Thoughts On the Exhibit "Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman and Designer" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Part 1)

by Gregg Chadwick

Intimately viewing the drawings of Michelangelo helps pull the veil of fame off of this towering figure. In spite of the title of the exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to give humanity back to artistic gods is no easy feat. The Met has done it twice in fourteen years. First was the 2003 exhibition of Leonardo da Vinci's drawings and now those of Michelangelo in 2017. Both exhibits have given a sense of hope and human possibility back to viewers in times of struggle and uncertainty.

In its exhibition, Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman and Designer the Metropolitan Museum has created a temporary museum dedicated to the life, times, and art of Michelangelo. It includes 133 drawings and poems created by Michelangelo that link the artworks to ongoing projects by the artist and his workshop. One of Michelangelo's earliest paintings is included and a small group of his sculptures in marble fill out the show. Also included are drawings by Michelangelo's mentors and artworks by his students and mentees. In a central gallery, a reproduction of the Sistine Chapel ceiling hangs as a canopy above the gallery.

Process and practice 

Like his older contemporary Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo was able to create astonishing works of art out of the simplest means of chalk, ink and paper. In Renaissance era Florence, both Leonardo and Michelangelo learned from established artists. Leonardo was apprenticed to Verrocchio, and Michelangelo was attached to Ghirlandaio's artistic workshop. Complex painting projects such as the Tornabuoni chapel, that Ghirlandaio's workshop was engaged in from 1485-1490 while Michelangelo was there, began with quick idea sketches on paper that were then fleshed out with more involved studies. Apprentices would often pose for these studies. Perhaps the young Michelangelo inspired a figure somewhere on the walls of this chapel? Copying the master's work was also part of the training for young artists. Process and practice were the keys to the growth of a young artist in Renaissance Florence.

The Met's exhibition opens with a group of drawings by Ghirlandaio and then moves on to examples of Michelangelo's studies based on earlier Florentine artists. In many of the works, with quick strokes of the pen coupled with a dense cross-hatching to create shadow and form, Michelangelo sculpts a form out of the paper.

Michelangelo Buonarroti (Italian, 1475–1564) 

Study of a Kneeling Man in a Cloak Seen from the Rear

pen and brown ink 11 1/2" x 7 7/8"

Albertina, Vienna

(formerly in the collection of Peter Paul Rubens?)

Included with Michelangelo's early studies after the Italian masters is a richly pigmented fantasy based on an engraving by the 15th century German artist Martin Schongauer. ( I wrote about this painting in 2009 when the artwork was first exhibited at the Met as an  early work by Michelangelo - link here.)

Michelangelo Buonarroti (Italian, 1475–1564)

The Torment of Saint Anthony (after Schongauer)

c. 1487–88. Oil and tempera on panel, 18 1/2 x 13 1/4 in.

Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth

Martin Schongauer

St. Anthony

engraving printed on paper 15th-century - German 

Emulation and Personal Discovery

The young Michelangelo absorbed the influence of his predecessors into a rapidly developing personal style based on an exploration of the human form. Moving from a faux antique look such as the recently attributed sculpture The Young Archer to poetically observed life studies, Michelangelo like Leonardo before him learned that "accurate understanding derives from investigation and experience." 

Michelangelo Buonarroti (Italian, 1475–1564) 

The Young Archer

 37" x 13 1/4" x 14" marble sculpture ca. 1490

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

In 1504, Michelangelo received a commission by the Republic of Florence for a grand mural of the Battle of Cascina in the Great Council Hall. At the same time Leonardo was working on his own mural for the grand space. Leonardo's chalk drawings for his battle scene are full of expressive movement and grand drama. After viewing Leonardo's powerful designs, Michelangelo, as evidenced in the Met's exhibit, went back to the well and drew a red chalk artwork inspired by the figures of Adam and Eve in Masaccio's fresco in the Brancacci Chapel. Curiously, in this chapel during his apprenticeship, Michelangelo was slugged viciously by a rival artist. His broken nose was never properly reset. Years later he went back to the scene  and reclaimed the space and Masaccio's art for his own use.

Michelangelo Buonarroti (Italian, 1475–1564) 

Study of Adam and Eve after Masaccio

1504  red chalk, 12 13/16" x 7 3/8 "

Musée du Louvre

More Like Flesh than Stone

Moving on from his inspiration, Michelangelo began a series of evocative drawings for the planned Battle of Cascina. Jonathan Jones in The Lost Battles writes that "time is included in Michelangelo's vision" in these studies. Jones continues - "There is a tragic power to these drawings. He portrays young men in their full strength and beauty and yet shades them with intimations of ruin."

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) 
Study of the Torso of a Male Nude Seen from the Back
1504  black chalk with lead white gouache highlights on paper 7 11/16" x 10 5/8"
Albertina, Vienna
(formerly in the collection of Peter Paul Rubens?) 

These drawings are sumptuously beautiful, and set the stage for the rest of Michelangelo's artistic life. Michelangelo's touch is all over these works. The use of chalk in many of the drawings, rather than pen and ink, opens up a sensuous physicality that feels more like flesh than stone. Remarkably to me, in the Met's exhibit, a few of the drawings feature a model sporting a hipster worthy mustache who could have walked out of 21st century Brooklyn.
A map of desire seems to be drawn across the back of many of Michelangelo's figures. In the gallery I think of the poetry and art to come - Cavafy, Isherwood, Bachardy, Bacon, and Hockney.

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) 
Study of the Torso of a Male Nude Seen from the Back
1504  black chalk with lead white gouache highlights on paper 7 11/16" x 10 5/8"
Albertina, Vienna
(formerly in the collection of Peter Paul Rubens?)

Coming up soon on Speed of Life - Part 2 on "Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman and Designer" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

*All photos of exhibit and artwork by Gregg Chadwick 2017

Getty Acquires Bernini Sculpture

Santa Monica, CA

The Getty Museum snaps up a Bernini bust, adding heft to L.A.'s Baroque holdings http://fw.to/azVqbSI 

Anish Kapoor's Gangnam for Freedom

                 Gangnam for Freedom - Anish Kapoor and Friends 

The British sculptor Anish Kapoor and a group of his human rights oriented friends have released a new video in partnership with Amnesty International and PEN International to bring attention to the ongoing persecution of artists and writers across the globe from China to Russia who have been harassed and imprisoned because of their work. Taking up where Ai Wei Wei's recent Gangnam Style video left off, Kapoor's own Gangnam Style romp combines symbols of imprisonment and torture with the names of many who have been persecuted in their artistic strivings for freedom. Please watch, visit the links, and find out what you can do to help shed light on this growing problem of censorship and oppression.

As an emigré from India to the United Kingdom, Anish Kapoor has often been concerned with the ideas of freedom and dislocation in his artwork. I have posted a few examples below that provide a brief glimpse into his artistic practice. For me, Anish Kapoor is one of the most important and visionary artists working today.

Anish Kapoor.
Dismemberment Site 1
Mild Steel Tube and Tensioned Fabric 2009
Gibbs Farm, Kaipara Harbour, New Zealand
photos courtesy  Gibbs Farm

 In North America, his best-known creation, Cloud Gate, is the centerpiece of Chicago’s Millennium Park:

Anish Kapoor
Cloud Gate
Stainless Steel 2004-2006
Millenium Park, Chicago, Illinois
Photos by Gregg Chadwick

Anish Kapoor, Hole, 1988; sculpture; fiberglass and pigment, 84 in. x 84 in. x 102 in. (213.36 cm x 213.36 cm x 259.08 cm); Collection SFMOMA, Gift of Mrs. Milo Gates; © Anish Kapoor

Source: http://www.sfmoma.org/explore/collection/artwork/169##ixzz2CtD7h8ex
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

More At: 

http://www.amnesty.org.uk/gao

Write Against Impunity
http://www.pen-international.org/write-against-impunity-the-campaign/
http://www.daytoendimpunity.org

Gibbs Farm

Thanks to:
Proudfoot http://www.proudfoot.tv
Akram Khan http://www.akramkhancompany.net/

The Birth of the L.A. Art World: Pacific Standard Time 1945-1980

Ed Ruscha
Standard Station, Amarillo, Texas
64.5" x 121.75" oil on canvas 1963
Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire
© Ed Ruscha

Opening this month in Southern California are a series of art exhibitions, Pacific Standard Time, documenting the Los Angeles art scene from 1945-1980. Pacific Standard Time is an unprecedented collaboration of more than sixty cultural institutions across Southern California. Initiated through grants from the Getty Foundation, Pacific Standard Time will take place for six months until April 2011.


In a Teaser for Pacific Standard Time, Anthony Kiedis from the Red Hot Chili Peppers Takes Artist Ed Ruscha for a Ride

The Getty Museum's comphrehensive exhibit of the period, Pacific Standard Time: Crosscurrents in L.A. Painting and Sculpture, 1950-1970, opens on October 1, 2011.

More at:
Crosscurrents in L.A. Painting and Sculpture, 1950-1970

Faces of Egypt

by Gregg Chadwick


Egyptian Portraits at the Neues Museum, Berlin
photo by Gregg Chadwick

Including:
Upper Left
Mask from Amarna: Portrait of a Man

Center : Queen Nefertiti

Bottom Right: Pharaoh Ay

New Kingdom, Dynasty 18, ca. 1340 BC
Gypsum
Amarna
Height 18 cm
Neues Museum, Berlin

These life-sized masks are from a series found in the workshop of the sculptor Thutmoses in Achet-Aton (today called Amarna) in Middle Egypt. Amarna was the capital of Egypt during the reign of Pharaoh Akhenaton and Queen Nefertiti.

The portrait study of a man in the upper left of the photo provides an interesting view of Thutmoses' artistic process.
First a cast was taken directly from the sitter's face and then a gypsum copy was made from the mould. The gypsum sculpture was then brought to detailed completion.

In this installation of ancient sculptures, we are directly confronted with the real faces of Egypt. Even if the sitters' names and identities have been lost to history, their muted presence seems to express the events they have witnessed and the stories they could tell.

The faces being broadcast out of Egypt today seem to carry the same weight of history.


Queen Nefertiti at at the Neues Museum, Berlin
photo by Gregg Chadwick



Protester at Tahrir Square on January 31, 2011

More at:
Neues Museum
National Geographic - Pharaohs of the Sun
Kmt: A Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt
Wael Ghonim, Google executive and democracy activist held by Egyptian authorities for 12 days, is being credited with re-energizing the Egyptian protests

What Lies In the Shadow of the Statue? ~ Ille qui nos omnes servabit.

Update; January 26, 2010
The statue is of Tawaret the goddess of protection during pregnancy and childbirth.

Temple of Haroeris and Sobek, Kom Ombo, copyright by Gary Jones.

The Egyptian god Sobek seems to be the inspiration for the giant statue on LOST. I was leaning towards Anubis but the crocodilian snout gives it away. (Anubis was probably a bit too close to Stargate anyway.) Gary Jones' masterful photo of the Temple of Haroeris and Sobek in Egypt shows Sobek in detail. The light in Jones' photo is stunning - mysterious and beckoning.

Caroline Seawright writes of Sobek:

"Having the form of a crocodile, the Egyptians believed that he also had the nature of a crocodile. He could be the strong, powerful symbol of the pharaoh, showing the ruler's might. He could use this force to protect the justified dead in their after life, and be the protector and rescuer of the other gods... yet he could also use that power to savage his enemies and the sinful deceased. He could bestow sight and senses to the dead, he could bring water and fertility to the land."

"What lies in the shadow of the statue?" Richard's answer in Latin is:

"Ille qui nos omnes servabit," ("He who will protect/save us all.")

Just in time for the release tomorrow of the film Angels and Demons, we have Richard on LOST answering questions in Latin and calling himself Ricardo. Latin of course brings to mind the Catholic church and the history of Rome. Could Richard be a priest? Is he also known as Father Ricardo?

More at:
Sobek, God of Crocodiles, Power, Protection and Fertility