hoped and prayed for it to be The Taking of the Christ.

The Taking of the Christ, Caravaggio, 1602-1603

If Saint Francis and The Taking of the Christ are shown in the same room together I will be calling the National Gallery my home from June to September! I cannot contain my excitement!


Here's the article which, aside from the Caravaggio show, lists the gallery's other up and coming exhibitions.


http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/national-gallery-puts-its-money-on-caravaggio/article1900974/

Top 50 Art History Blogs on www.onlinecourses.net

I recently received an email stating that I am part of the Top 50 Art History Blogs from onlinecourses.net. Not believing the email to be true, I followed the link and there I was! For the Love of Art!!

Here's the link to the top 50 Art History Blogs from Blogger. There are some really good art history blogs out there. Have fun reading.


www.onlinecourses.net/best-art-history-blogs

Google's Art Project and the "aura"

HELLO!

It has been a while. I just realized that I have three followers, which is exciting, considering I thought no one visited this blog, never mind wanting to follow it. So hello to you and I hope you are having a lovely evening!

Have you visited the Google Art Project yet?

     

      A professor of one of my courses this semester brought it to the class' attention. I immediately ran home and tried it out. It is pretty amazing. You can visit all sorts of museums and view a wide range of works up close. I am a little disappointed that many of my favourite works are not up there and you can only zoom in on specific works. "Wandering" through the galleries is wonderful but if a work catches your eye you can't get close enough to it.

Here's a video of how Google went about creating this project:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYXdEUB0VgQ

How amazing would it be to get that close to a work? To wander through a gallery without other visitors?

I hope other galleries will join in. Its a fantastic tool for those with a bit of an interest in art to get close enough to see the details of a specific work. Maybe it will be the seeds of a love for art for those who do not wish to visit a museum.

     My professor posed a question that was quite interesting. Do you think this will replace the museum and the physical art piece?

     My reply would be no, not for me. It's great to be able to visit museums online and look at works close up, possibly closer than if you were actually in the museum (such is the case with the Mona Lisa, or so I am told). It brings to mind Walter Benjamin's theory of the "aura" and how photographic reproductions of works can never totally replace the experience of the work. Each art work contains its own "aura" that is lost in reproduction. I could not agree more. A couple of years ago I took a fantastic Bernini seminar course, in which the professor allowed us to experience learning art in a way that was only open to her graduate students. We attended a Bernini conference, which was a little piece of heaven on earth, as well as visiting the Ottawa National Gallery for the Bernini Portraits exhibition. It was amazing. As I have stated a great many of times, my love for Bernini is undying and fervent. Many of the portrait busts at the show were ones we had looked at, a great number of times, in class. You know they're great but you don't know how great until you stand before them. One such work was Bernini's Scipione Borghese. 

                                           Portrait Bust of Scipione Borghese, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Marble, 1632

Studying it, you understand he was a large man, therefore, the work is a large piece. You are taught that the work has a life-likeness to it and it seems as though the marble is about to speak. Nothing I had read prepared me to see the actual work. It is massive, solid, and shiny. The man has such presence and you feel as though you are in conversation with him. As though his thoughts are rendered in his eyes and his tongue is about to speak what he his thinking. He was, and is, a large man. The shininess of the work tells you he's large, as though he is sweating because of the extra weight. There's a feeling, an emotion that every art piece has and it is something that cannot be captured by photography or Google. You have to physically stand before the work and feel it (although don't touch it!). It is in this way that the Art Project can never replace visiting the museum. Something I am sure the countries featured, tourist sites and museums are quite glad to hear!

Until next time. Thanks for reading.

Drama and Desire

     I love Fridays! I am downtown and at the gallery surrounded by great pieces of art; my Heaven. This summer the AGO is showing an exhibit entitled Drama and Desire. I was a bit skeptical upon hearing about the exhibition. I feared the hype would not match the show. It was advertised as an exhibition displaying works by Jacques-Louis David, Eugene Delacroix, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Edgar Degas, and so on. Aside from Baroque art, works from the Romantic period make my heart race. They are to touch you in ways other works are not supposed to. They appeal to every sense, dream and fear. Hearing of the show, a reel of Romantic pieces played in my mind; Liberty Leading the People, The Raft of Medusa, Gericault's Portraits of the insane, Oath of Horatii, Degas' tiny dancers, etc. Though these works have nothing to do with the thesis of the show–showcasing the drama and theatrics and the relationship between theatre and art– I prayed and hoped for the greatness of the period to reveal itself at the AGO.

I set myself up for disaster and a crashing wave of disappointment. Hearing the publicity for the show my hopes dwindled. The show's major work was, and is, David's Oath of Horatii. I have nothing against this work. It is magnificent, grand and Neo-Classical. I used to be in awe of this work but it seems to show up, in one way or another, in many art history courses. For lack of a better word, I am, quite plainly, sick of it.

      Today I saw Drama and Desire and I am far from disappointed. My prayers were answered and hopes fulfilled. I may not have seen Liberty Leading the People or Gericault's Portraits of the Insane but the lay out of this show was simply amazing.

     The first work the visitor sees is David's Oath of Horatii. I thought I was sick of this work, apparently, I was wrong! Though this is a contentious topic, it is hard to deny that this work is one the greatest works in art history. It is the culmination of art historical tradition into a nice Neo-Classical package. It perfectly and seamlessly displays advances in painting discovered decades, centuries, prior to this work such as depth through perspective, movement, triangular composition, and the masculine, muscular human form.  The work is pre-Revolutionary and was completed on the eve of revolution and movement. It is in every way the calm before the storm. Following this work the French Revolution of 1789 broke out and thus a wave of revolutions and movements followed. Revolutions in culture, society, politics, economy, industry, artistic movements, and religious movements, to name but a few.
     The Romantic Movement was a period of great change. We see the artist become more individualized and interiorized. Nature becomes a religious centre, replacing older orders and traditions. The Industrial Revolution not only played a role economically but also artistically, as seen in Turner's Rain, Steam, Speed.

Standing in front of David's Oath of Horatii one can feel the coming of great change. The work is too perfect, crisp, traditional. Then you notice the date and you can feel the wave rushing towards you.

      My favourite part of the exhibition was the Fuseli room and the Degas room. The Fuseli room contained a huge work of King Lear in which a small piece of the play was recited through audio speakers overhead. Spotlights were set up to highlight the characters parts, when heard, in the painting. Perfect. The viewer feels as though they are watching a play. No need for actors as the work moves and makes its viewer feel.

     The Degas room displayed his child ballerinas. I've seen these works in text books and online and in no way do these mediums do them justice. His ballerinas are graceful, young, and tired. You can hear the whispers from the audience, the music from the orchestra, and time slip away from the dancers as they perform before an eager audience. Beauty and contradiction rendered perfectly.
     I am far from disappointed. I do not regret playing the art history reel in my head, which plays nonstop and always to my satisfaction! I was incredibly pleased with the show, regardless of the exclusion of my favourites. I  suppose my favourites require a trip to their home instead of their trip to my home. I have learned that a textbook or computer cannot capture greatness; it cannot be duplicated and its "aura" is in fact lost through the medium of replication, as Walter Benjamin argued. I am glad I saw the Oath of Horatii in person, it is far greater than I could describe to you.


www.ago.net
All images from Google.

Bernini's Corpus

         I love art, everything about it. I love studying it, I love "googling" it, I  love all of it. I volunteer at a museum here in Toronto and I love it. I look forward to my Friday afternoons.
     Art takes me away from the real world. It's a trip without the drugs! I'm not saying that I love every piece of work ever created, that would be ridiculous. But certain works grab me and hold me. It is at this point that I become incredibly un-academic. It is funny what happens if you let yourself go. Certain works take me away. I always try and visit Bernini's Corpus when I volunteer on Fridays. You walk in the room and it calls your name. It subtly and quietly whispers me forward until I am directly below it. I look straight up at Christ's face and stare admiringly at His calm features. I look down at the platform which tells the viewer who donated the work and the usual artist name, date, and medium. I look back up and the gallery swirls around me and disappears. I watch the drapery, which is carefully placed around Christ's waist, flutter in the wind. I feel the cool wind whistle through the gallery entrance and the warm sand beneath my winter boots. I feel completely taken away, as if standing in the presence of Christ's last breath. And then it happens, students, families, museum goers enter the gallery and stand with me before Christ and I am taken back to present time.
         I look at them and wonder if they see what I see. If the museum is disappearing to them also. Sometimes, sadly, my questions are answered when they quickly walk away. Other times I watch them stare up also. Usually those who stare up are little kids, between 5 and 10 years old. They just stand underneath and stare. I remember one instance when a couple of young mothers visited the museum and I was assigned to stand right outside the gallery which houses the Corpus. They had little kids who were still waddling and crawling as they walked into the gallery. The mothers looked quickly at the work and then turned away to have a discussion of some sort. But their little children stopped in front of the work and plumped down on their diaper protected bottoms. They just sat there staring. Totally taken away with the work. Their mothers did not notice how entranced they were with the work. But I watched them and they could not take their eyes off of the piece, until of course their mothers swiftly scooped them up like trained athletes. I wondered what they saw. If they thought it was real man standing before them or if they were aware that he was not real. I wondered what they felt and what they were thinking. I mean they were babies, what could they be thinking? It's funny because I wondered if I stared at the piece in the same way, with the same awe.
       It must seem mad to those of you who are reading this. But this is why I love art. As a viewer, whether knowledgeable or not, art speaks to you, art can allow you to time travel and take you away. But only if you let it. A baby has no preconceptions about what is good or not. What is accepted to be good by institutions and the scholars attached to those institutions. They have no pretensions or previous knowledge. They just look, and when something grabs them, they stare in amazement.
     I am not crazy, well maybe partially. But this is art. It was, and is, created to make you feel. It was created for the viewers of the period to feel the moment and mood of their times. A piece of art does not need to be political in nature for you to feel a period. It is purely the style in which it was created; the way the brush hit the canvas, or the chisel stroked the marble. You can feel the Renaissance through the smooth oil paint on canvas, or the classical ideal of the body, or the beautiful drapery in the clothing. You can feel the modern period in the quick painterly brush strokes and the artist's fingers in the sculpture.
     I know this is incredibly anti-academic, discussing how the work makes me feel. But it is nothing but the truth. Before all things art makes me feel. Before I choose a work to write about, I always make sure I feel something for it before I research it. What is the use in researching a work if I have no feeling for it?
     I will try to be more academic in my following postings. I will try to read something and comment on it. But it will be about a work that makes me feel, a work that grabs me and shakes me around a bit.

Happy Holidays.

Image from the AGO website. www.artmatters.ca

Blog I: Introduction