Art Post: The Merode Altarpiece

The Merode Altarpiece from the Workshop of Robert Campin, The Cloisters, 

Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC

How about an art history lesson?  The above piece is the celebrated Merode Altarpiece by Robert Campin (or more accurately, his workshop).  Painted in 1427-1432, this rather small but thoroughly captivating masterpiece is my second favorite Annunciation.  Robert Campin is one of my favorites of the so called Flemish Primitives, that is painters from the low countries (in and around modern day Belgium) who were active in the 15th and 16th centuries.

Let's start with the subject.  Paintings were commissioned and the only folks who could do that were wealthy patrons (individuals) or institutions.  Consequently, many of the paintings depict religious scenes or were portraits.  This altarpiece was commissioned by the two wealthy individuals on the left side panel called "donors."  Donors would commission works of art as a way to increase their chances of getting into heaven.  No lie.  Hmm.  Makes me think of Martin Luther and his objections to indulgences.

Right Panel - Joseph

The central panel is, of course, the Annunciation.  An Annunciation depicts the archangel Gabriel showing up at Mary's house to tell her she is going to bear the Christ child.  In most Annunciation scenes, Mary is seated in a domestic setting, often reading a book.  There are usually lilies, which represent her purity, sometimes Gabriel's wings are rainbow colored, and there's usually a tiny crucifixion near the window to symbolize the immaculate conception.  Sometimes Gabriel's speech is shown as latin phrases upside down, a kind of early speech bubble, but not in this painting.

The panel on the far right is very, very cool.  That's Joseph and he, being the carpenter, is building a mousetrap.  The mousetrap symbolizes how Christ will "trap" and defeat Satan.  This kind of symbolism isn't used very much and we are very lucky that Campin chose to include it.

These types of religious paintings are packed with other symbolism which I'm not knowledgable enough to write about but most everything depicted in the painting usually has some kind of meaning or reference.

When I was in NYC last time, I was by myself and determined to see many of the things I missed on previous visits.  One of them was going to The Cloisters, a branch of the Met, which is located at the north tip of Manhattan in Fort Tryon Park to see their splendid collection of Medieval art.  I was really looking forward to seeing this painting in person and doing some sketching.

When I saw the painting for the first time I was struck by how small it is.  Barely four feet across and only 2 feet high.  The second thing is all the marvelous details in the painting.  Flemish Primitives are known for their almost microscopic details and this lovely domestic scene is packed full of them.  I was also struck by how fresh the painting the looks.  The paint still looks like it's wet!  Shimmering, luminous colors with layers of depth.  The photos don't do it justice.

After staring at it for a while, I pulled out my sketchbook and began to draw.  I was intimidated as hell about drawing anything from this incredible piece but had settled on her hands.  I'd never drawn hands before but I was determined to do it anyway.  Sometimes great art inspires you to try crazy things.  You can see my efforts below.

A screen shot of the original so you can see what I was aiming for.

Drawing The Virgin's hands was not easy.  See that small but exuberant note on the bottom left of my sketchbook page where I mention how happy I am?  I was so excited to be seeing this piece of art and I was excited that my sketch actually looked okay.  I mean, it's not anything close to the original but it kind of looks like it.

The other thing I was learning to sketch during this trip was folds of fabric.  It took a while to get comfortable with drawing heavy drapery but I enjoy such drawings now and sometimes fall back on drawing folds of fabric when I've worn myself out at the end of a museum/sketch visit.

Sketching parts of paintings has been really instructive.  When you try to copy a masterpiece you learn so much about the artist and yourself.  You have to really look at it and you learn about line, shading, and color.  You can sometimes spot small details that aren't immediately apparent such as this one:

See her eyes?  You can see how they've shifted ever so slightly because Gabriel has just landed in the room.  This is the moment of transition which symbolizes the shift that's coming.  In her life, in the world, and in most religious lives.  A monumental moment captured so subtly by this master.

I spent a long time staring at this altarpiece and pondering what it would be like to be able to see it all the time.  Must be amazing.  As it is, I have my sketch to remind me, and now this blog post.

Art Post: My First Canvas!

My department had a work-related event put on by Art Uncorked which involved all of us going out and learning how to paint a picture.  The medium was acrylic on canvas.  I've never painted before with the exception of adding a touch of color with a watercolor pencil to some of my sketches.  We started with a literal blank canvas and the instructor taught us how to find measure it out and find the horizon line.  From there we followed him as he explained how to do each part of the picture.

What a blast!

The group had picked Morning on the Seine Near Giverny by Claude Monet.  I'd wanted to do Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh but I was glad we did this picture because it was fun to play with the effects of water, sky, shadow, and light.

My version of Monet's masterpiece.

The instructor asked me if I'd painted before as he watched me paint the background trees.  I told him no, but I do sketch and I have looked at a lot of art and enjoy learning about it.  He kept saying I had to have watching a painting show on tv because I was using some good brush techniques.  I haven't since I don't watch television.

We learned to mix and layer colors and learned how to overlay the picture with some white to give it that misty, impression-y look.  He taught us about how to paint reflections in the water and how to paint trees.  I struggled to some degree with painting the right shapes but I found the acrylic to be easy to work with as long as it's still wet.  It also helps that Impressionism is inherently forgiving since nothing really has to be that precise.

Here's Monet's original so you can see what we were going for.  I'm no artist but at least it kind of looks like it.

One of the coolest things was seeing everyone's interpretations.  One guy's painting was darker than the others and he added a white blob in the sky so it looks like the moon on the water at night.  Another painting was more dashes and dots so the entire picture was alive with movement and color.  Still another painting was completely different. She'd used the same color palette and there were some trees and some blue for the sky and water but hers looks like a massive storm with 75 mile an hour winds.  It's a wonderful picture!

Of course as soon as I got it home I could see places where I wanted to do more work.  The water reflections need better blending.  I need to add more pink to the sky.  And I wish I could do the trees over again.  Oh well.

I'm thinking I might take an oil painting class later or at least do another Art Uncorked event though I can just see myself filling my apartment with all these canvases.  Might not be a bad thing, actually.

2010 Europe Trip: Ghent - An Art Side Trip

Ghent is a city in Belgium and about a 30 minute train ride from Bruges. I originally thought I'd take a day trip to Brussels and Ghent but I only had one day. After considering the pros and cons I decided to go to Ghent.

I'd read about both Ghent and Bruges when I was in my early 20s in Conde Nast's Traveler which had recently been relaunched. The article was very short, a blurb really, comparing Bruges with Ghent. It said that Ghent is often overlooked in favor of Bruges. This might be true for many travelers but the primary reason I chose Ghent over Brussels was so I could see some key pieces of art.

When I arrived at the train station I found the tram to downtown after asking some locals. Ghent is a modern city with an amazing city center of medieval buildings. As we drew closer to downtown, however, I realized the city was in the middle of a massive restoration project. All of the streets and sidewalks of the downtown area were being torn up and redone. It was a mess.

A view of the downtown construction.

It quickly became clear that I wasn't going to do much walking around. If that's all I'd come for I would have been disappointed but I came to see the art so all was not lost.

I started at the Sint-Baafs Cathedral (you can see it in the above picture looking down the street) to see the main event, The Ghent Altarpiece or the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb by the van Eyck brothers (started by Hubert, who died while working on it, and finished by his brother Jan). This polyptych was completed in 1432. The altarpiece is 11 x 15 feet. Yes, that means it takes up an entire wall. I knew the painting was undergoing a major restoration but they said I could still see it and watch the restorers at work.

My postcard of the front of the altarpiece with the side panels open

The restorers were housed behind a glass wall with various tables and computers, lights, cameras, and other instruments. They were working on Adam and the singing angels in the upper left corner, and the two panels of knights in the lower left corner. The rest of the main altarpiece was still on the wall. Restorers were making notes and taking pictures of it. The two panels of knights were right in front of the glass wall so I could get a good look at them. I stood there for over an hour, watching and looking. People came and went, including crowds of tour groups. Most were there for two minutes or less. There was one couple who stayed for perhaps 15 minutes before leaving. When I was taking my class of Lower Medieval to High Renaissance Art, I was completely amazed by this altarpiece the first time my teacher showed us the slide. I vowed that I would someday see it in person. At the time it seemed like such an impossible dream. Now that I was there I was really going to look at it.

I noticed the archangel Gabriel was leaned up against the wall behind the closest restorer who was sitting at a desk with a lot of camera and computer equipment. I couldn't really see Gabriel with all the stuff in the way, plus he had a green strap hanging over his precious face. Though I can't draw faces at all I decided to stretch myself a little and draw him.

Gabriel is part of the back side panels which close over the main part of the altarpiece. He's in one panel with Mary in the other next to him in a depiction of the Annunciation.

A photo of the back of my postcard showing the back side panels. You can see Gabriel there on the upper right side and Mary opposite him on the left.

You've seen this sketch before but I had to show in context here.

Another photo of my postcard. You can see what I was trying to attempt in my sketch.

Gabriel was a tough, tough draw. Because he was behind the restorer leaned up against the wall on the floor, I had to stand on my tip toes to get a decent look at him. The restorer noticed I was trying to draw him and was kind enough to turn on a light near him so I could see better. Also, I was really intimidated because this was a treasured masterpiece by the van Eyck brothers with all its glorious attention to minute details. Still, I was very happy I made the attempt. One of the many cool things I liked about Gabriel was his traditional rainbow wings look like the cross section of a watermelon with the same kind of texture.

I reluctantly left the altarpiece and strolled around the cathedral. There's a Rubens there as well though I can't remember which one. I didn't take any pictures of the inside of the cathedral. I went outside and wandered around the main part of the historic city center as much as I could but the torn up streets and heavy equipment motoring around made me think twice so I made my way back to the tram.

Uneven, torn up streets.

Sint-Niklaaskerk is right across the street from Sint-Baafs.

The street restoration project should be finished sometime next year, if memory serves me correctly. When they're done I'm sure the city center will be gorgeous.

I took the tram back to the train station then inquired about where I could find the Citadelpark, a lovely park where there are several museums, among other things. It was very close to the train station, maybe 2-3 blocks away. I was on my way to the Museum voor Schone Kunsten to specifically to see two paintings by my favorite painter, Hieronymous Bosch. As an aside, I wrote an essay a couple of years ago entitled The Role of Extreme Violence in Art where I talk about Bosch, among others, and why I love him so much.

A very beautiful park. No one was around. I think I saw two people on my way to the museum.

Sun, trees. I can't get enough of these kinds of photos.

The museum was larger than I expected and again, no one was around. They had a special exhibit going on but I elected not to see it. The art I was looking for was in the second room I walked into. There they were: Christ Carrying The Cross and Saint Jerome At Prayer.

My postcard of Christ Carrying The Cross, the fifth Bosch I've seen so far.

I LOVE this painting and spent a long time looking at it. There was no one in that part of the museum, not even the security guards. Sadly, the painting was in need of restoration. I decided to try drawing another face and chose the grotesque face in the lower right corner of the painting. Since his features were so exaggerated I thought it might be easier. It wasn't. I particularly had a difficult time with his nose, getting it in proportion to his face and in the correct shape.

On another wall in the same room was Saint Jerome. I was really tired by then and decided to go the easy route and just draw his robe. I've gotten much more comfortable drawing draped fabric.

You can see the robe I drew draped over the tree log on the right.
As the post-it tag notes, this is my sixth Bosch.

I walked through the rest of the museum and only saw three other people. The museum is a kind of a maze with different levels and sub-levels. It seemed like it was organized in a half-circle shape. I kept getting lost and couldn't figure out which direction I was moving in. This proved to be fun because I kept walking into rooms with interesting art, particularly when I got to the 20th Century section.

I eventually found my way out and walked back to the train station where I caught the next train back to Bruges. My back, shoulders, neck, arms and hands were hurting, sketching is a painful activity for me. It was late afternoon in Bruges and folks were out in force in all the outdoor cafes. The walk back was good for me and my feet had finally gotten used to the cobblestones.

Mike's Earliest Known Painting

Today the Kimball Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas put out a press release stating they have acquired the earliest known painting by Michelangelo. They are very proud and rightly so. Michelangelo, or Mike as my art teacher was fonding of calling him in lectures, apparently painted this picture when he was 12 or 13 years old. Below is an image of the painting:

The Torment of St. Anthony, oil and tempura on wood, 1487-1488

There was some controversy over the authenticity of the painting but a rigorous examination and restoration by the Metropolitan Museum of Art provided positive confirmation.

Mike was obviously influenced by Martin Schongauer's famous engraving. Check out the image below:

St. Anthony Tormented by Demons, engraving, ca. 1470-1475

Mike's painting has more details like fish scales which the engraving doesn't have. The rocky landscape reminds me of Leonardo da Vinci's landscape in his Virgin of the Rocks. I have no idea if Mike was influenced by this painting or ever saw it, but you can see the similarities. Perhaps it was just a commonly used convention at that time. See below:

Virgin of the Rocks, oil on panel, ca. 1483-1486. This one is in the Louvre. Leonardo painted a second one, virtually identical, and it hangs in the National Gallery in London. I got to see it when I was there for a visit.

I'm having a grand time with these art posts. In the past I've been hesitant to copy images of art onto this blog but it really makes it more fun if you can see what I'm talking about.

Glorious - The Disturbing Art of Francis Bacon

I'm barely acquainted with artist Francis Bacon but when I saw images of some of his disturbing paintings I recognized them immediately. How did I get on this tangent? Tonight I read a featured article on Wikipedia about his "Triptych, May-June 1973" which depicts his lover's last suicidal moments before dying. Not a cheery subject to be sure but the painting is incredibly powerful in its depiction of a human being in suffering.

After viewing many images of his paintings courtesy of Google all I can think of is how glorious they are. While visceral and violent, they also have a tremendous energy and reach down deep into the core of your being. Such images have the capacity to strip away all extraneous garbage so all that remains are your thoughts about life and death. From there you can consider what a life worth living means to you.

At least that's what I get out of Francis Bacon's paintings just by viewing them on my computer screen. Perhaps that's me and my weirdness.

These images provoke a very different response in me than my favorite paintings by Bosch and Bruegel the Elder. Bosch's and Bruegel's paintings of monsters, death, torture, and the landscapes of hell provide the comfort of recognition for my own dark side. To me they say, "you're not alone, we're right here with you and have been for hundreds of years." They remind me that while I might have nightmares and a sometimes scary overactive imagination so do others and there is a place for such ideas in this world too.

A stunning Francis Bacon image to close out this post:

Study After Velazquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X, oil on canvas, 1953

The Role of Extreme Violence in Art

I've been wondering about the role of extreme violence in art lately. Clearly there's a place for it, but what use, purpose does it serve?

About Me
The first thing you need to know about me is that I'm definitely in touch with my shadow side and it doesn't scare me. When I was much younger I used to be distressed by my own thoughts and ideas until I started exploring my dark side, primarily with violent films. In fact, and I think I've said this before, if you knew what was going on inside my head, oh about 80% of the time, you would run far away. I'm a dark person even though I'm good at hiding it. People who love me and catch glimpses of it now and then sometimes have difficulty reconciling me as they know me and my shadow side.

After I moved here and was served with my divorce papers I wrote a revenge short story. I made the mistake of reading it to my writing group and I think they had some difficulty with it. We never met again. One woman said I needed therapy. This short story is set in the mid-1800s in Mexico in a town close to the border of Texas. It concerns a story of a good, hardworking man who comes home to the destruction of his family by a gang of thugs. His beautiful wife and four out of the five kids are all dead in the burning house. His oldest daughter, age 9, is missing. What happens next is this good man goes on a massive killing rampage to avenge his family's deaths. He not only kills the gang members one by one, but also their families even if the men have been disowned. His brother who initially helped the man ends up working with the authorities to put a stop to the carnage. The killer takes on a strange supernatural quality and there are plenty of religious references. This story is so gory, violent and graphic that I haven't told anybody of it's existence except the unfortunate members of my former writing group. The process of writing the story was fascinating to me because I really tried to push the boundaries of what I could come up with. I haven't looked at it in years, but I've been thinking about it a lot lately.

Don't worry I'm not posting it here.

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
I finished reading this book just a couple of weeks ago which brought up the question that forms the subject of this post. I can't say the book was recommended by one of my bosses, only that he mentioned it a couple of times in our conversations about Paradise Lost.

I would never recommend this book to anyone, and neither would he.

Widely lauded as one of the greatest novels of the 20th century it is a story of a trip through hell. The main character, The Kid, has a taste for violence. At age 15 he joins a band of scalpers in the mid-1800s near the border of Texas and into northern Mexico. The story is based on a real band of scalpers, the Glanton Gang. This is one of the most violent books I have ever read. It also beautifully written. The descriptions are amazing. The main antagonist, The Judge, is one of the most disturbing characters of all time. Whereas Glanton is a mere sullen sociopathic killer, the Judge goes beyond that and even beyond evil because evil implies morality as its opposition and morality is mere speck in comparison to the Judge. It exists, but only in context to the other characters.

This book is staggeringly violent and yet it is necessary to this story. Why is that so? Why have these extremely disturbing descriptions? Why have these character do these things? What is the point?

I once had a conversation with a friend of mine who couldn't understand why I went to see a play at Berkeley Rep call The People's Temple. It was about The People's Temple and the Jonestown massacre that took place in 1978. He asked me why I insisted upon filling my head with such a subject matter. At the time I explained to him it was about reconciling a event that terrified me when I was kid. I also told him it was a good learning experience for me in that it reminded me how easy it is to get caught up in a cult and perhaps in other group ideas.

I don't know what the role of Blood Meridian's violence is, at least not right now. I can't say I learned anything from reading it except to say that I saw myself becoming numb to it after a while, and more importantly, that this fact did not bother me at all.

They're going to make a movie out of this book. Ridley Scott is supposed to direct. How the hell they're going to avoid an NC-17 rating is beyond me. Even if you tone down the violence, many of the images are so awful and integral to the story that cutting them out will make for a different story altogether. And it will take nothing less than an Oscar caliber performance to bring the Judge to life.

Man Bites Dog (dirs. Belvaux et al.) 1992
I watched this Belgium film years ago because I was curious about a film that had a reputation for extreme violence and had been banned in four countries. It's about a camera crew that follows a serial killer around while he talks about and practices his "art." The main character, Ben, is charming and engaging. The movie, thankfully filmed in black and white, is an interesting commentary about reality TV and an exercise in blacker than black satirical comedy. Towards the end the camera crew gets caught up in Ben's activities and they go on a rampaging slaughter. Funny, gruesome and very disturbing. Ben's charm really pulls you in and you can't help but think that he's really not that bad until the the men's activities begin to escalate. Although this film has not made the 10 ten lists of the most disturbing films of all time, it is occasionally honorably mentioned.

Now what did I learn from watching that movie? Was there anything to learn? Did I even like it? I don't know. I did like it and I thought it was interesting and very well done but I have not seen it since viewing it that first time. In a way I don't have to because most of the film has managed to stay with me all these years since. Is that a good thing? It's certainly a positive commentary for the people who made the film.

I don't recommend it, by the way. I don't think it's necessary viewing for most people.

Bosch, Bruegel the Elder and the Isenheim Altarpiece
My favorite kind of art is the Northern Renaissance, and my favorite painter is Hieronymus Bosch. I find his visions of Paradise and Hell and his grotesque creatures to be endlessly fascinating. As my art teacher used to say "everything is going to Hell according to Bosch." His visions of Hell depict people being tortured and tormented. Along those same lines is Bruegel's astounding painting The Triumph of Death. Bruegel was inspired by Bosch and this painting shows people being killed by an endless army of skeletons. All social classes are represented here and it even shows a common form of execution at the time being broken on the wheel. Grim, awful and relentlessly fair, this is a fantastic painting.

I learned about the Isenheim Altarpiece by Matthias Grünewald not too long ago. It is a huge piece (approx. 105 x 120 inches) in several panels painted between 1512-1515. When the main panels are closed it shows a disturbing crucifixion scene, probably the most disturbing I've ever seen. Mary Magdalene and Christ's mother Mary are in their usual postures of grief and agony (the Madonna is supported by John the Apostle). John the Baptist is there with a bleeding lamb. The crucified Christ is much larger than the other figures in the painting. His body is covered with sores and his face, hands and feet are tortured and twisted. His arms look like they should have broken a long time ago. Having looked at plenty of crucifixion scenes over the years because of the kind of art I love, I can say that seeing this painting up close (on a learning DVD) for the first time made me have to look away for a moment. The teacher described it as "shocking." And it is.

My second reaction after looking at it closely and pausing my DVD was the thought "that is so incredible." The rest of the altarpiece has some strange elements to it such as the angels playing in an orchestra for the Virgin and Child on the inside of the panel (one of which features an oddly feathered Lucifer looking ruefully up at God the Father) and other things. Clearly the purpose of showing such a shocking crucifixion scene was to bring home Christ's agony as he died for our sins. It's very effective for that. It made even me, who doesn't really believe in organized religion, think twice it.

My gushing about these art works aside, and descriptions, I do wonder about the role of violence in these artworks. In Bosch's paintings the role of violence shows people being tormented in Hell for their sins and perhaps work as a deterrent. Bruegel's painting, in contrast, shows that while Death is inevitable, it is also indiscriminate and oddly fair. Grünewald's extraordinary altarpiece reminds people of Christ's sacrifice in a terrible way.

Clearly the people who commissioned these painting as well as the artists felt it was necessary to depict violence of this type. I suppose some could argue that those times were more violent than our modern times, but I wonder if that is true.

Conclusion
I have none. Many people I know, particularly people I really care about, say such violence is over the top and unnecessary. It is not necessary to fill our minds with such images. To bring these things to the forefront of our consciousness does not add anything. And yet such violent depictions persist. It's easy to say that violent depictions in art during the Renaissance was a necessary way to educate people and to help them focus on being devote and righteous, but what about today? I wonder sometimes if such extreme violence is not so much a mirror of our society, but merely an expression of our individual shadow sides. We all have a dark side and some are more in touch with them than others. Or rather some, like me, find it necessary to be in touch with our dark sides.

I welcome your comments. This is a really interesting subject for me and would love to hear what other people think.

Abelardo Morell

Years ago I accompanied my ex to a conference in San Diego. He would have to spend two days in a hotel conference room while I knocked around San Diego by myself. The first day I went to the zoo, of course, and although the weather was cool, I had a lovely time photographing and sketching the animals.

The second day I wandered around Balboa Park going from one museum to another. One of the museums I went to was the Museum of Photographic Arts and they were featuring the work of Abelardo Morell, a photographer born in Cuba. If I recall this was at least ten years ago and Morell had a lovely Alice in Wonderland exhibit going on. The photographs were charming. Here's one near and dear to my heart:

The Mock Turtle's Story, 1998, by Abelardo Morell

As charming as these Alice pictures were my real attention was caught by his camera obscura photographs. He turns an entire room into a camera by selecting one with a view he's interested in, places black tape over the windows leaving one 3/8 inch hole which provides light for the picture, focuses the lens outside the window, stops down the maximum depth of field, opens the shutter and leaves for about eight hours. The result is the view is shown projected onto the wall, but upside down in true camera obscura style. The same principles are used to make pinhole cameras. When I took my photographer class in high school we learned to make and use a pinhole camera and I took several interesting pictures with it.

I was fortunate enough to purchase the print below at the museum in San Diego, now bent and yellow around the edges. It's still in good shape, and I'm finally going to have it framed. I say I'm fortunate because I haven't been able to locate another one anywhere.

Manhattan View Looking South in Large Room, 1996, by Abelardo Morell

I used to have this picture in my office and it was always a pleasure to see people's reactions to it. Inevitably, most people would blow right past it, but if they were repeat visitors eventually they would be arrested by this image. No one had any problems recognizing the New York city skyline, but they couldn't figure it out and would stand there staring at it. One of the eeriest things about this image is you are looking at Manhattan during the day, but there's no traffic on the streets. This is because the exposure time is about eight hours and anything moving in the picture will not show up.

If you want to see more of Mr. Morell here's a website. His photographs of ordinary household objects are also wonderful such as falling coins, spoons and pictures in his house.

http://www.abelardomorell.net/