Burst of Light: Caravaggio and His Legacy

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Saint John the Baptist, 1604-05
(The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art) 302#

 "Burst of Light: Caravaggio and His Legacy" an exhibition demonstrating the lasting legacy of the infamous artist on 17th century art has traveled across the country from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to the Wadsworth Antheneum in Connecticut, a much smaller collection but noteworthy nonetheless. As with any show of this magnitude foreign loans are a major issue which are missing except for two loans from the National Gallery in London and the National Gallery of Canada in the Wadsworth exhibit. The show includes five paintings by Caravaggio which are hung in the first of three galleries. Also in the first gallery are those artists who were Caravaggio's contemporaries or those artists that worked alongside him. The 'Caravaggisti' as his followers are known are divided into two galleries according to their geographic location. There is an audio guide for the exhibition which is accessed through a phone line. For you to enjoy the exhibition as any other visitor can do at the Wadsworth I am including the telephone number 1-860-760-9980 and the numbers on the works of art. Just dial this number from any phone and punch in the numbers on the paintings followed by the pound key. The main number for the overview of the exhibition is 300#.

As soon as visitors enter the main gallery of the exhibition they are confronted with a half-clad, young Saint John the Baptist, commanding attention in the middle of the facing wall. This painting is everything one expects from the infamous Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio - he is a full-length figure pushed to the front of the picture plane with a dark background that helps to project the figure into the viewer's space and a strong light coming from the top left. It is even possible to see the incisions above the right knee. This painting is flanked on both sides with two smaller, more intimate works - Martha and Mary Magdalene to the left and  Saint Francis of Assisi Ecstasy to the right.

The Bellelli Sisters - Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas, The Bellelli Sisters, 1865-66,
(LACMA)

Edgar Hilaire Germain Degas, one of the most well known and beloved (all those ballerinas...) of Impressionist artists is also one of the most enigmatic.Since it is assumed his ballerinas are lovely and graceful, people seem to not make the connection to the licentious world the artist was actually depicting. But of all of Degas' paintings revealing modernity with all its concurrent problems, it's the family portrait's that I find the most mesmerizing. There is something so disturbing about the discordance and the disconnect that is so palpable in his family portrayals.  The protagonists are usually looking in opposite directions, barely touching with solemn, melancholy expressions.  But this painting with the one girl's face blurred is even more puzzling than most of his other portraits.

Edgar Degas, The Bellelli Family (Family Portrait), 1858-1867
(Musee d'Orsay)

I wrote about the haunting Bellelli Family Portrait last year and it was quite a surprise running into The Bellelli Sisters, during my visit to Los Angeles Country Museum of Art two months ago, as if running into an old friend.  In this portrait Degas' nieces, Giovanna and Guiliana Bellini, are depicted as young ladies as opposed to the little girls in pinafores they are in the family portrait. Degas was very fond of this painting and did not part with it his whole life because he never saw his cousins again after he painted this portrait. If he cared so much for his cousins, and  taking into consideration the closeness he presumably shared with the girls' mother, his aunt Laura, then  this begs the question of why he always chose to represent families in disconnect.  Was it just a part of his artist-journalist persona of reporting his observations of the human condition or was it something else.  The gallery label provides a comprehensive conclusion:

"Edgar Degas's talent for portraiture was manifested in radical compositions and the ability to express the character of his sitters with great subtlety. In this double portrait of his Italian cousins, he gives each figure her own space and direction, suggesting their distinct personalities. Giovanna faces the viewer, while Giulia is turned aside , focused elsewhere. The two sisters are a study in contrast:: one fair, the other dark; one in black, the other in a lighter, brown dress.  Degas blurred the details of Giulia's face, perhaps imitating effects of photography."

Resources:

LACMA gallery label and website 

ARTstor.org

Baldessari @ the Met - For those who missed it...

John Baldessari's "Palm Tree/Seascape" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art© John Baldessari, photograph © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

John Baldessari exhibit "Pure Beauty" was at the LACMA when I was visiting in August which I didn't get a chance to see but made a note to self to catch in New York.  It was the realization that I was going to miss it once again that prompted me to drop everything and run to the  Metropolitan Museum of Art, last week, four days before it  closed.  

It was such a groundbreaking experience for me as a student of Art, that I wish I had the chance to tell all my friends and take my kids to see it.  Unfortunately, it closed yesterday but I still want to share the experience with everyone.  I put up the link for the Met Audio Guide (you can download it by clicking on the title of this post  or http://www.metmuseum.org/audio/exhibitions/AudioGuide_Baldessari.zip) the numbers for some of the works are underneath them so those who are interested can take the tour right here and now...

There is also a link to an interactive artwork -'JOHN BALDESSARI - in still life 2001-2010' which lets you recreate the 17th century Dutch painting below anyway you like.  It is extremely cool...

 

http://in-still-life.com/index.php

WHAT IS IT THAT DISTINGUISHES ART FROM REAL LIFE???

John Baldessari's retrospective 'Pure Beauty' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, asks this question and forces the viewer to contemplate the answer repeatedly...

John Baldessari (American, b. 1931)
Tips for Artists Who Want to Sell, 1966–1968
Acrylic on canvas; 68 x 56 1/2 in. (172.7 x 143.5 cm)
The Broad Art Foundation, Santa Monica
© John Baldessari

His quirky sense of humor is ever-present in all of his works.

John Baldessari, 'The backs of all the trucks passed while driving from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara, California, Sunday 29, January 1963" photography, 1963.
 © John Baldessari

According the Met Audio-Guide here Baldessari is utilizing the mundane without elevating it to 'High Art' status in an attempt to construct meaning from the ground up.  (Met Audio-Guide 401) 

John Baldessari (American, b. 1931)
Commissioned Painting: A Painting by Elmira Bourke, 1969
Acrylic and oil on canvas; 59 1/4 x 45 1/2 in. (150.5 x 115.6 cm)
Courtesy the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York and Paris
© John Baldessari

John Baldessari (American, b. 1931)
Commissioned Painting: A Painting by Anita Storck, 1969
Acrylic and oil on canvas; 59 1/4 x 45 1/2 in. (150.5 x 115.6 cm)
Courtesy the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York and Paris
© John Baldessari

 "Is style really important or is it the idea behind the art?"

These are two of the three artworks on display commissioned by Baldessari from contemporary artists of  paintings of photographs he had taken of his friends pointing at an object of their choice, the title was added later by a sign painter... (Met Audio-Guide 406)

John Baldessari (American, b. 1931)
California Map Project, 1969
© John Baldessari

'Making Art that existed out in the world'

Baldessari took a map of California and drove around the state to find the literal places where the letters fell on the map.   

"mistaking the map for the territory... in treating the letters on the map like real places, Baldessari deliberately makes this mistake"(Met Audio-Guide 408)

John Baldessari (American, b. 1931)
I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art, 1971
Black-and-white video with sound, 13:06 min
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, 2010 (2010.262)
© John Baldessari

The Artist turns the typical school boy's boring punishment for bad behavior of repetition into a pledge of not producing 'boring art' (Met Audio-Guide 413)

John Baldessari (American, b. 1931)
Virtues and Vices (for Giotto), 1981
© John Baldessari


Hope, Prudence, Temperance, Sloth, Gluttony, Avarice 

Baldessari originally hung these photographic images matched with the seven virtues and vices in a chapel-like alcove and dedicated them to Giotto recalling his frescoes from the Arena Chapel. (Met Audio-Guide 420)

John Baldessari (American, b. 1931)
Lizard to Pianist (with Gold Sphere), 1984
Gelatin silver prints and color photographs on board
© John Baldessari

Title is telling us how to look at the work...Building the work up in almost an architectural manner  (Met Audio-Guide 421)

John Baldessari (American, b. 1931)
Kiss / Panic, 1984
Gelatin silver prints with oil tint on board, in eleven parts; 80 x 72 in. (203.2 x 182.9 cm) overall
Glenstone
© John Baldessari

At the time Baldessari made this work, he was becoming interested in Freud and  began to think of his collection of film stills as a collective unconcious...(Met Audio-Guide 422)

John Baldessari (American, b. 1931)
Heel, 1986
Gelatin silver prints with oil tint, oil stick, and acrylic; 106 1/2 x 86 15/16 in. (270.5 x 220.9 cm) overall
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Modern and Contemporary Art Council Fund
© John Baldessari

Is the title referring the the body part or the character of the man in the picture or the command being given to the dog? 

"One of the hallmarks of my work have always been omitting information and deleting it, that might be very necessary to understand the image... but, thinking that what you leave out the spectator with their imagination could replace" John Baldessari (Met Audio-Guide 423)

John Baldessari (American, b. 1931)
The Overlap Series: Jogger (with Cosmic Event), 2000–2001
Lambda prints on Sintra with acrylic and crayon; 84 x 43 3/4 in. (213.4 x 111.1 cm) overall
Jennifer B. Stockman
© John Baldessari

On the one side it is a snapshot of a street scene outside of his studio, on the other it is a scene out of a movie that is constructed out of someone's imagination and in the middle where they overlap -Baldessari painted to change the surface because he is against categories...(Met Audio-Guide 424)

John Baldessari (American, b. 1931)
The Duress Series: Person Climbing Exterior Wall of Tall Building / Person on Ledge of Tall Building / Person on Girders of Unfinished Tall Building, 2003
Digital prints with acrylic on Sintra; 60 x 180 in. (152.4 x 457.2 cm) overall
Ringier Collection, Switzerland
© John Baldessari

The figure which is basically a plastic raised or recessed silhouette, is optically and literally popping out of the picture because it is simplified and painted flat in the three primary colors...(Met Audio-Guide 425)

John Baldessari(American, b. 1931),
 Prima Facie (Third State): From Aghast to Upset, 2005.© John Baldessari

Prima Facie - How things appear on the surface upon first glance...(Met Audio-Guide 427)

John Baldessari (American, b. 1931)
Prima Facie (Fifth State): Warm Brownie / American Cheese / Carrot Stick / Black Bean Soup / Perky Peach / Leek, 2006
Pigment prints on canvas with latex paint; 92 in. x 9 ft. 6 in. (233.7 x 289.6 cm) overall
Glenstone
© John Baldessari

How we attribute meaning to color... (Met Audio-Guide 428)

The strange yet alluring juxtapositions, oscillation of words and images, the sharp sense of humor, the artist's intentions and my own interpretations of the works was very inspiring and exhilarating ... Baldessari's statement of 'looking at art as a form of life, a process of seeing possibilities and making new meanings' resonated within me, motivating me to new heights.

Sedef Piker (Turkish-American, b. 1966)
My BrainCloud, 2011



the end

At the Museum

I am a museum freak... that's what my boys call me anyway.  It is true that I feel most contended at a museum than anywhere else.  I always wanted to share this love with my kids and took them to various shows and exhibits from the time they could walk; unfortunately my plan backfired and if anything, they seem to have an aversion to museums.  I have a new protege I can work on now - Prometheus Maximus, my five weeks old nephew.  It's never too early to start...I thought ... and... took him to see the 'MANLY PURSUITS - The sporting images of THOMAS EAKINS' exhibit at the LACMA  this past week, the first of many museum visits we can enjoy together in the future, I hope.

The Art History of Western Civilizations class I took at the New School this past spring, of course, covered  Eakins while on the subject of Realism; one of his most famous paintings 'Gross Clinic' was on the final, as a matter of fact.  It is such a powerful work that I have been meaning to go and see the real thing in Philadelphia soon, although I did get a chance to view what is considered to be Eakins's finest figure painting 'Salutat' at the LACMA.

I find special exhibitions like these about an artist to be very interesting; they are a great way of getting some inside information about the particular working techniques and influences of an artist.  This exhibit was enlightening about Eakins's perfectionist attention to details and the influence of photography in his work of the time period.

Eakins's meticulous perspective studies drafted repeatedly for his paintings with rowers were fascinating.  I am aware of the preliminary sketches or numerous studies involved in any painting but these looked like the work of an engineer or an architect rather than the sketches of artists I had seen before.  They had rooms full of photographs he took of male nudes in action and the figures were represented incredibly realistically, right down to the tan lines on the necks and hands of the sportsmen attesting to their profession as laborers during the day.  The 'Swimming Hole' was a painting of Eakins and some of his students that I had seen in one of my textbooks that was also on display.  The book stated that this work was considered to be so scandalous that it caused his dismissal from the academy as an instructor.

In all of his sporting images, Eakins chose to represent a break in the action, one moment suspended in time; the Catherine OPIE 'Figure and Landscape' photography exhibition that was on view at the next gallery was photographs of  high school football games and players, also suspended in time, interpreted as a continuation of Eakins' Sporting Images from contemporary life. What I found most powerful were a room full of her Surfers Series.  All white room with photographs of a white sea and sky and men as only little, insignificant dots on the horizon.  The calm, quiet of the sea was so palpable as to be almost eerie.

Our museum outing was a grand success, Prometheus slept through most of it... We went back to the LACMA one more time to walk through some other parts of their collection; the rest will have to be for another visit...

  

LACMA