poor Griselda

A Tale from the Decameron by J.W. Waterhouse

If there�s one good reason why the major public museums ought to stay free, it�s so I can pop in for a half hour or so whenever I�ve got a half hour to spare. Unlike the monumental Louvre, which calls for a more serious approach (at least one glass of wine for every 45 minutes of browsing), the National Gallery�s manageable size and free-entry policy means that a once a week breeze through isn�t just doable but downright enjoyable.

I know where my favourite pieces are and I know the best routes to get to them � e.g. I always stop off for a woozy sigh of delight in front of the Wilton Diptych before heading round to dally in front of The Arnolfini � but sometimes when I�m whizzing round, I notice a new piece, or at least a piece that I think is new. Yesterday afternoon, I noticed lots of works I hadn�t seen before but when I investigated further to see whether there was a list of curatorial changes and rotations to confirm my suspicions, I was greeted with mostly blank stares. �Oh yeah, the curators are in most mornings moving things about here and there,� I was told by one friendly information assistant. Not so helpful, then.

Excepting the wonderfully serene feeling I got from wandering through the Sainsbury Wing, the highlight of yesterday�s jaunt was a series of three fifteenth-century (1493-4) Italian paintings on the tale of Griselda which were supposedly displayed in a Sienese palace.

I love the characters in the panels, the nod to Botticelli�s women and the peculiar animals set into the foreground. I love the zoom technique where the arch in the first panel becomes the setting for the second and third panels. I love that the viewer is intended to read the paintings as one would read a story � from left to right, with multiple incidents from the narrative occupying the same panel. As with most paintings, the digital reproductions simply don�t do them justice.

Incidentally, the story of Griselda is rather amusing. If you�ve read Chaucer�s �The Clerk�s Tale� it may sound familiar, but I know it from Boccaccio�s Decameron (the Decameron is a stonking good read and would make an excellent Christmas present, or if you haven�t read it, do yourself a favour a purchase a copy immediately!).

The story goes a little like this: the lovely lady Griselda marries the Marquis of Saluzzo, Gualtieri, who turns out to be quite bonkers. In order to test her wifely devotion, first he declares that both of their children must be put to death and then publicly renounces Griselda for a more noble woman. Little Miss Perfect is wounded by her husband�s actions, but patiently accepts his wishes and goes to live with her father. About twelve years later � TWELVE YEARS! � Gualtieri announces that he�s got another grande dame and wishes Griselda to return to him as a servant in order to prepare for the wedding. So far, so creepy. Griselda returns only to be introduced to Gualtieri�s new bride, a twelve-year old girl. Griselda wishes them both well, at which point, ta da!, Gualtieri reveals that the girl is really their daughter and not his bride-to-be. Gualtieri tells Griselda that the whole thing was one insanely ludicrous plot to find out whether his wife was as faithful as all fourteenth-century wives ought to be. They then live, presumably, happily ever after�

Venice: Canaletto and His Rivals

Canaletto's The Entrance to the Grand Canal, looking West, with Santa Maria della Salute, about 1729. � The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The Robert Lee Blaffer Memorial Collection, gift of Sarah Campbell Blaffer (56.2).

Monday evening as I strolled up to the National Gallery on my way to view the recently opened exhibition, Venice: Canaletto and His Rivals, I was struck by a rather amusing coincidence.

Work is being done to the front fa�ade of the National Gallery and a wrap around the scaffolding sees a Credit Suisse-sponsored scene that imagines Trafalgar Square as a Venetian lagoon.  "Canaletto Comes to London" it proudly proclaims, but the funny thing is that only a few weeks ago the art world was up in arms about similarly sponsored billboards in La Serinissima herself.



Venice's famous Ponte dei Sospiri (a name coined by Byron who romantically suggested that prisoners being led from the interrogation rooms on one side of the bridge to the prison cells in the Doge's Palace on the other side, would sigh at their last sight of the beautiful city while making the crossing) has of late been covered in huge ads for Coke, Chanel, and Bulgari.  In a city like Venice, always fighting a battle between the built environment and, well, the environment, such ads have been common sources of raising restoration funds.  But the current slew of advertisements, such as those surrounding the Bridge of Sighs, are different: they aren't about the city, but the brand footing the bill.  At least with the old ads, one might come to some idea of what the original building looked like.  Not only does the Bulgari ad completely obscure the Bridge, but it succeeds in enfolding the architecture of the city into a kind of gruesome ad campaign. 

 

Image by Davers

Having said all this, I found the National Gallery's ad particularly amusing because it highlights the hypocrisy of the gang of talking museum heads who signed an open letter to Giorgio Orsoni, the Mayor of Venice, and published it in the Art Newspaper.  Given that their museums and exhibitions are funded by BP, Ernst & Young, Credit Suisse, etcetera, on what grounds, I wonder, do the museum heads protest Orsoni�s decision.  Just because his corporate advertisers get more visual impact for their buck doesn�t mean we aren�t dealing with the application of precisely the same principles.  Given the National Gallery's Venice-themed wrap-around (which admittedly isn't half as bad as the ads on the Bridge of Sighs), perhaps it's unsurprising that Nicholas Penny has opted out of the open letter.  To be clear, it�s not that I�m all in favour of selling off beloved city landmarks or national art exhibitions to the highest corporate bidder.  Simply that the hypocrisy of museum directors with their pleading open letter on the one hand, but only too happy to accept cash from BP et al (as long as the logo placement is subtle) on the other hand, drives me bonkers. 

As for the Canaletto show, it's surprisingly good, and I say surprisingly as someone who adores both Venice and Canaletto.  I tend to find the exhibitions at London's major museums - especially the Tate �disaster-zone� Modern - utterly pointless and so attend with suitably lowered expectations.  Venice is one of the most visited cities in the world, so its regular appearance as the subject of blockbuster exhibitions is no surprise: it brings in the big bucks.  But despite its overwhelming popularity and resulting theme-park trappings, Venice has a subtlety only to be found once one diverts from the Grand Canal.  Amusingly, I know a lot of people who don�t like Venice but I maintain that they either haven�t been with me or they haven�t been in the off season.  Possibly both.  Venice is incredibly beautiful, picturesque to the point of being grotesque, but it won�t give you anything for free.  You have to go exploring, get lost, go for a swim, get off the Rialto and into Cannaregio. 

It amuses me to think that in many ways, twenty-first century Venetian tourists are Canaletto�s heirs: making view pictures with their Minoltas and Canons instead of hog-hair brushes.  The purpose is one in the same: wealthy tourists want a memento to remind them of their visit to this most beautiful city.  In the eighteenth century, one might have bought Canaletto�s Entrance to the Grand Canal: Looking East (1744), whereas now one can snap a quick pic of the same scene on the Number 1 vaporetto chugging down the Canal.  Just because the former is part of the Queen�s collection of art doesn�t mean that the self-styled snap is any less precious...

Canaletto. The Entrance to the Grand Canal, looking East, with Santa Maria della Salute, 1744. � 2010, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

So, Canaletto�s paintings are beautiful � Venice at her loveliest, most golden, most unearthly � and the Grand Tourists head home with proof of the pudding, but what�s actually rather refreshing, even challenging, about the curation of this show is that it doesn�t rest on such an unexamined approach.  In fact, the exhibition title gives it away � the star of this show isn�t Canaletto, but Venice � and the comparison of Canaletto with his nephew and prot�g�e, Bellotto, as well as later view painter, Guardi, provides an illuminating juxtaposition to the differing approaches of the veduti painters.  It�s tempting to use a Goldilocks analogy when considering the three: Bellotto too cold; Guardi too hot; Canaletto just right, but that hardly does justice to the subtleties of their styles.  Canaletto�s later works are the easiest to take in, the most obviously beautiful, but such unchallenging beauty quickly wears thin.  The Goldilocks analogy is particularly apt in the Bellotto room: one fascinating pairing has another of Canaletto�s scenes depicting the entrance to the Grand Canal sandwiched by two different attempts by Bellotto to paint the same scene.  Of course, it�s impossible to tell whether Bellotto was making a concerted effort to distance himself from his uncle�s technique � quite likely � but neither painting has the harmony or the gorgeous diffused light of Canaletto.  One attempt is too harsh, the other is too soft and Canaletto�s sits in between and sings.

But despite the beauty of Canaletto�s works, Guardi steals the show � while his images display all the hallmarks of view painting, his work feels less constrained by the demands of the genre or the whims of tourists: the lighting is stronger, less diffused and tonally there are more greys and browns, instead of the jewel tones omnipresent in Canaletto.  A few of Guardi�s pieces look as if finished with India ink: thick, swift, black liquid brush strokes define window frames and architraves, where Canaletto is softer and more forgiving. 

Guardi. The Lagoon with the Torre di Malghera, around 1770�80. � The National Gallery, London

Guardi. The Grand Canal with the Rialto Bridge from the South, about 1780. � Image courtesy of the Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Widener Collection. 

There�s something compelling and refreshing about the wild looseness of Guardi�s paintings after Canaletto�s over-idealised, disneyesque portraits of La Serinissima at her most clich�d.  Though the city may be affectionately referred to as eternally serene on account of those familiar, sweeping vistas, Venice's history is one of turbulence and violence, and for all its fairy-tale beauty Canaletto�s work serves as a reminder that at the end of the day, in the world of art at least, the interests of money reign supreme.

Cy Twombly: Il Miglior Fabbro

So occasionally I get a bit sick of living in London and want to pack it all in for a more exciting existence in Zambia or Puglia or anywhere "exciting." Generally though, I'm pretty content living in this city, and some days I even thank my lucky stars that I get to call the capital home. Today was most definitely a star thanking kind of day. I suppose it might seem odd that it only takes an art exhibition to garner such praise, but I need my humanist batteries charged regularly. Otherwise I tend to get grouchy. And I'm not much fun when I'm grouchy...

I had been putting off going to the Cy Twombly exhibition because I didn't want to be disappointed. Although I find the building magnificent, the exhibitions drive me to despair: Duchamps, Dali, Gilbert and George, yawn, yawn, yawn. Surely it would be far more inspiring and educational for the art-viewing public to have regular exposure to less well known artists. When Nicholas Penny was appointed as the new director of the National Gallery earlier this year, one of the first things he said to the press was that blockbuster exhibitions don't teach anyone anything, and insisted he would concentrate instead on erudite shows of lesser-known artists. Finally, I thought, a man with some bloody good sense. As of yet, he hasn�t been director long enough to make good on his word, but he appears to have struck a chord with other galleries if this exhibition is anything to judge by.

The human mind must derive immense pleasure in the making of cross references, patterns, and connections in works of art; whether literature, music, or the visual, as we seem to love saying things like, �this band sounds like a cross between early David Bowie and Brahms!� or �this author is the new Hemmingway.� Twombly excels at this sort of cross-pollination and there are references, both ancient and modern, aplenty. Twombly makes no secret of his love of great poets, especially Rilke and Homer, but for me, the subtle or even unacknowledged connections were more intriguing. Twombly's early works, for instance, reminded me very much of some of the commercial work of Gary Fernandez, a modern illustrator. While the similarities are entirely tenuous (though I suppose it is possible Fernandez takes Twombly as inspiration), the vibrant, fresh, looseness of the Twombly is very evident in the illustrations of Fernandez. There�s something very illustratory (nice word, I know) in general about Twombly's early pieces which give them a surprisingly modern sensibility.























One of my favourite paintings from the exhibition, Treatise on the Veil, was entirely different from any other work displayed. Evidently these paintings were inspired by an Eadweard Muybridge photograph of a bride in motion. Muybridge was a photographic pioneer, using multiple cameras to create stop-motion action sequences of things like horses galloping or a couple dancing. Twombly�s series of six interlinked panels brilliantly echoes the concept (and the inspiration of a stop motion bride seemingly floating under her veil) while simultaneously remaking the technique into something completely new.



Quattro Stagioni, perhaps Twombly�s most well known work (the Modern's publicity for the exhibition is taken from this work), is hung in two different versions, completed roughly around the same time, 1993-95. These reminded me of something, but it took me a while to remember that, especially Estate, echoed the work of Clyfford Still, which I'd seen at an exhibition in Washington DC in 2003. You can see the difference between the two immediately, but that's hardly the point. The stylistic similarities are perhaps more intriguing. Still is far more controlled; he�s cleaner, harsher, more primitive, while Twombly is all whimsy, ragged, carefree, reckless insouciance, but it was Still's yellow painting below that I remembered and brought the resemblance to mind. I love discovering connections like these � as I'm not approaching this from an academic perspective, I don't have to consider the implications of whether they actually knew each other. I can simply enjoy the thrill of recognition and the remembrance and clarification of that recognition. I suppose it's this sort of thing that makes an unpersonal gallery exhibition into a far more personal experience.

The first two are the Twombly's, and Still's work is below.
















































































The last series of work in the exhibition is from Twombly�s 2005 Bacchus, Psilax, Mainomenos (for those non Greek speaking, anti-mythologists, Bacchus is the Roman equivalent of the Greek god of wine Dionysus, and even if you do know that, you probably don�t know that his rites were celebrated with orgies and animals being torn to pieces and their raw flesh consumed � see Euripides� The Bacchae for more fun and games). This was the only time where I felt the work on display represented something quite different to me than it did to the curators. The accompanying blurb indicated that Twombly�s initial inspiration for the work was Homer�s Iliad, which seemed sensible enough given Twombly�s classical leanings. The curators then went on to say that the brilliant, massive, red looped paintings were an expression of pure drunken abandon. Having three of the paintings in the room at once, there was little euphoria to be felt. They are marvellous pieces of work, but all I could think of was Christopher Logue�s War Music, a contemporary, pseudo-translation of the Iliad, with its haunting evocation of war, �Dust like red mist/Pain like chalk on slate. Heat like Arctic� and also �Moving at speed, but absolutely still/The arrow in the air. Death in a man/as something first perceived by accident.� In particular, the long streaks of dripped down red paint create a sense of morbid frenzy, the body exploding into a fine red mist. Not exactly jubilant...


Still, I found the exhibition to be absolutely superb (how many adverbs in one post?). I was so enamoured that I sought out a feedback form from the information desk and filled it in then and there. It basically said, �more like this please.� I hope they take my advice.