#When the Author Was Painting the Vault of the Sistine Chapel

[artdaily7]

Michelangelo: To Giovanni da Pistoia "When the Author Was Painting the Vault of the Sistine Chapel" —1509 I've already grown a goiter from this torture, hunched up here like a cat in Lombardy (or anywhere else where the stagnant water's poison). My stomach's squashed under my chin, my beard's pointing at heaven, my brain's crushed in a casket, my breast twists like a harpy's. My brush, above me all the time, dribbles paint so my face makes a fine floor for droppings! My haunches are grinding into my guts, my poor ass strains to work as a counterweight, every gesture I make is blind and aimless. My skin hangs loose below me, my spine's all knotted from folding over itself. I'm bent taut as a Syrian bow. Because I'm stuck like this, my thoughts are crazy, perfidious tripe: anyone shoots badly through a crooked blowpipe. My painting is dead. Defend it for me, Giovanni, protect my honor. I am not in the right place—I am not a painter. Michelangelo 1508-12 Sistine Chapel ceiling, fresco, Vatican City, Rome, Italy

#Michelangelo #Sistine Chapel ceiling #Sistine Chapel #fresco #Vatican City #Rome #Giovanni da Pistoia #When the Author Was Painting the Vault of the Sistine Chapel #I've already grown a goiter from this torture #Art #Poetry #Painting #Ceiling Painting #Fine Arts #Michelangelo Buonarroti #I am not a painter #I am not in the right place #Renaissance #Renaissance Art #Insecurity #History #Art History #Confidence #Letters #Christianity #catholocism #The Bible #High Renaissance

[alexanderpearce]

every time i have art block i am like. i am Michaelangelo Writing To Giovanni Da Pistoia When the Author Was Painting the Vault of the Sistine Chapel

#I AM NOT IN THE RIGHT PLACE - I AM NOT A PAINTER #thank you so much to tumblr user fluffairy for reccing me that poem on that allen ginsberg post its so good #shut up ulrike #michelangelo #michelangelo di lodovico buonarroti simoni

[spudcity]

To Giovanni da Pistoia When the Author was Painting the Vault of the Sistine Chapel

I’ve already grown a goiter from this torture, swollen up here like a cat from Lombardy (or anywhere where the stagnant water’s poison). My stomach’s squashed under my chin, my beard's pointing at heaven, my brain’s crushed in a casket, my breast twists like a harpy’s. My brush, above me all the time, dribbles the paint so my face makes a fine floor for droppings! My haunches are grinding into my guts, my poor ass strains to work as a counterweight, every gesture I make is blind and aimless. My skin hangs loose below me, my spine's all knotted from folding over itself, I’m bent taut as a Syrian bow. And because I’m like this, my thoughts are crazy perfidious tripe: anyone shoots badly through a crooked blowpipe. My painting is dead. Defend it for me, Giovanni, protect my honor. I am not in the right place—I am not a painter.

–Michelangelo Buonarroti, 1509

Translated by Gail Mazur

#Michelangelo #Sistine Chapel #Gail Mazur #poetry #I am not a painter

[a-h-arts]

Michelangelo as he was Pope Julius II was a fastidious man whose eye for the arts was always set on his lofty standards of beauty and perfection that few artists could satisfy. So when the pope saw the Pieta whose beauty surpassed the ancient Greek and Roman sculptures adorning the tomb of a French cardinal, he wanted the same awe-inspiring adornment for his tomb, whereupon one Michelangelo Buonarroti from Florence was summoned for the commission for the work. From then on, that’s how Michelangelo at age thirty-three reluctantly embarked on his Herculean task of frescoing the vault of the Sistine Chapel. This book by Ross King recounts such background stories of the making of the Sistine Chapel frescoes and descriptions of the personal traits of Michelangelo. Go to Amazon

An interesting but ponderous account of a great work of renaissance art. The topic of this book is an artistic and historic blockbuster: Michelangelo's famous frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The author tells the story in great detail -- arguably in too great detail. Every artist and assistant artist and many of their relatives and patrons are given, along with their towns and some of their history -- often with little relevance to the story. This is a lot to wade through and is more than is necessary. Their names are long and hard to pronounce, at least for a non-speaker of Italian. There is a fair amount of repetition as well. For example, we are told at least three times that, contrary to (supposed) popular belief, Michelangelo did not do his painting solo and while lying on his back (as in Irving Stone's "The Agony and the Ecstasy"): He built elaborate scaffolding to make his work and that of his assistants easier. We are told about the sexual reputations of not just Michelangelo (meh) and Raphael (stud), but of many of their friends and associates. This sounds promising but is actually not that explicit and hence a bit disappointing when the book could have used a bit of pizzazz... Go to Amazon

A humane genius Unlike Brunelleschi's Dome which I have found more tedious, I enjoyed this book thoroughly. It is entertaining and very illustrative of the times Michelangelo and all of the Renaissance masters lived. The papal intrigues also come out as a kind of Agatha Christie mystery in a sense. The hardships Michelangelo had to go through in order to achieve the completion of this supreme work sound quite real and it is astounding to learn how he managed to outdo some of the masters of the time when he was new to fresco. YES, here I learned that believe it or not, this was his FIRST experience with the technique. I considered him a genius in his own right before reading the book, but now my admiration is boundless. Go to Amazon

Five Stars This is a wonderful book, worth reading even for who have read ... The Pope was a Bad Actor ... but you knew that! Amazing book done masterfully with just the right amount of detail. An enjoyable sit with Roman history and its Pope and his tumultuous relationship with the Master of fresco. I really loved learning so much about what I saw Fascinating history lesson It might have been "the pope's ceiling" but Michelangelo made it his own Great read Amazing detail What's the real story of the Sistine Chapel ceiling?

#Historical #art #book

[decaffeinatedpenguinpizza-blog]

PAULINE CHAPEL Maestro De Luca and his team have worked on the restoration of the Pauline Chapel. The very first step in the restoration process consisted in the cleaning of the gilded and coloured stucco decorations and the restoration of the frescoes, which were painted by Lorenzo Sabatini and Federico Zuccari. The very last step of this restoration consisted in the cleaning and conservation of the two frescoes painted by Michelangelo, the Conversion of Saint Paul and the Crucifixion of Saint Peter, which face one another on the side walls of the Chapel. This extremely important and delicate phase started in June 2008 with the constant effort and work of Maestro Maurizio De Luca with his principle assistant Maria Putska. For a proper restoration, which aims at allowing the public to appreciate the authentic Michelangelo, our restorers had to clean each area and remove every detail that was not originally done by Michelangelo’s hands. In fact, the Pauline Chapel is a coherent work of art, where all the painters, with their distinct styles and techniques, were able to work in consonance with the style and genius of the supreme master, Michelangelo. In fact, these painters did not engage in any competition with Michelangelo, but instead humbly sought to create a harmony within the Chapel by playing supporting notes. Thus, it would have been erroneous to place the emphasis solely on the frescoes of Michelangelo presenting them as exceptional testimonies which outshined the rest of the artist, and in fact, leaving them in his shadow. If we had done so, we would have been unfair not only to them, but to art history itself. The painters, sculptors and decorators who worked in the Pauline chapel some twenty years after Michelangelo, were surely flattered to have been chosen to work in the same Chapel as the Great Master. Indeed, the work inside the Pauline was challenging enough for them, but became all the more intimidating because, after the publication of the "Lives of the Artists" by Giorgio Vasari, Michelangelo was considered a Genius and almost a "deity." Thus, both Sabatini in the Fall of Simon Mago and Zuccari in the allegorical nudes of the vault, tried to keep a low profile by using a style as similar as possible to Michelangelo, avoiding every possible dissonance with the overall style of the Chapel. Restoration, as our professors have taught us, is above all a critical work which descends directly from one’s interpretation of the story that has been refigured. It was this interpretation of the story that lead to the philosophy of intervention, which was then elaborated and defined by the Direction of the Restoration Committee for the restoration of the Pauline Chapel (Professor Arnold Nesselrath, Maurizio De Luca and with your author). Of course the cleaning of Michelangelo’s frescoes is based on coherence with the chromatic values, with the tone and the "patina" of the whole of the frescoe itself. However, in order to better understand the reasons and difficulties of the restoration, one should know the construction problems confronted during the building and decoration of the Pauline Chapel. All these difficulties are the direct consequence of the particular character and the special destiny of a sacred space, so utterly unique for what it represents. The Pauline Chapel has been the Papal Chapel for ages. It is the most intimate and private among the chapels of Apostolic Palace. The Pauline is the chapel which, even more than the Sistine, is called to evoke the mission and destiny of the Universal Church. In fact, this Chapel is dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul. On the first rests the historical and juridical legitimacy of the roman pontiffs. The second is the corner stone which sustains and justifies the doctrine of the Church and its ecumenical mission. The Popes of the XVI century, amidst the Reformation and Counter Reformation, were utterly aware of the extraordinary symbolic meaning of this place which explains the complicated construction and decorative itinerary of this chapel, so full of interruptions, reworkings and adjustments by multiple Popes. Antonio da Sangallo was the first architect in charge of the construction of the Chapel, between 1537 and 1542, during the papacy of Paul III Farnese. Also, Perin del Vaga took care of the stucco decorations, which were eventually removed at the time of Gregory the XIII Boncompagni. In the forties of the same century Michelangelo, who had just completed the Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel, started painting his last two frescoes. These years are extremely hard for Buonarroti, who is also dedicated to the construction of St. Peter’s Basilica and the designing of the Cupola, despite his old age and fragile state of health. The existing written documentation shows massive purchases of ultramarine blue (we found so much and of such high quality during the restoration!), but it also shows several interruptions in the decoration of the Chapel (summer 1544 and summer 1546) because of the Master’s declining health. In 1550, Michelangelo completed his works of art, but the renovation of the Pauline Chapel would be suspended for more than twenty years, until the papacy of Pope Gregory XIII. This Boncompagni Pope was a man of intelligence and exquisite taste. He reformed the calendar, commissioned the construction of the Tower of the Winds and the Gallery of the Geographical Maps. During his papacy the Pauline Chapel is again a construction site full of artists and decorative professionals of every kind. Painters like Lorenzo Sabatino and Federico Zuccari and their assistants work alongside decorators, sculptors and goldsmiths whose names (Andrea Svolgi, Bartolomeo Fiorentino, Cesare Romano, Prospero Bresciani, Giacomo Casagnola etc. etc.) are written in the accounting books of the period. The present image of the Pauline Chapel is basically the one that Gregory XIII wanted during his papacy (1572 - 1585) and it is characterized by the large murals of Sabatini and Zuccari, which describe the most important episodes of the life of St. Peter and Paul and by the gold and coloured decorations of the vault, which recall the Gallery of the Geographical Maps. The last renovation was completed in the years of Pope Paul VI (1974-75) and focussed on the remodelling of the presbytery. This rearrangement, in agreement with Archbishop Harvey, his Excellency Paolo De Nicolò and the Prefecture of the Pontifical Household, with Monsignor Guido Marini, Master of the Pontifical Liturgical Celebrations and with the approval of the Holy Father, who visited the Chapel on the 25th of February 2009, was completely removed in order to restore the presbytery to its original arrangement. The Technical Services of the Governatorato, under the direction of the Engineer Pier Carlo Cuscianna restored the old marble altar. This altar has been detached from the wall in order to allow the celebration of the Mass both towards the public "versus populum" and towards the Crucifix "versus crucem". The restoration of the frescoes by Michelangelo was carried out with infinite care and attention (also thanks to the collaboration of Gianluigi Colalucci, former restorer of the Vatican Museums now retired, who worked in the Sistine Chapel twenty years ago). Everyone expected these two frescoes to appear "sub specie negra," under a dark layer of dust. We anticipated finding darker colours in comparison to those of the Sistine as an expression of pessimism and melancholy which characterized the last years of Michelangelo’s career. The old master, at the end of his life was confronting himself with the concept of the "Absolute" and with History. He was focussed on his ultimate challenge with the "affettuosa fantasia che l’arte mi fece idolo e monarca" (the affectionate fantasy which made me an idol and a monarch). And so, seen through the prism of his final sonnets, and in the spirit of the "Rondanini", thus we loved to think of the Michelangelo of the Pauline chapel. The cleaning revealed a suffering and almost tragic Michelangelo, but with extraordinary and solid plasticity and firm, urgent, cromatic appearance. The colours are the same of the Last Judgement and serve to highlight a terrible, violent and desperate humanity. Never before has the style of Buonarroti revealed such ravaged faces and hate-filled expressions, eccentric and complicated postures, as well as such a great exposition of wild energy and darkening of reason. Only in Goya of the "Black Caprices" and "Quinta del Sordo" some two centuries later, will anyone move amongst these unsettling regions of emotion. It seems almost as if the painter is questioning the theological enigma of a Salvation mysteriously offered to an unmerriting humanity, immersed in Evil and covered with the sin here represented. Michelangelo questions himself about all this and we have the impression that Saint Peter interrogates himself as well depicted as he is, irately staring out in the very moment in which he is lifted upside down on the cross, almost second guessing the usefullness of his martyrdom. As we all know this terrible idea was destined to affect another great Michelangelo: Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, who represented the same subject on the canvas of the Cerasi Chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo. The restoration gave very consoling results, far beyond our prudent expectations. All the previous restorations were removed with extreme care in order to leave behind only the original Michelangelo. The frescoes of Michelangelo were finally freed from the layer of oil and dust which was suffocating them and are now ready to shine in all their beauty and vivid colours. On the 4th of July, when the Holy Father unveils the "parva" Chapel of the Apostolic Palace, I hope nobody will say that this restoration brought the frescoes of the Pauline to their "original splendour" (as too often our inexperienced journalists like to write). On the contrary, this restoration merely sought to hand over the frescoes of Michelangelo, Zuccari and Sabatini along with the decorations of the entire Chapel, in the best possible conservation condition for the best possible appreciation and enjoyment of those who enter this space of prayer, and after all, that is all we can ask of a well done restoration. Antonio Paolucci Director of the Vatican Museums THE HISTORICAL EVENTS The Pauline Chapel was built during the works of renovation around the Sala Regia commissioned by Pope Paul III (Farnese, 1534-1549). These renovation works lead to the demolition of the Chapel of St. Nicholas and the construction of the "Staircase of the Maresciallo". The construction of the new sacellum (small chapel), which began in 1537 and was based on the project of Antonio da Sangallo il Giovane, was meant to serve the very same functions as the previous chapel and would be located not on the east side as before, but on the south side of the Sala Regia. The works must have been almost completed by November 1538 because on All Saints day Mass was celebrated in the "Cappella Noviter Erecta". The Pauline Chapel, as still today, had a rectangular plan, covered by a vault "a schifo," followed by a more narrow rectangular room which was covered with a barrel-vault and destined to become the presbytery with the altar. The commission given to Michelangelo to decorate the new chapel must have been contemporary to the finishing of The Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel. The artist first painted the Conversion of Saint Paul between the end of 1542 and July, 1545. The works for the Crucifixion of Saint Peter began immediately after the completion of the Conversion of Saint Paul and ended in March of 1550. The iconographic program of the Chapel, was most certainly suggested in part by the Pope himself and it is possible that originally it was different than the present one. In fact, Vasari in his first edition of "Lives of the painters," wrote about a Consignment of the Keys, and not about the Crucifixion of St. Peter. Thus it could be — unless the Aretino made a mistake — that the original theme for the frescoes was the "call" of the two Princes of the Apostles. The glass in the windows was completed in 1543 by Pastorino, while Perin del Vaga was commissioned in 1542 to decorate the vault with stuccoes. The final appearance of the Pauline Chapel after the interventions of Perin del Vaga and Michelangelo is unclear and it is particularly uncertain if the decorations were even completely finished. L’abbellimento della appella riprese con The The embellishing of the Chapel started again with Gregory XIII (Boncompagni, 1572-1585) who, in 1573 sought the advice of Vasari for a new iconographic program, but which was never carried out. However, the second phase of the decoration started during the same year when Lorenzo Sabatini painted the Stoning of St. Stephen, the Healing of Saint Paul in the house of Anania and the The Fall of Simon Mago, which were all completed by the end of 1577, the same year as the death of the artist. Between 1580 and 1585 Federico Zuccari and some helpers finished the decorations by painting the Baptism of the Centurion and replacing the ceiling decoration with the fifteen Stories of St. Peter and of St. Paul. Until the papacy of Leo XIII (Pecci, 1878-1903), the intervention of Pope Paul V (Borghese, 1605-1621) in the Chapel was testified to by the presence of his large papal coat of arms on the floor. These renovations must have focussed primarily on the altar area and been connected to the works done by Maderno for the façade of Saint Peter as well as to the construction of the new Bell Tower next to the Apostolic Palace. In fact, some documents clearly acknowledge that the walls of the Pauline Chapel were also affected by the new façade. Nei due ecoli successivi sono During During the next two centuries, restorations are documented during the papacy of Alexander VIII (Ottoboni,1689-1691), possibly in order to repair damages caused by a fire while another three minor restorations occurred in the XVIII Century. To Clement XI (Albani, 1700-1721) we attribute the construction and embellishment of the wooden structure or "machina" of the 40 hours devotion for the exposition of the Blessed Sacrament which covered the area of the altar. In 1741, Pope Benedict XIV (Lambertini, 1740-1758) commissioned Domenico Spolia "restorer of paintings and stuccoes" the complete restoration of the Chapel. Another intervention, probably more limited, must have been done in 1786 by the "figurative painter" Bernardino Nocchi who was paid for the "restorations of paintings and frescoes in the Pauline Chapel and in the Sala Regia." The Nineteenth Century was characterized by two very important restorations: the first one was commissioned by Pope Gregory XVI (Cappellari, 1831-1846) and focussed not only on the paintings and stuccoes, but also on the altar area where the "bella machina" was removed along with its entire wooden apparatus. As a result, the wall behind the altar was renovated with a magnificent marble tabernacle to keep the Blessed Sacrament, four granite columns, and precious marbles as well as the painting The Transfiguration of Our Lord by Simone Cantarini. Pope Gregory XVI also added a "new floor of marble sections covering the presbytery, separated from the rest of the Chapel by a grate" ("L'Album", 25th December, 1837, p.330). A commemorative marble inscription was placed on the lunette above the altar (and subsequently removed) as a testimony of these works. In 1838 the engraver Pietro Girometti made a medal representing the Pauline. A further renovation took place during the Pontificate of Pius IX (Mastai-Ferretti 1846-1878), as the archival documents and the presence of his coat of arms in the Chapel testify. A dedicatory plaque was placed above the door before the intervention of Pope Paul VI which held the inscription "PIUS IX PONT. MAX. PAULI III SACELLUM ANTIQUAE FORMAE MAGNIFICENTIUS RESTITUIT. ORNAVIT AN. MDCCCLV". È nell’ambito dei lavori di PioIX During the During the works commissioned by Pius IX, the "machine of the 40 hours" was placed back in its former location. The same machine was definitely removed once again during the papacy of Leo XIII during the years of 1890-91. This renovation focussed once again on the altar wall and the floor where the architect Virgilio Vespignani replaced the coat of arms of Paul V with the coat of arms of the reigning pope. The execution of the works was given to the "marmoraro romano" Paolo Medici (a specialist in marble sculpting). Also the walls of the presbytery, which were evidently affected by the presence of the machine of the 40 hours, were newly decorated. A complete new restoration took place in the XX Century between 1933 and 1936. The results of this restoration were presented at the Roman Pontifical Academy of Archaeology on the 12th of January 1934 by Bartolomeo Nogara, the then Director of the Vatican Museums and Biagio Biagetti, Director of the Paintings of the Holy Apostolic Palace. Furthermore, a complete photographic documentation of the frescoes by Michelangelo both of the Pauline Chapel and the Last Judgement was completed. The restoration took place simultaneously with the one of the Last Judgement, under the direction of Biagetti and utilised the same methods. The restoration started with the Conversion of St. Paul (January 1933 — November 1933), followed by the Crucifixion of St. Peter (August 1933 — February 1934) and continued with the side frescoes of Lorenzo Sabatini and Federico Zuccari. The restoration of the decoration of the vault was continued between July 1935 and January 1936. In 1975, during the papacy of Paul VI (Montini 1963- 1978) and after the liturgical reformation of the Vatican Council II, the last arrangement took place in the Pauline Chapel. On this occasion, the Medici Company, constructed an oval altar in yellow imperial block as well as a round base under the tabernacle of the same stone (the project was prepared by the architect Giovanni Carbonara). During this restoration the marbles of the apse were cleaned and a new commemorative plaque was placed on the entrance wall. Celebration of Vespers on the occasion of the re-opening of the Pauline Chapel in the Vatican Apostolic Palace (4 July 2009) [English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish]    Images of celebration

[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: Books, Wefts, and Black Lives Matter at the Baltimore Museum of Art

Kiki Smith, “Tidal” (1998), on view as part of “Off the Shelf: Modern & Contemporary Artists’ Books” (2017), The Baltimore Museum of Art (photo by Mitro Hood)

Fog enveloped Phan-Xi-Pang, Indochina’s tallest peak, in an ocean of vanilla milkshakes. You could drink the air with a straw.

Touring Vietnam during the past two months, I eagerly anticipated painting and drawing the mountains I found pictured online. Unfortunately, clouds and fog often hid the range like the closed covers of a book, day after frustrating day. Frustrating, that is, until I embraced the mystery of what was there — Robert Ryman on swimmy steroids — rather than longing for what wasn’t.

Shortly before leaving the US, I had a related experience. I was at a press preview for a show called Off the Shelf: Modern & Contemporary Artists’ Books at the Baltimore Museum of Art, where being unable to see all that I wanted to see played first a troubling role, then an enticing one.

Artists’ books tend to be rare and fragile. They need to be protected. Hence the vitrines, which, along with closed covers and fixed, double-page spreads, prohibit a full read. It is, however, a treat to see any part of these inventive objects.

Of course, there are many works of art beset by obstacles that limit our viewing experience. We stand far below that colossal, every-page-visible-at-once picture book known as Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel. Who wouldn’t like a more optimum look at the narratives muscling their way across a vaulted heaven? Who wouldn’t like to get up close and personal with Adam or Eve, or to bite into an apple from that tree in their garden? We can’t. But we take what we can get.

Compare this to the thwarted desire to leaf through the pages of the publisher Ambroise Vollard’s 1931 edition of The Unknown Masterpiece (Le Chef-d’Oeuvre Inconnu) by Honoré de Balzac, the first book I was drawn to upon entering Off the Shelf. Six of the etchings by Pablo Picasso that accompany this tragic literary classic about art and seeing, which hang directly above the book. The illustrations can be treasured independently, as can the French author’s words. But when a great story and great images merge, it’s magic.

Installation view of “Off the Shelf: Modern & Contemporary Artists’ Books” (2017), The Baltimore Museum of Art (photo by Mitro Hood)

With one exception (a promised gift), all the works in Off the Shelf are from the BMA’s collection. Rena Hoisington, Senior Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs, curated wisely, as well as helped design the individual displays and overall galleries. On monitors in an adjoining room, viewers can scroll through numerous books from the exhibition, allowing for a more start-to-finish eyeballing (albeit virtual) experience. One of my scrolling favorites is Paul Verlaine’s once-banned, sapphic Side by Side (Parallèlement, 1900), sinuously illustrated by Pierre Bonnard. In what is considered by many to be the first modern livre d’artiste (artist’s book), the artist’s rose-sanguine marks echo the look and spirit of Verlaine’s words, which were printed on cream-colored pages in a fluid, Renaissance font designed by Claude Garamond.

Bonnard’s sprawling lithographs sometimes corral and always counter the boxy boundaries of italicized type. Often, it seems as if the women he portrays are being coaxed from, or are dissolving into, the paper’s humid sensuality, nude figures sparely drawn here, detailed there. Like a storm cloud, in a section entitled “Sappho,” a sweeping arc of dark, braiding hair from two embracing women further exhilarates their impassioned moment.

Double-page spread of “Side by Side (Parallelement)” (1900), words by Paul Verlaine, images by Pierre Bonnard

Off the Shelf is an intimate exhibit of small gems. The works spring from inspired painter/writer pairings of showstopper sensibilities, including Grace Hartigan/James Schuyler; David Hockney/The Brothers Grimm; Susan Rothenberg/Robert Creeley; and Jasper Johns/Samuel Beckett. With few exceptions, like the over-sized and weighty My Pretty Pony, a steel-covered undertaking by Barbara Kruger and Stephen King, these editions are not what, 30 years ago, my then-three-year old daughter would have referred to as “two-handed books.” But despite their mostly midsize proportions, these images and objects have a king-size impact, partly because creative combos are sharing the more private — but no less profound — sides of themselves. And we get to peek.

“Salute” (1960), Grace Hartigan, prints/James Schuyler, text, The Baltimore Museum of Art: Gift of Floriano Vecchi, New York, in memory of William Richard Miller (© Estate of Grace Hartigan)

Few of the more than 130 artists’ books and related prints in this show are ever seen in public, yet they are decidedly social in nature. Visual artists team up with other visual artists, as well as with poets, novelists, fairytale writers, book designers, typographers, typesetters, and publishers.

Hands down, the biggest social event of Off the Shelf takes the form of 1 Cent Life (1964), a celebration of art and poetry that brought together the disparate styles of abstraction and Pop. Walasse Ting and Sam Francis invited 28 blue-chip artists, ranging from Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, and Andy Warhol, to James Rosenquist, Joan Mitchell, and Tom Wesselmann. The boisterous affair included 172 pages filled with 62 lithographs and 62 poems (written by Ting).

Installation view of “Off the Shelf: Modern & Contemporary Artists’ Books” (2017), The Baltimore Museum of Art (photo by Mitro Hood)

In this exhibition, pages turn, hang, separate, and fold. When unfolded, the accordion books, Tidal (1998), by Kiki Smith, and Ed Ruscha’s Every Building on the Sunset Strip (1966), reveal elegant, elongated proportions with sleek, unique formats.

With computer screens replacing paper pages, a show like Off the Shelf is timelier than it would have been less than a decade ago. It remains to be seen whether tactile books become less important due to their cost and the diminishment of their practical necessity, or more important through their physicality and personality. Big money is on the former. I hope it’s the latter.

*   *   *

Louise Wheatley at her loom in her studio, Harford County, MD, 2016 (photo by Anita Jones)

Another show currently at the Baltimore Museum of Art is Timeless Weft: Ancient Tapestries and the Art of Louise B. Wheatley. Anita Jones, the museum’s Curator of Textiles, installed weavings from Wheatley’s more than 40-year career alongside a series of ancient Egyptian Coptic fabric works. The historical conversation that unfolds between the contemporary weaver’s works and the time-old textiles enriches them both.

Content, color, texture, and technique represent visible connections between the two bodies of work. And then there are invisible links that become an evocation of time. The Coptic weavings have missing — invisible — parts, which have been lost over the centuries. I’ve always been a sucker for fragments,  where the harsh blade and the delicate patina of centuries reconfigure shapes and dimensions, add subtlety to surface, and glaze the beauty of age across pristine colors. Fragments lead to fantasy. What could have been depicted in the no-longer-visible parts surrounding the stylized hares racing through several borders of an Egyptian 10th-11th-century silk and linen textile? The fragment adorns a wall not much more than a vitrine away from its contemporary counterpart, Wheatley’s “Rabbit” (2014). From threads to shreds and back again, in my imagination I complete the story.

Louise Wheatley, “Rabbit” (c. 2014), linen, wool, cotton, silk (courtesy the Artist and The Baltimore Museum of Art)

Although some of Wheatley’s finely crafted weavings are large, many are about the length of a long finger. But even the artist’s tiniest textiles deliver with the might of a fog that can erase a mountain, as we see in both her portrayal of a gangly insect, “Walking Stick” (c. 1995), and a biblical hero, “David” (c. 1991), as he kneels (in one panel of a pocket-size triptych) to look for the stone with which he will defeat Goliath.

One of the larger wall hangings, “Fruits of the Spirit” (c. 1991), struck me initially as being dominated by three vertical strips of flat black. The central strip backs a charming, light-toned portrait of a pear tree that grows on the artist’s farm in Maryland. Turns out, the dark strips aren’t black at all, or flat, for that matter, but rather — as a close inspection reveals — a blend of deep tones, textures, and colors.

This tapestry does with shade what another of her works, “Egg Collection” (2005) does with shine. Here, variations in the figure/ground relationships, the finely spun warm and cool off-white ovals, and the quivering grid containing the now-you-see-them-now-you-don’t eggs create a slow, playful bounce to this fragile yet solid work. It’s as if the artist took a bunch of eggs, shook them up, and not only did not a one of ‘em crack, they all seem to revel in the delicacy of the dance of their white-on-white invisibility.

Louise Wheatley, “Egg Collection” (2005), linen, wool, cotton, silk (courtesy the Artist and the Baltimore Museum of Art)

Wheatley’s range of subjects is impressive. With heft and weft, she is equally expressive — formally, psychologically, and spiritually — at addressing pear trees and eggs, darkness and light, bugs and the bible.

*   *   *

Adam Pendleton, “A Victim of American Democracy IV” (wall work), (2016), adhesive vinyl, installation at The Baltimore Museum of Art (photo by Mitro Hood. ©️ Adam Pendleton, courtesy Pace Gallery)

For merging words and images, these are red-letter days on Baltimore’s Art Museum Drive. In a third show at the BMA, Front Room: Adam Pendleton, the words are the images. In Pendleton’s case, his ABCs are white, gray, and black — not red — sometimes spanning the walls from floor to ceiling.

Several works feature variations of the rallying cry “Black Lives Matter,” which has a trenchant meaning in Baltimore after the death of Freddie Grey. Gestural, sprayed, dripped, printed, broken, cropped, layered, rotated, and wiped-away, the letters simultaneously weave information, emotion, frustration, and hope into a powerful humanistic, social, and political message.

Adam Pendleton, “what is . . . (study)” (2017), silkscreen ink on Mylar (courtesy the Artist and Pace Gallery)

Like the BMA’s books, Wheatley’s textiles and Pendelton’s mixed-media ventures pack a punch (actually, hers is more of a lingering touch). With her, you don’t see it coming; with him, you can feel the vibrations down the block. Her mists/his missiles, resounding, both.

Off the Shelf: Modern & Contemporary Artists’ Books continues through June 25; Timeless Weft: Ancient Tapestries and the Art of Louise B. Wheatley continues through July 30; and Front Room: Adam Pendleton continues through October 1.

All three exhibitions are located at the Baltimore Museum of Art (10 Art Museum Drive, Baltimore, Maryland).

The post Books, Wefts, and Black Lives Matter at the Baltimore Museum of Art appeared first on Hyperallergic.

from Hyperallergic http://ift.tt/2rIMbMw via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Hyperallergic

[a-h-arts]

Michelangelo as he was Pope Julius II was a fastidious man whose eye for the arts was always set on his lofty standards of beauty and perfection that few artists could satisfy. So when the pope saw the Pieta whose beauty surpassed the ancient Greek and Roman sculptures adorning the tomb of a French cardinal, he wanted the same awe-inspiring adornment for his tomb, whereupon one Michelangelo Buonarroti from Florence was summoned for the commission for the work. From then on, that’s how Michelangelo at age thirty-three reluctantly embarked on his Herculean task of frescoing the vault of the Sistine Chapel. This book by Ross King recounts such background stories of the making of the Sistine Chapel frescoes and descriptions of the personal traits of Michelangelo. Go to Amazon

An interesting but ponderous account of a great work of renaissance art. The topic of this book is an artistic and historic blockbuster: Michelangelo's famous frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The author tells the story in great detail -- arguably in too great detail. Every artist and assistant artist and many of their relatives and patrons are given, along with their towns and some of their history -- often with little relevance to the story. This is a lot to wade through and is more than is necessary. Their names are long and hard to pronounce, at least for a non-speaker of Italian. There is a fair amount of repetition as well. For example, we are told at least three times that, contrary to (supposed) popular belief, Michelangelo did not do his painting solo and while lying on his back (as in Irving Stone's "The Agony and the Ecstasy"): He built elaborate scaffolding to make his work and that of his assistants easier. We are told about the sexual reputations of not just Michelangelo (meh) and Raphael (stud), but of many of their friends and associates. This sounds promising but is actually not that explicit and hence a bit disappointing when the book could have used a bit of pizzazz... Go to Amazon

A humane genius Unlike Brunelleschi's Dome which I have found more tedious, I enjoyed this book thoroughly. It is entertaining and very illustrative of the times Michelangelo and all of the Renaissance masters lived. The papal intrigues also come out as a kind of Agatha Christie mystery in a sense. The hardships Michelangelo had to go through in order to achieve the completion of this supreme work sound quite real and it is astounding to learn how he managed to outdo some of the masters of the time when he was new to fresco. YES, here I learned that believe it or not, this was his FIRST experience with the technique. I considered him a genius in his own right before reading the book, but now my admiration is boundless. Go to Amazon

This is a wonderful book, worth reading even for who have read ... The Pope was a Bad Actor ... but you knew that! Amazing book done masterfully with just the right amount of detail. An enjoyable sit with Roman history and its Pope and his tumultuous relationship with the Master of fresco. I really loved learning so much about what I saw Fascinating history lesson It might have been "the pope's ceiling" but Michelangelo made it his own Great read Amazing detail What's the real story of the Sistine Chapel ceiling? Interesting reading

#Historical #art #book