Blackpaint 683 – Michelangelo: Animals, Trees, Colours and Tits

Modern English

Forgot this one last blog – “At this moment in time…”

Why not “Now”?

 

Michelangelo’s Animals

“I’m an admirer of Michelangelo’s representations of animals, none more than the mighty fish flanking Jonah on the Sistine Ceiling.”: (Martin Gayford, the RA Magazine, winter 2020).

I’m an admirer of Martin Gayford’s writing on art, especially his great book “Modernists and Mavericks”, second only, in my view,  to “The Dream Colony”, the book of Walter Hopps interviews.  Gayford’s book is really interesting in its examination of the links between London artists of the 60s.  Brilliant book, marred  by the omission of Albert Irvin, surely a very important London painter.

I find this remark about Michelangelo’s animals puzzling, however.  Offhand, I couldn’t think of any animals M had actually done, apart from the odd snake.  A few years back, I did several blogs on the theme  “Michelangelo doesn’t do trees”(see Blackpaint 112)  This was in response to a report that someone, a German expert I think, was proposing a” Sermon on the Mount” as a previously unacknowledged Michelangelo.  The painting portrayed a heavily wooded mountain top; I showed, I believe, that M never painted trees, and if this was by M, it was the only one he’d ever done that included trees (apart from a couple of dead ones and the tree of knowledge in Garden of Eden – see below).

Just for fun, then, I’ve researched Michelangelo’s animals to see what Gayford means, and if his portrayals are anything special.  Results below:

 

Here’s the image that Gayford cites above.  It’s like a big trout, sucking at Jonah’s left thigh.  Sort of colourless; reminds me of those Billy Bass talking fish.

 

Here’s Paul on Malta(?), struggling with a serpent.

 

 

Here’s another serpent, this time handing Eve the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.  Not really an animal, is it?  More of a woman, really.  As for the tree, this is about as complete and leafy a tree as Michelangelo ever painted.  It looks as if the serpent has interrupted Eve in some activity…

 

Here’s Minos, with yet another snake attacking his penis.  Michelangelo gave Minos the face of Biagio, an old enemy.  He doesn’t look too bothered. does he?

 

Here’s Noah and his sons, sacrificing rams in thanks to God for the survival of the Ark  There’s a touch of Wallis and Gromit about the cow’s face; I think it’s the eyes.  I’ve noticed that in some medieval paintings, usually horses.

 

Tityan attacked by an eagle.  feathers and neck are rather odd..

 

Ganymede being abducted by the same bird, by the looks of it.

 

Looks like a Barn Owl on a tomb.  Face looks accurate; not sure about the legs.

 

 

Two versions of Phaeton tumbling from his chariot as it falls; contortions of the horses are great.

 

Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus.  Horse is OK but not stunning…

 

Couple more mounts at the crucifixion of Peter (off picture to the right).  Again, OK but stiff and nothing special.

 

A very pithy critique offered by Alan Bennett, through the words of a character in “The History Boys” (I think the James Corden character):  “Michelangelo doesn’t do women, Miss – he does men with tits.”  Spot on, at least for the sculpture above.  there’s the owl again, under her/his leg.

Another great insight from Waldemar Januszczak; he talks about Michelangelo’s “Opal Fruit colours” with regard to the Sistine ceiling.  Spot on, again.

That’s pretty much it.  I don’t think Michelangelo’s animals are anything special;  His trees are almost non-existent; his landscapes are arid, rocky, desert-like, featureless.  What he is rather good at is the human body, especially the (naked) male body.

A couple of my figure drawings/paintings below, Definitely NOT offered for comparison  with those above.

Rising in the Mist

 

Seated in the Dream Studio

Blackpaint

11/12/20

 

 

 

Blackpaint 588 – Fundamental! Wolfie and Hockers at the Tates

Wolfgang Tillmans, Tate Modern

Huge blown-up photos on the walls, but also desktops full of his “snaps” (and pro-Remain, anti-Brexit propaganda posters/leaflets he presumably produced).  He calls each room an “installation”, the nature of which he expounds in the booklet, to avoid explanations on the walls.  My favourite below:

 

Try to see that right arm and hand as a leg and foot and you get a totally different image…

Additionally, you can see –

A drainpipe and drainhole, with water running down through soggy litter; an amazing starscape over a dark hillside; a male bumhole close-up; a close-up of a vagina which appears to be that of a transsexual, judging by the hairy legs (echo of the famous Courbet picture); several large, beautiful colour field abstracts, red and ochre mainly, recalling Hoyland or more, Diebenkorn’s desert colours combined with his Ocean Park structures; crystalline car headlight; that strange shape of the swimmer picking his foot; enormous, rather touching blow-ups of delicate weeds sprouting in his backyard – and a simple image of a man in a blue T shirt, that is startlingly clear and 3D, when looked back on through the arch, from a short distance – try it.  And, of course, those great ones of pigment threads, slowly floating and whirling in fluid.  Great exhibition; Tillmans can find beauty in strange places – drains, for example.  Not sure about the other apertures.

Hockney, Tate Britain

After the big RA Hockney exhibition of 2012, I was expecting a bit of deja-vu; there was a bit, but I was surprised at how informative and enjoyable the Tate show is.  I’ve been twice, on a Saturday and a Thursday, and both times, the Tate was rammed with white-haired, retired schoolteacher types, along with the tourists and students.  Hockney is definitely a Treasure of Middle England, comparable, I guess, to Alan Bennett in his fanbase.

I reckon there are about ten or twelve different “sections”, some of them being distinct phases in his painting, others different areas of activity; here’s my breakdown of the show:

• The earliest real Hockneys from the early 60s – textured, splashy paint, cartoon boys, areas of raw linen, words and letters (cf.Johns), jokey content – Boys Together, Typhoo Tea, toothpaste, the boys speeding towards Italy (see below).  I can’t get away from seeing a similarity to Bacon in the brushwork, splatters and bare surfaces here, if not the content (although one of the shower ones could be).

Flight to Italy

• Next, the Kitaj-like ones, where Hockney makes well-drawn, naturalistic figures, often alongside flat cartoon characters (see below).  Various palm tree and pyramid pieces, chaps in pants on bed or in shower.

Man in a Museum (You’re in the Wrong Movie)

• Swimming pools, snakey surface reflections, Bigger Splash of course.
• A roomful of drawings, from early “cartoons” through beautifully, sparingly executed portraits, Kitaj, Kasmin etc.
• Raw red USA desert canyons and Yorkshire Dales – hills and winding roads, flattened against invisible glass of the surface, shining with vivid colours, which I thought were a bit much in 2012, but I see from a TV film on Hockney last night are pretty accurate.  That one of hawthorn trees with maggot blossoms and the Van Gogh pink and grey sky..
• A room of beautifully drawn but underwhelming drawings of woodland scenes.
• The static portraits of Ossie Clark, Celia Birtwell, Henry Geldzahler, Hockney’s parents  et al; they recall della Francesca in the respect that the characters appear self-absorbed, or at least, uninvolved with each other.  There is a della Francesca on the wall behind Geldzahler, Baptism of Christ, I think.
• Piercingly psychedelic verandahs, blue with red flowerpots, overlooking fiercely green lawns.  Those flowerpots really cut through.
• A roomful of his composite videos of wood and meadowland in different seasons, taken by a battery of cameras from a moving car.
• Ipad drawings and pictures he has worked up from them.
• The psychedelic woods and landscapes from the 2012 exhibition.

I like the early stuff best, but it’s an impressive body of work, to understate the case.

To finish, a series of quick life drawings done with a brush and black acrylic.  Picasso at Barcelona next time.

 

 

 

 

 

Woman with Fan, 1 – 6

Blackpaint

26/2/17

 

 

 

Blackpaint 260

Mark Wallinger

Video installation  in the Tate Britain.  It’s been there for some time, but I took  the time to sit and watch it on Sunday.  It’s a film of people, mostly business types, coming through the exit gates at an airport, in slow motion, to some beautiful early church music.  The music and slow motion turn the whole thing into a ballet and endow every movement and facial expression with significance; raised eyebrows, for instance, to convey nonchalance, perhaps; a quick check of the mobile, a squaring of the shoulders..  At one point, a young man, student maybe, enters from the right with a cup of coffee, cutting into the path of a woman who has just come through the gate.  A collision seems inevitable, but no – they pass by as if the other did not exist.  In the final seconds of the loop, a young woman runs into the picture and towards the camera, again, close to an emerging passenger – and again, it’s as if they are unaware of the other’s presence.  The sort of exhibit that makes you want to go back to see if you missed anything.

Keith Arnatt

His “Artist as a Shadow of his Former Self” is worth a look (in the same room); just a photo of his truncated shadow on a brick wall, but with the title, and the wall, of course,  it felt related somehow to Banksy’s stuff, only years earlier.

Barry Flanagan

A whole room of lovely small drawings, actually prints, I think, of simple line drawings with a couple of portraits that reminded me of early Hockney.

Turner

Looking at the “Sea Monsters” in the flesh, so to speak, I noticed yet another imponderable – on the immediate left of the “face” (or the left hand fish, as I am coming to think of it) there is a thing like a head with a cap on top and blunt face with no nose.  Another sea monster??

Michelangelo

Vincent thought Michelangelo did legs too long – but that it didn’t matter; there was truth in the distortion.  He doesn’t say which piece or pieces he is referring to, unfortunately.  I have to say that I haven’t noticed any particular leg distortion, but I do have a problem with the breasts on “Dawn”, part of the Lorenzo de’  Medici tomb.  As Alan Bennett made one of his History Boys say, she has a man’s torso with a woman’s breasts stuck on – or words to that effect.  Or, maybe he was referring to the female figure on the Giuliano de’ Medici tomb, where the breasts are even more “stuck on”.

Michelangelo’s drawings of the Tasks of Hercules in the Royal Library at Windsor show poor Hercules getting a really painful looking chomp on the backside from one of the heads of the Lernean Hydra.  He wrestles with other heads and necks in the classic Laocoon pose.

Bela Tarr

The Wallinger shows how the right music and slow motion can make the ordinary fascinating and full of moment; Tarr’s film, “The Man from London” (see Blackpaint 256 ) uses the music in this way throughout throughout – instead of slow motion, however, he uses stillness and a development from dark to lit, blurred to clear.  In one sequence, a character is walking along a harbour wall and the camera, travelling with him, swings in such a way that he appears to be making no progress against the background at all – indeed, it looks as if he is walking forwards but moving backwards.  Highly unsettling.

Blackpaint

14.03.11