The Persistence of Genius --- Day 12/8

Salvador Dali, The Persistence of Memory, 1931, oil on canvas

Something about this painting turns my stomach, in person at MoMA when I get to New York, but even just seeing a picture of it.  Is it the slick, slimey (to me) paint, the sickening (to me) palette, the liquid ghastly images (me again)?  Could be all three plus some semi and unconscious things I knows nothing about.

But, in spite of being repelled, or, more accurately being drawn by 'the fascination of the abomination,'* I cannot help but acknowledge The Persistence of Memory has continually been the most visited painting in the most visited modern art institution in the world for good reason.  Its surreal sensual power has persisted for nearly a century now because it is, quite simply, genius.

*Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

New and Old Master

 

Michelangelo age 15-16, Madonna of the Steps, 1490-1492, bronze.  First sculpted work.  Created while studying in the household of the Medicis in Florence.  The piece's sensitivity and multi-dimensionality was already ahead of the accepted practice of the day. 

"Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to release it"  

"I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set it free."

~ Michelangelo (Italian, 1475-1564)

Having spent a few days at the de Young Museum  in 1900's of Calder and Picasso, both of whom are celebrated for their sculptures, my thoughts now move to arguably (if anybody actually would) the greatest sculptor who ever lived: Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, best known simply as Michelangelo.  And to a few things I learned about him recently.  

First, biographically, I didn't know that he grew up, after the death of his mother, with his nanny and her husband who was a stone cutter.  Or that Michelangelo's father owned a marble quarry so that the young boy spent a great deal of time watching stone being quarried and carved as well as acquiring hands-on experience with the stone at an early age.  He also sought out the company of significant artists and worked in his early teens as an apprentice to one of the master painters who had been hired by the Vatican to decorate the walls of the Sistine Chapel.

Second, in terms of his technique.  Like many people I am familiar with the two famous quotes from Michelangelo above.  Because of them I have carried an image of the sculptor standing in front of a block of marble and artfully chipping away until he began to sense a presence inside.  And then gradually, carefully, laboriously continuing until, OMG, David!  Or, secondarily, that Michelangelo looked at a block of marble, sensed what figure was in it, and carved away "until he set it free." In both cases, the figure inside would have been a revelation to Michelangelo.

Turns out, yes, Michelangelo saw sculpture as the art of taking away to bring the form below into existance. But, no, the look of the form was not a surprise to him. Even before, and certainly in the multi year process of  actually carving, he produced detailed sketches -  over 900 of them remain.  The drawings are imbued with technical skill but, beyond that, with his own spiritual passion and desire to work with the marble to bring the soul of his subject to life. 

No higher goals for himself can be imagined, and the wonder is that he actually achieved them - at an early age.  During his twenties! he produced two of the world's greatest sculptural masterpieces, Pieta and David.  At the time the life and emotion he had brought to the grieving mother and the depiction of the human form he achieved with David were beyond ground breaking, beyond a revelation.  Nearly 450 years after his death in 1564 his work is as wondrous as it was at the time, remains ground breaking and is still the gold standard sculptors aim for.

Micheangelo, Pieta, 1498-99, Carrara marble

and then the very next year he began David

Michelangelo, David, 1501-1504, Marble

Brimming with Freshness

 

The Calder-Picasso show at the de Young is a visual delight.  The works on display look great individually and together coalesce into a magical environment.

Calder's fly along, bobbing on shaped delicate wires, delighting with primary colors in graceful, unpredictable motion.  Picasso's are strong, passionate, earthy, focussed on the inner self.  They look as if he stepped up to his easel and let his passions rip.  But, not at all.  All of Picasso's works started classically: with study of the great artists in museums, knowledge of classic themes throughout history and countless preliminary drawings. 

The show takes viewers back to the early and mid twentieth century when both Calder and Picasso did their most revolutionary - and freshest - work. One of my favorite art eras so I thoroughly enjoyed feeling close to those artistically alive times.  To my mind though the show's signage is too much technical 'art speak' trying to convey how radical the works were when they were first introduced.  That's a visual feeling thing, and to really get it she wishes she could have seen the exhibit at its original venue, The Picasso Museum in Paris:

Stay Still Please

 

Jim Farrant (English), Sweet Peas and Daisies, undated (ca. 2010)

 

Ahh, the still life.  It has been a little while since I spent some time with one of the oldest art genres.  And quite a while since the San Francisco air was so fresh, the birdsong so loud, the sun so promising that I felt a touch of spring fever.

Still life was an art form long before it was officially deemed a 'genre' by the Dutch in the 16th century (who called it stilleven). And, although often associated with flowers, still lifes are any arrangement of inanimate objects like fruit, glassware and textiles, usually set on a table.   In western art history the earliest known still lifes were created by the Egyptians in the 15th century BCE with the most famous being at the Tomb of Menna whose walls are adorned with exceptionally detailed scenes of everyday life. 

Later, while the Greek and Roman craftsmen mostly reserved their still lifes for mosaics (or the mosaics were the most endurable), they also placed every day objects in their frescoes like this one from a 1st Century wall at Pompei.

Then in the Middle Ages you find still lifes used for religious purposes, often incorporated into bible scenes and illuminated manuscripts.  And then it was on to the Renaissance and astoundingly detailed paintings of everyday life.

Jan Brueghel the Elder, Flowers in a Wooden Vessel, 1606-1607

And the Dutch vanitas still lifes with their momento mori admonition: Don't forget, everything dies, including you.  So don't be too materialistic.  (Or something along those lines all symbolized by rotting fruit, molding bread, rats, clocks, and other deteriorating or dead objects in the canvases). 

Pieter Claelsz, Vanitas Still Life, 1625 

Pretty soon it was on to Impressionist and Post Impressionist art with multi million dollar paintings of Sunflowers.

Vincent van Gogh, Sunflowers, 1889

And of course modern art which often challenges (or defeats) the viewer trying to discern the object.

Georges Braque, Still Life with Metronome, 1909

The wonder in this long history is that the still life continues to be such a fresh art form.  Each one different, each with its own individual energy. And, among the inanimate objects, a part of each animate artist left behind. 

Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009), May Basket, undated (20th C), o/c

Only God Can Make....A Safety Pin*

 

Claes Oldenburg & Coosje van Bruggen, Corridor Pin Blue, 1999, stainless steel, aluminum and glazed acrylic enamel  (de Young Museum, San Francisco)

So, I was reading about outdoor sculpture gardens and some of their lovely, harmonious artistic offerings to nature.  Then I thought of our local de Young Museum's sculpture garden which is just off its cafeteria. You buy your food, take it on its tray to a table along the greenery,  hear the birds chirp and look out to  view ... a huge safety pin.  

Not harmonious, but that was just fine and had been long before its creation in 1999 with its team of artists, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen.  In 1961 Oldenburg wrote in his poem I Am For Art "I am for an art that does something other than sit on its ass in a museum."  And later in the poem 'I am for an art that you can hammer with, stitch with, sew with, paste with, file with. I am for an art that tells you the time of day, or where such and such a street is. I am for an art that helps old ladies across the street....."

By the time he wrote all this Oldenburg was studying art at Yale and totally fed up with the freeform wholly personal meditations on canvas of the Abstract Expressionists.  He was one of several artists in England and then primarily New York and California who felt that art was not something separate and exalted from real life and began to celebrate real life with their "Pop Art" as it came to be called.  They turned to everyday sources the most famous of which are probably Andy Warhol's Campbell Soup Cans.  

Oldenburg, who later teamed with his wife, van Bruggen turned to sculpture and became known for his huge public sculptures.  Among their creations are 

shuttlecocks in Kansas City  

a clothespin in Philadelphia,

 

and, one of my personal favorites, a spoonbridge with cherry in Minneapolis .

Are they as impressive as a tree or just the green grass they sit in or as miraculous as the birds singing around them?  No, but in their ways, they do respect the environments they are set in. There's a grace to their forms and a quietness to their simple designs and minimal colors.  The joy and tongue-in-cheekiness is timelessly fresh.  And from my experience giving private art tours, they make people happy.

*A nod to Joyce Kilmer's poem, Trees, which ends with the line "But only God Can Make a Tree."

Where's the Wedding?

 

Hugo van der Goes ((Flemish, ca 1440-1482), The Virgin and Child with Saints,
Oil on wood panel, @43" x 49" panel

I may have mentioned I have much to learn about how art is actually made so I was very interested to see the preparatory underdrawing Hugo van der Goes used to guide him while painting the altarpiece above in the mid 15th century.

Art experts and enthusiasts like me aren't certain what then guided an 18th century artist to strip away the Virgin and Child, add another panel and turn the painting into a scene of the wedding of Henry VII to Elizabeth of York.



The altered panel had been suspected as early as 1890 but then denied by the owner of the work at the time.  So the altarpiece came down through the ages as a wedding painting.  This until 1983 -1984 when a one year restoration was carried out by David Bull. His work was done so meticulously that the underdrawing was kept intact - a feat considered a masterpiece in itself - and an amazing and extremely rare rediscovery of a work by a famous master was made. 

Fabric + Artist = Fiber Art

 After something like 100,000 years, mankind evolved from covering itself with animal pelts, furs, probably leaves to being able to produce textiles so easily and inexpensively that there could be 'fiber art.'  That is, textile-based objects that have no intended practical use. And, particularly since the 1960's the dedication, creativity and skills of fabric artists around the world have elevated the field to high art.  Take a look at wonderfully imaginative works by a few of them.

Joana Vasconselos, Crochet Dog

Gabriel Dawe, Rainbow Thread

Svetlana Lyalina, Tapestry Dress/Canvas