Blackpaint 672 – Bomberg, Deneuve and Angels’ Wings

Bomberg

Continuing from last blog on Roy Oxlade and Bomberg, I’ve now finished the Oxlade book “Art and Instinct” and I’m somewhat wiser, but by no means completely clear on Bomberg’s main message – or the “Approach”, as he called it (Bomberg tended to capitalise throughout his writings, most of which, in the Oxlade book at least, were unpublished notes).  Two things are clear – he was regarded as a guru by his students, who tended to make works which obviously reveal his influence (see Creffield and Dorothy Mead, for example) and he had an overwhelming sense of mission, to deliver art, and art teaching,  from the “errors” propounded by William Coldstream and others.  Coldstream was  imposing the LTS (learn to see) system on students, which was based on “accurate” observation, measurement, the rules of perspective and proportion developed during the Renaissance.  This precluded a freshness of approach, strapped students into a visual and practical straitjacket and prevented them from finding “the Spirit in the Mass”, to use Bomberg’s phrase.

What was, or is, the “Spirit in the Mass”?  Not sure.  There’s some religious or at least metaphysical stuff in there, obviously – but is it any more than “forget the rules, respond to the subject as you see fit, try to find the essentials, whatever they are, of the object which you are drawing or painting”?  I was surprised, when I looked into Bomberg’s work, to find how poerful and varied it is.  Some examples below.  I’ve left out the early, semi-abstract ones, “Mud Bath” and “Jiu Jutsu” as I’ve discussed them elsewhere.  Also I left out the Palestine paintings – “accurate”, but flat and boring.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just a few; I love the way he paints women and I was surprised at the erotic charge in some of the pictures.  And that mountainscape.  Check him out – there’s a great sequence on YouTube.

Coronavirus Updates

We in the UK have, for the last six or seven weeks, had the benefit if a daily update on the progress of the pandemic here, delivered mostly by the government minister of the day, flanked, at a proper distance, by a scientist or two.  Certain idiosyncracies of vocabulary and phraseology have developed over that time, repetitions that maybe have already been noted in the press – I wouldn’t know as I stopped buying papers weeks ago – they can carry the virus.

Of the politicians on offer, my favourite is Dominic Raab, because he resembles  Simon Cadell, who played Mr. Geoffrey in “Hi De Hi”.  Anyway – “Incredible”; everyone is working incredibly hard under incredibly difficult circs, doing an incredible job.  Related to this is ” the clock“, which again, everyone is working round.  “Granular”; I think Jonathan Van Tam, the scientist, introduced this one.  It’s to do with looking really closely at evidence, getting right down to the real nitty gritty to quote the old song – and coming up with a really close analysis – not smooth, but – well – grainy.

And phrases; the way they evaluate the questions put to them, especially those from the public; “I think that’s an incredibly good question” – Matt Hancock is the master of this – “I really do think that’s a really great question” –  then they proceed to avoid answering it, usually by “paying tribute” to “the incredible work” being done by health care workers, researchers, or whoever it might be.  This sounds snotty – I don’t mean it to be; I’ve less time for the arrogant journalists who think they are the real government.

 

Truffaut’s Films

The Last Metro, Deneuve and Depardieu both on fabulous form in Truffaut’s WW11 piece, about an actor/manager (Deneuve) trying to keep a theatre going in occupied Paris, while her Jewish playwright husband hides in the cellar from the Nazis.

 

The next best in the box set; Fanny Ardant this time, with Depardieu; she moves in next door, not knowing that D, her former lover,  lives there.  Smouldering, as Barry Norman probably said.

Angels’ Wings

Jan van Eyck, Ghent Altarpiece (detail)

This picture appeared in the RA magazine, and my partner was intrigued by the wings.  They look as if they’re cut from a melon, she said – green on the outside and sort of fleshy glistening inside,  I looked at some other examples to see – as far as I can make out, they are a one=off.

 

Ghirlandaio, Coronation of the Virgin (detail)

Nice splash of red, yellow and blue here…

 

Fra Angelico, The Last Judgement (detail)

Beautifully marked – but no recognisable pattern..

 

 

Fra Angelico, The Annunciation (detail)

Butterfly wings, definitely.

 

Dieric Bouts, the Road to Paradise (detail)

Lovely blue ones – and presumably, holes cut into the robes.  Must be difficult to get on.

Raphael, The Archangel Michael (detail)

Hint of snakeskin here – look at that fore-edge.

 

To finish, a revamped painting of mine, which I noticed “after the fact” sort of bore a resemblance to the theme – but not to the quality, of course…

Angel Wings (formerly Lost in the Woods)

Blackpaint

29.5.20

Blackpaint 642 – Monk, Barlow, Nudes and Fellini

William Monk, “A Fool through the Clouds”, The Pace Gallery

This is only on until 10th April, so visit soon if you like his works.  Three examples below – they are big, by the way.

 

 

 

Phyllida Barlow, Royal Academy until 23rd June

As at the Tate some years back, and at the Venice Biennale 2017, giant structures in stone, wood, fibre glass, canvas and metal, filling the white galleries and presenting beautiful prospects through the archways.  As can be seen, they recall skeletal structures, perhaps poking up through mud on river banks or sea shores; great precarious boulders or metal chunks, balanced on spindly supports and draped with canvas swatches.  I don’t know who to compare her works to – maybe Keifer in terms of size (but not portent)…  No-one else, really.

 

Great view through doorway.

 

I wouldn’t stray beneath those structures at the back…

 

They were squashed flat 10 seconds later…

 

The Renaissance Nude, Royal Academy, Sackler Gallery 

As you would expect, there are some fabulous treasures on display here; nothing, however, to justify the rather overheated review Adrian Searle gave it in the Guardian a few weeks back.  Far from arousing lusty thoughts, I was constantly struck by how odd some of the nude body shapes and features were, Cranach for instance, but also Durer, and others.  Many of the artists seem to have a better grasp of the muscular male physique.  I particularly liked this mysterious little picture in a vitrine with several others in a series; it’s by Giovanni Bellini, I think – what’s he doing?  Coming out of his shell is the obvious answer.  Probably has some alchemical significance – maybe??

 

 

The Ship Sails On, Federico Fellini, 1981

Fellini will be turning up regularly in this blog over the next few weeks, as I’ve just been watching virtually his entire output on DVD.  Three to go – “Clowns” (on You tube, but in Italian with Portuguese subs), “Intravista” and Voice of the Moon” (his last film, can’t find it on DVD).

Anyway, “Ship” is the one about the voyage to dispose of the ashes of a star opera singer (Helen Suzmann) in 1914.  The guests are an assortment of singers, academics, royalty and hangers-on, and there is a sort of narrator in the form of Freddie Jones, a journalist who breaks the fourth wall constantly to address us (as he is doing in the still above).  What I particularly noticed this time round was how closely Jones’ facial expressions resemble those of Giulieta Masina, Fellini’s muse and wife.  Raised eyebrows, sudden perplexed frowns, that mouth pulled firmly down at the sides, expressing an undermining skepticism: a sort of facial shrug.  Barbara Jeffords is great too, as a rival diva.  The fabulously artificial seascapes too, with the static plumes of black smoke from the funnels.  At the end, Fellini pans back (is that the right expression?) to show the crew working the “sea” surface in the studio.

No new paintings, so these are the ones I sold in the exhibition last week:

Bad Old Science

Good New Science

Ballet

Disunity of the Spheres

I certainly can’t be accused of pretentious titles…

Blackpaint

4th April 2019

 

 

 

 

Blackpaint 620 – Signorelli, Picasso and the Ape in the Museum

National Gallery

A new Signorelli, someone up a ladder, probably related to a Crucifixion.  This one’s good, but I have to say, I wasn’t keen on his other big ones – a visit of the Magi and a Circumcision.  The first has one of the worst baby Jesuses I’ve ever seen (and I’ve listed several in previous blogs).  I think Signorelli is much better doing his murals of writhing, fighting demons in his cartoon-like style, like those in Orvieto, for instance.

 

Yes, it’s definitely a baby…

That’s more like it, Luca…

In addition to Signorelli, we were looking at the painting by “Follower of Georgione” and the one by G himself and it struck me that the texture and detail involved reminded me a little of Richard Dadd’s “Fairy Feller’s Masterstroke”.  Fanciful, I know, but then I got another blast of Dadd from the Altdorfer – I think it was the legs of the man on the right…

Follower of Giorgione

Altdorfer

Finally,the big Perugino and the Mond Crucifixion by Raphael, the one with the sun and moon with faces: surely both P and R were using the same model for Mary?

The Square, dir. Ruben Ostlund (2017)

From the director of Force Majeure, this repeats the motif of a smug, liberal, bourgeois male who commits a disgraceful act.  In FM, it was running away from an avalanche, leaving his family; in this film, the guilty man posts accusing letters through all the doors in a block of flats, knowing that his stolen phone and the thieves are in one – but which one?  It has unfortunate consequences for a young boy in one apartment.

The erring male is an art museum director and the scene above is a performance staged at the museum by an actor who imitates an ape.  Of course, he goes too far and begins an assault on a female guest that looks as if it will turn into rape if uninterrupted.  Eventually, one of the suited guests tries to pull him off and the others  join in, punching and kicking.  Funny, and reminiscent of Bunuel, Festen, and maybe Airplane, a little.  Not sure what point, if any, was being made here, however.  Those Swedes, though – they do love to “epater les bourgeois”, don’t they?

More Picasso

As promised last time, some more pictures from the Picasso Year 1932 exhibition at Tate Modern.  Some of them are in hideous frames, so I’ve cropped them out.

Inflatable ladies playing at beachball.

 

One of an impressive Crucifixion series, recalling both Grunewald and Goya’s Disasters of War.

 

This looks like a beautiful flower from across the gallery; pretty good close up too, except that the breasts resemble the eyes of a frightened ghost…

 

Bit of a horror image – her face looks like a stylised Otto Dix trench corpse…

 

Unusual for Picasso (that sounds odd in itself), in that there are no hard lines around the various components of the image.  Great little painting.

 

Continental Drift

Blackpaint

26.5.18

 

 

 

 

Blackpaint 616 – Peevish Charles, Resentful Leavers and the Platypus

RA- Charles I Exhibition

Obviously the Holbeins and Van Dycks are the stars of this show – that Van Dyck family portrait with the kids and dog and baby  is noticeably informal, compared to earlier group portraits.  The hunting portrait of Charles, borrowed from the Louvre, is great; I think it’s the satin-clad elbow poking out at you.  On TV, some pundit said the horse in the picture “stole the show”; I say the elbow does.  The triple portrait of Charles on the poster captures a sort of querulous obstinacy; weak-eyed, peevish but with clear indications of an inflexible wilfulness.

Fantastic Mantegna series of the Roman Triumph; tapestries based on Raphael cartoons, especially The Miraculous Draft of Fishes; I’m not keen on that Titian of the man in furs with the big dog jumping up at him.

Leavers and Remainers  (Trauma, Requiem)

Maybe because I’ve just read David Goodhart’s The Road to Somewhere, I keep seeing the two sides in the Brexit vote represented in TV drama.  The John Sims character in “Trauma”, bitter, obsessive, smouldering with self-righteous anger at the doctor who failed to save the life of Sims’ son after he was stabbed.  He’s the Brexiter, of course, hating and pursuing Adrian Lester’s smooth, rich, elite surgeon.

There is also “Requiem”, with the Remainers being the young cellist and her devoted accompanist, the Brexiters being the hostile, defensive Welsh villagers, burning with resentment towards these invaders from London with their nosy questions.  More to both these series of course; probably just my obsession.

The Post, dir. Spielberg (2017)

Very old-fashioned Spielberg film – stirring music at strategic moments, Hanks and Streep doing the Right Thing in defiance of the US government, an admiring group of young women gazing up at Streep as she leaves the courtroom…   I did reflect, though, that the Washington Post’s publishing of the Pentagon Papers would never have happened in the UK, with the various restrictions on the media that can be brought into play here and, indeed, the willingness of the British media to cave in to the government.

Loveless, dir, Zvyagintsev (2017)

The poster said “mesmerising” and “riveting”; can be code for very, very slow…  But, happily, the film is both (mesmerising and riveting, that is).  After “Leviathan”, Zvyagintsev has shifted his focus from politics and the new gangster elites in Russia to the personal; furious, bitter fighting between his divorcing parents lead a Russian teenager to go missing in a forest near Moscow.  Much of the film concerns the campaign by a volunteer group to trace the youngster, setting about the search in a determined and disciplined way, going to considerable lengths to do what the police might be expected to do, or at least, attempt.

Brett Whiteley

I’ve been looking at Whiteley’s work again, and I have to say, he takes collage to stunning lengths; among the objects affixed to various works are the following: teeth, brain (actually a slice on a slide, by the looks of it in the photo), eggs, birds – and a platypus.

To Yirrawalla (1972)

 

Little Van Gogh

I’ve got some pictures with this group, which rents paintings out to offices, moving them around every few months.  Examples below – they’re all mine.

 

Blackpaint

21.2.18

 

Blackpaint 320 – The Shire, the Sunset and the Pequod

David Hockney

His new show at the RA seems to be dividing the critics somewhat, so I am eager to go see.  Some seem to be casting him as Grand Old Man of figurative painting, upholding traditional old English values (that thing about drawing, a sort of fetishism I think) against the conceptuals, the empty, sensationalist Hirstites. His grumpy old squire-ishness and eccentricities about smoking and the calendar assist in this, I suppose.  Some reviewers are writing in awed tones about beauty and soul – enough to make you sick, or me anyway.

Martin Kettle in the Guardian expresses this identification with traditional values – he chucks in Yorkshire pride too, no nonsense in Yorkshire – most strongly; he writes that “Hockney and his art express and address the kind of people and country that he and we wish we were”.  What does this mean?  That we are  people who love landscape painting, hate abstract and conceptual art, admire the “useful”, despise the frivolous, can draw really, really well?  All sounds deeply conservative to me, as if Hockney’s art was made to chime with Cameron’s current version of Thatcherism.  He’s probably right about many people living in Britain today – when times are hard and uncertain, you tend to cling to what you see as safest.  Not sure he’s right about Hockney, though.

Hockney’s tree pics and landscapes strike me as so oddly coloured that I think of them almost as cartoons – the repros I have seen remind me of the graphics that you used to see in pre – CGI animation; not so much East Yorkshire as The Shire.  That bright green, the beetroot – to – mauve colours he uses for paths; it all lacks the denseness and richness and subtlety of trad English landscape.  So what – he’s using trees and landscape to make pictures and if the pictures don’t look like the landscape, it shouldn’t be a problem.  The only question is, do you like the pictures?

Giorgione

Was in the National Gallery today, and I came across a couple of paintings by this mystery man of Venice.  The first, Il Tramonto, the Sunset, had a lot going on in it as well as the sun setting; St. George killing the dragon, St.Anthony waving out of a cave, St. Roch (maybe) getting his leg bound up, and a pond with a very humpy monster sitting in it.  What is the relationship between all these?  Like the Tempest, in the Venice Accademia, no-one has much idea what’s going on.

The other picture was the Adoration of the Kings, that little panel with the groom crossing his legs and looking down at his feet, way off to the right out of the main action of the picture, but stealing the attention completely.  The glowing yellows and reds are up to Raphael standard.

Catena

Why does Catena have partridges wandering about in both the pics on display next to the Giorgiones?  there they are, in both a St. Jerome in his study (lion with very human face) and in an Adoration (baby Jesus with head like a cannonball).

Travelling Light

At the Whitechapel, the latest government pictures selection, by Simon Schama this time.  Best pictures; Roger Hilton’s fabulous Pequod (thought it was a big Alfred Wallis, from across the room); Bomberg’s Jerusalem Armenian Church, and Marta Marce’s “Scalectrix” loops.  There’s that great portrait of Byron, done up like a Greek soldier, but looking very soft – not like the mad satanic near rapist portrayed in Ken’s “Gothic”.  Once again, fantastic booklet, made for bloggers so they don’t have to take notes.

Blackpaint

19.01.12

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Bridget Riley at the National Gallery

This exhibition contains both Riley’s own works and those of artists she has herself chosen, presumably to illustrate her inspirations and connections with her paintings.  “Escape 3” is the first of her works on show.  It is a canvas of modulating grey and blue wavy horizontal lines.  When I looked at this in the gallery, it appeared to me that the top half was irregular in terms of the width of the lines and their spacing, whilst the lower half consisted of two areas which “tilted” towards the viewer like a hinged sandwich.

Later, I saw the exhibition reviewed on TV and it was obvious that this division was false; the undulating, horizontal lines are “crossed” by regularly- spaced “creases” running diagonally top to bottom.  Optical illusion, but I only “got” the proper illusion, as it were, when the TV distanced me from it.

Opposite is Mantegna’s “Introduction of the Cult of Cybele to Rome”.  Processions of celebrants going this way and that, very strong sculptural effect, almost 3D.  Riley says the painting has “an all – embracing rhythm with which he (Mantegna) builds horizontals and verticals”.  The connection is “the special nature of pictorial space” in his paintings.

The other paintings she has selected are Raphael’s “St.Catherine”, in which more rhythmic currents in the portrayal of robes, the wheel, the figure are present; and three small Seurat figures -in -landscape  sketches, which presumably resonate with her palette (as does the Raphael).

There are two huge paintings, one on linen, the other directly on the wall (executed by assistants), which are in pastelly blue, green, beige and orange and resemble  cut out and concertina’d paper decorations, leaning viewer’s left to right, and stretched across an area of wall.  “Arcadia”, on linen, was done in 2007, “Blue” this year, of course.  The rhythms are there, the colours echo the Seurats to a degree. 

 There is a whole wall covered with empty black circles, which intersect like Venn diagrams; a colourful, vertical stripes painting (like those Mod blazers from the 60’s – yes, I had one); and a shimmering, modulating – again- set of black through to white dots, set in a circular pattern.  The most striking work, I think, is “Red on Red”, a beautiful, flame-like image in red, pink, orange and Prussian blue.

So, at first glance, highly unlikely combination  of images, but possible to see what she is driving at.  I’m unable to swallow Andrew Graham – Dixon’s assertions that her work reflects her love of natural forms, however;  I think you can probably take ANY painter and set your terms wide enough to discover ANY influences, echoes, associations you like – or, at least, art journalists can.  Just chop and wave your hands, assert EMPHATICALLY and pause for dramatic effect before the last word.

Quiz; Who painted the tower at Neunen, over and over again (no, I mean paintings, not the actual tower)?

Blackpaint, unfinished yet.

25.11.10

 

Blackpaint 213

National Gallery

I had to go up to see Clive Head’s pictures, currently getting record crowds.  They are hyper real, like huge photographs – a tube exit at Victoria, street scenes in Kensington, I think – one, a coffee shop, shows Bouji’s night club in the background.  Fantastic job; you have to get pretty close to see they are paintings, not photographs.  I thought they had been done from photos – the angles look photographic – but according to the blurb, does loads of drawings, takes loads of photos and draws freehand from a combination of photos, so they are more than just a photographic repro in paint.

I looked very closely for some time, and couldn’t distinguish any way in which they differed from such a repro, however; at first, I thought it was the depth of focus, but this can be achieved by photographic means and the store signs do blur in the distance, sure enough.

I checked out the Raphaels, of course, and noticed the tight, pursed little mouths that most of his women have, for example the Mond Crucifixion (love the sun and moon); but also the two Madonnas, the Pinks and the Garvagh.  His men don’t have the mouth thing – pope Julius has a sour, pulled in straight line of an old man’s mouth.

I’d forgotten about the two beautiful, highly-coloured, little predella paintings, of the Procession to Calvary and the Sermon on the Mount; the first looks like something from the Canterbury Tales, somehow (apart from Christ, of course).  There’s a great tension in it, created by Christ pulling back under the weight of the cross and the man leaning forward, dragging on the rope.

Cranach the Elder

That naked Venus, ignoring the complaining Cupid; she’s got a clean, lean body like a modern-day teenage model.

Garofalo

My notes appear to read “fungus on maple”, but I now realise it’s “fingers on nipple”.  It’s that picture of the two couples and the man on the right is caressing the woman’s nipple; move the children on quickly.  In the background, a lizard descends the tree behind them and further back, a goat is trying to mount a bank – presumably a comment on the foreground action.

Veronese 

“Unfaithfulness” – one of the great back and shoulders in art; reminded of that Gauguin drawing, something about pigs (see recent blog on Gauguin).

Michelangelo

There are two Ms, both unfinished – the Entombment and the Manchester Madonna.  Neither of them bear much resemblance to the Sistine stuff; the faces and poses are very different, although the muscularity of the bodies under their silky clothes is characteristic.

Diebenkorn and Terry Frost

I was surprised to find similar figures appearing in the works of these two – particularly chevrons.  Frost liked heraldic devices, Diebenkorn playing cards.

Bloody Wakefield by Blackpaint

30.10.10

Blackpaint 212

Raphael v. Michelangelo (cont.)

Having made one of my usual sweeping generalisations ( great cliche that; you can see them sweeping in the mind’s eye, Horatio),  I am now having to qualify it repeatedly.  Raphael’s “static” compositions (see last blog) – the Fire in the Borgo is perhaps the least static.  The man hanging by his hands is very Michelangelesque.  Also, The Expulsion of Heliodorus. 

Michelangelo’s “Last Judgement”

So the angels swirling about in the top left and right lunettes are carrying the Instruments of the Passion.  On the left, the cross, the crown of thorns, the nails – invisible, but presumably in the hands which are being cradled by a second angel – but NOT the lash,  a strange omission, really; on the right, the whipping column (the huge phallic object, in case you hadn’t noticed), the sponges on a stick, the ladder, peeping up at the very top.  Vasari mentions a lance, the one that pierced Christ’s side presumably, but I was unable to make it out.

St. Bartholomew and St. Peter

These two seem oddly threatening to the Christ figure; the first, waving his skinning knife near the left leg, and Peter pointing a huge key at Christ, like some kind of Star Wars firearm.  Christ could be recoiling in alarm.  Opposite Bart, St. Lawrence sneaks away like a thief, with a backward glance, his grill over his shoulder.

Naked Lunch

From Michelangelo to William Burroughs.  Re-reading the above book, in the section titled “benway”, I found a description of interrogation and demoralisation techniques, short of out and out torture, that coincided very closely with the techniques in which British forces were trained, according to a Guardian article a day or two ago; I think the Guardian source was Wikileaks.  The Burroughs book was written in the 50’s.

“A naked lunch is natural to us,

We eat reality sandwiches.

But allegories are so much lettuce.

Don’t hide the madness.”

“On Burrough’s work”, Allen Ginsberg 1954.  What great advice for an artist.

Fra Angelico

I’ve already blogged about the above, in relation to his strange and beautiful “Mocking of Christ”, with the disembodied head spitting into his face.  Looking at other paintings, I have some questions:  why, in “The Dream of the Deacon Justinian”, are Sts. Cosmas and Damian replacing Justinian’s corrupted leg with a healthy – but black – leg (Justinian is white)?  And in the gruesome “Decapitation of St. Cosmas and St.Damian”, the sainted heads retain their halos, as they roll about in the dust, looking like space helmets; do saint’s heads always retain the halo after removal?  I shall be checking the web to find out.

Blackpaint

28.10.10

Blackpaint 211

Colour

My birthday the other day, and I got three cards of different painters: Albert Irvin, Vincent van Gogh and Alfred Wallis.  with them lined up on the mantelpiece, it struck me that Irvin’s and van Gogh’s colours were so different that it was almost as if you needed a different word to describe them – VG’s muted, rich, glowing, nuanced; Irvin’s brash, bright, glaring (fluorescent even), with no blending or sculpting, hardly any texturing.  But it’s more than this – they just seem to be from two different worlds altogether, can’t explain more clearly.  Irvin seems to go with Warhol and maybe Albert Oehlen, no-one else I can think of.

As for Wallis, his palette in this picture, white, Prussian Blue, yellow ochre is really characteristic of St.Ives.

This stuff is all because I’ve been bought a load of different oils and am trying to work out what pictures I can paint with them – the “old” ones have the wrong forms, textures etc.

Michelangelo and Raphael

Pretty much sticking by what I said in last blog, but there are some Raphael compositions that you couldn’t really call “static”:  Galatea, the various St. George’s and St.Michael’s, Road to Calvary (the so-called “spasimo” – though even this is restrained, compared to Mick).

One thing – “Dream of Jacob of the ladder to heaven”; it’s on the wall of the Palazzi Pontifici in the Vatican.  It’s sooty and badly drawn and looks as much like a Raphael as an Albert Irvin.  It’s not in the Wikipedia list of his works, for some reason.  I think a workman knocked it out during Raphael’s lunch hour.

Reading Diebenkorn book by Jane Livingstone, and again reminded of Lanyon in his attitude to figurative v. abstract, and to landscape.

Back properly soon.

Nameless as yet, Blackpaint

25.10.10

Blackpaint 210

Blackpaint is indisposed at the moment so cannot write very much.

Raphael v. Michelangelo

Returning to this idea from last blog, that I got from Matthew Collings on TV, that you can compare the two and decide which is better; at first I thought it was ridiculous.  After all, sometimes you prefer one thing to another, other times it’s reversed.  Then I thought that you do this with ordinary stuff all the time; why not with the top end?  they may be incredible but that doesn’t mean they’re perfect (maybe perfection is a fault – but no semantics today).

So, the obvious things:  Raphael’s colours are more intense, glowing, subtle – I think first of the rich red to browns, the blue, of course, like Perugino’s but somehow less sharp, and the deep green in the seated Pope.  Michelangelo’s colours are also subtle, apart perhaps from the blue  background to the Last Judgement, but only the Doni Tondo comes anywhere near Raphael for colour.

But the figures – Raphael’s are mostly static.  They sit on  thrones, converse with measured arm gestures, gaze reverently skywards, balance fat-cheeked holy babies on their knees (the babies sometimes reach for a flower, gently).  They are, mostly, clothed.  Revealed flesh is  thick – sinews and bones are well- covered (apart from Michelangelo’s knee, mentioned in last blog).  His compositions are stately.

Michelangelo’s figures are not static; they writhe, twist, gesture violently, flex and display muscles, tear at their hair and generally act up in a Mannerist – manner.  They are frequently naked, often entwined with others or with phallic objects (see the Column of Flagellation in the Last Judgement).  they are sculpted into or out of the “space” of the background.  The compositions are usually in motion, always idiosyncratic (see those young men posturing in the background of the Doni Tondo).

So – Raphael is the better painter, Michelangelo draws better.  I love them both, but Mick for choice!

Stuart Brisley

There’s a new painting by the above in the St.Ives room at the Tate Britain; it’s rather like a Tapies, a black, shallowly- cratered surface with a greeny-grey, sparkling texture like mica in the craters and cracks.  Is “shallowly” a proper word?  Proper blog next time, when my head stops pounding.

Rufus 2 by Blackpaint

23.10.10