Palazzo Ducale, Urbino

(photo by Il Conte di Luna, 2007)

Since my helicopter is in the shop, I've downloaded an aerial view of Urbino and the Ducal Palace from the internet.  Duke Federigo da Montefeltro, the "Light of Italy" and still a local hero over 500 years later, built his palace in the mid-fifteenth century.  This UNESCO World Heritage Site is widely considered the perfect princely dwelling in the perfect medieval hilltop fortress town.

Here is a picture of Duke Fred, a fabled patron of the arts (including that youngster Raphael) and amasser of the second largest library in Italy after the Vatican.  One of the Renaissance's most famous Condottieri and inspiration for Machiavelli's "The Prince", the Duke was both a great warrior and leader of his people.  He lost his right eye in battle and later had surgeons cut out the bridge of his nose to improve his peripheral vision (all the better to see the assassination attempt coming at you...).

The Duke's private study.  About half the paintings of famous figures that line the upper wall are sepia photographic reproductions of originals that are now housed in the Louvre.  Monsieur Louvre, give them back!

In places like this there is always an overwhelming number of things one could photograph---in this case I decided to look down......it all just seems so perfectly Italian.

p.s. another Banksy?

My last Bristol post....is this another Banksy?!?  I don't know but it sure looks like one!  Internet access has become challenging (in a tiny town in Apennines) but last weekend I visited William Morris's Red House and the studio of David Mabb.  I''ll try to get some pics up over next few days.  Ciao bellas!

My first in situ Banksy!

I'm in Bristol, England, for a few days, the home of the anonymous and very famous street artist Banksy---remember him from this post?  While out to dinner last night I asked my local hosts if they knew where any "Banksys" were.   Not three blocks from the restaurant was the one above (complete with subsequent paint ball splatters.....don't these graffiti guys have any respect!?!).   As I was crossing the street to get a closer look, a driver barreling down the hill at excessive speeds no doubt had to lighten pressure on the accelerator for a millisecond to avoid mowing us down.  As the disaffected youth flew by he leaned out of window and yelled "c#nt!!".   Normally my first thought would be "asshole!" but in this case it was "Wow, thank you for enhancing my artistic experience."

Banksy, Where's the Gift Shop?

I had the pleasure of seeing Banksy's new movie Exit Through the Gift Shop a few days ago.  Banksy is a British street artist who is well-known for his graffiti take on anti-war, anti-capitalist, anti-establishment themes.

I think if William Morris had lived today he would have been a big fan of the anonymous and pseudonymous Banksy.  He shared the same strong anti-war, anti-capitalistic views, views which of course led Morris to become one of the founding father's of the British socialist movement.

Exit Through the Gift Shop is one of those movies that stays with you for days afterward as you try to unravel and decipher the message and meaning of the "story".....specifically, was it all an elaborate joke and if so, on whom?

As we left the movie, my friend and I both wondered "Where was the gift shop?" ---it was never shown or mentioned in movie (Banksy escaping museum guards, for instance?).  Upon reflection, an obvious interpretation is that Banksy is commenting on the commercialization of art and how it is all a large money-making undertaking that ultimately corrupts the point of the art.  Go to the gift shop and get your William Morris mug or Monet umbrella....take home your bit of kitsch and leave your dollars, euros, pesos, yen behind.  But then I thought maybe it goes even deeper, and that Mr Brain Wash's one-man show was the gift shop.  For a street artist, the world is the "museum".  Maybe Banksy set up MBW in this large space reproducing hundreds of kitschy spin-offs of real art, and was able to so perfectly manipulate the LA art scene that he had hundreds (thousands?) of people lining up in the "museum" (outside) to exit through the gift shop where they bought the derivative crap.  

I realize you can't really follow this without seeing the movie but I'm still left wondering if MBW (Thierry) was a willing, perfect, unwitting pawn of Banksy's or an integral co-conspirator?  Thierry seemed so utterly and genuinely daft it is hard for me to imagine anyone being that good an actor.
_______________________

Wall and Piece is an entertaining retrospective of Banksy's work.  My teenage son loved it.

Green and blue never looked so good together....

 Circe Invidiosa by J. W. Waterhouse, 1892

(in the Art Gallery of South Australia)

One of the first images from the NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory, launched in February on a five year mission to study Sun's magnetic field (false color image, blues and greens above 1 million kelvin in temperature).

Perseus and Andromeda, 1876, Edward Burne-Jones

 (in the Art Gallery of South Australia)

Aurora borealis over Eyjafjallajokull volcano/glacier in Iceland....possibly even caused by the solar flares seen in sun picture above?  Photo by Albert Jakobsson.

Minerva at the Library of Congress

Elihu Vedder's marble mosaic of Minerva of Peace, her armor laid aside, standing guard before the Main Reading Room and holding in her hand a scroll that lists the various disciplines of learning, science, and art.

Ordered disorder, perfect imperfection....

I visited the Phillips Memorial Art Gallery in D.C. earlier this week.  Have you ever had the experience of coming across a work of art in a museum or gallery, maybe by somebody famous or maybe by someone you've never heard of, being incredibly moved by it, thinking how wonderful it would be to have it in your home, and then, in the next moment, thinking "heck, I could do that...I'll just do it myself and then I'll have it!"?  I had that experience with this piece by Linn Meyers called "at the time being".  It is a work painted directly on the museum walls---really, it is only squiggly lines....

But then you look closer....the lines are complicated, beautiful, a subtle blend of white and yellow.  You soon realize you are in the presence of something singular.  A museum essay describes this piece which is inspired by a Vincent Van Gogh painting in the museum's collection:

"Linn Meyers spent two weeks working steadily on this project.  She started by painting the walls a dark blue that evokes Van Gogh's Starry Night.  Then she laid out the circular shapes around intersecting horizontal and vertical lines that generate the overall composition, or what she calls, the matrix.  Thin lines followed, twisting and turning, connecting and disconnecting, looping around it and filling in the central blanks, resulting in a dazzling field of optical sensations."

"Meyer's circular forms are completely off-center.  Like lovers, they embrace and drift apart.  At once intense and loose, systematic and improvisational, controlled and impulsive, Meyer's drawing sucks us in, simultaneously inducing vertigo and offering solace."

mmmmm....you can see more of Meyer's work here.

Strangely, just to the right of this wall was another painting I had that "i-could-do-this" feeling:  Paul Klee's Arab Song (1932).  It is a painting in oil on rough burlap.  So muted, primitive, quirky and peaceful.....

Whistler's Amazing Peacock Room, Freer Gallery

 

I had the opportunity to visit the Freer Gallery of the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. this week.  This museum, on the National Mall, is named after Charles Lang Freer who donated his extensive collection of art, including much ancient Asian art, to the Smithsonian in the early 20th century.  In one room of the Freer Gallery is The Peacock Room, which was moved intact from Freer's home in Detroit after his death in 1919.

The story of the Peacock Room is an over-the-top cautionary tale of the perils of contracting with artists.  The dining room was originally constructed by architect Thomas Jeckyll for the shipping magnate (and Pre-Raphaelite patron) Frederick Leyland; it included an elaborate lattice of shelves to display the owner's porcelain and the walls were hung with gilded leather.  Leyland had also commissioned James McNeill Whistler to paint the portrait over the fireplace, "The Princess From the Land of Porcelain" (first pic).  The room was nearly done when Jeckyll asked Whistler for advice on the color of the shutters (see below).  From this point, and with Leyland's approval (who shortly after departed on business), a series a small color adjustments were made to the room by Whistler.

But then Whistler stayed on, becoming increasingly enamored of the alterations he was making to the room (and possibly also of Leyland's wife), including gilding the ceiling and shelving, painting the leather prussian blue, and painting dramatic gold peacocks on the shutters.   Whistler wrote to Leyland saying that the dining room was "really alive with beauty — brilliant and gorgeous while at the same time delicate and refined to the last degree," and that the changes he had made were past imagining. "I assure you," he said, "you can have no more idea of the ensemble in its perfection gathered from what you last saw on the walls than you could have of a complete opera judging from a third finger exercise!" 

When Leyland got the bill for the "expanded" project he did not authorize, he refused to pay and the two got involved in a bitter lawsuit (is there any other kind?).  Whistler's revenge was his final modification to the room, two large peacocks fighting over a pile of silver at the end of room (pic above).  He called the mural "Art and Money; or, The Story of the Room." 

Years later, after Leyland's death, Freer, a long-time patron of Whistler, purchased the room (in 1904) and installed it in an addition on his house in the U.S.   The room is considered by many to be Whistler's greatest creation. 

The Art in the Machine

I was recently given an extraordinary book, The Machinery of Life by David S. Goodsell, by a relative who said the pictures (watercolor paintings) reminded him of my William Morris wallpaper.  The paintings are of the cells and molecules in the human body, all rendered in stunning detail by a scientist with a keen artistic vision.  I can see it, although I think we lean more toward turn of the century Art Nouveau style than Morris Arts and Crafts.  It's nice to imagine the inside of our bodies looking like this. 

 Marigold and Pea?  (Cytoplasm and Cell Wall)

 Vine and Morning Glory? (Cellular compartments)

 Lupin?  (Actin and Myosin filaments in our muscles)

 Sprout? (Blood clotting)

Sweet Pea and Lichen? (Programmed Cell Death)

If you want to learn about how our bodies work, reading this popular book is a brilliant place to start.

Harriet Finck, fractals, and hidden gems...

In Harriet Finck's exhibit "Visual Midrash: Text as Form" the artist explores the written Hebrew word; sometimes the words are written directly on the paper but often they are buried deep within the paintings.  These works of paper tell, as per the artist's statement, stories of birth and death, angels and dreams, despair and redemption.  I don't see the words, even in the closest close-up below, but it is not a language with which I am familiar.  These paintings remind me of aboriginal paintings of the Dreamtime.  I would happily put one of these stunning pieces on a wall in my house (all click to enlarge). 

a triptych

a diptych

another painting

closer....

closer....

and closer....it's fascinating and equally beautiful at every scale....a fractal painting 

Above, detail of painting.....below, detail of carpet in art deco bar in South Beach.  In scientific terminology, an example of convergent evolution.

....and the hidden gem?  the local university art gallery.