Thursday, September 21, 2006

First monthly gallery trip

Yesterday I went on the first of my monthly gallery trips with Nat. I chose the National Gallery, for no reason except it was the first with a good web site that google found me. I suppose that is one liberating point of knowing nothing about art, I don't think I dislike anything.

The National Gallery is in a great location, in Trafalgar square. It was a warm sunny day and the square was really looking good. In the square there are four large plinths with sculptures. Three of the plinth have traditional dark sculptures on, but the fourth has a modern piece. I remember hearing all about the selection process on the news, and the outcry about the final choice. The modern sculpture is in pale marble and of a naked, pregnant disabled lady. It is by Marc Quinn, who took casts of her body and then passed the model onto Italian sculptors to make the marble. Having seen it I can see why people were concerned about it standing out, it does. I'm not sure I think that is a bad thing, maybe people would pay less attention to it if it was dark and fit in more. However I don't think the subject of shape of the sculpture is in anyway 'wrong' for the venue. I'm pleased I had the chance to form my own opinion about it.

The gallery itself is in a magnificent building. By the time you get to the first of the exhibits, the building has put you in the right frame of mind, with it's ornate ceilings and mosaic floors. We decided to start with the earliest paintings and work forward. I found it very interesting how the subject matter changes over time. I hadn't realized how many of the paintings in the 1200-1500 date period would be religious. It was also interesting how much brighter and more lively the pieces from monasteries seemed to be. In several of the paintings angels were shown with coloured or patterned wings. I've never come across that before, when did it become the norm to paint angels with white wings?

As we moved on towards more recent work we got to see two incomplete paintings by MICHELANGELO. These were fascinating. I must admit I haven't given a lot of thought to how paintings are put together. Where do you start with some of these huge and intricate paintings? I was surprised to see how complete some areas were when right next to them was nothing. I got the feeling that areas were painted in as they took his fancy, rather than in any proscribed order. Maybe this is my lack of understanding showing, but that is how it looked to me.

The next painting what really leapt out at me was The Ambassadors by
HOLBEIN the Younger, Hans. I've seen this many times in books, and I have always liked it, what I wasn't ready for was the size. It is one of the problems with only seeing art in books. You just don't get a good feel for scale. For me reading the measurements doesn't help, I don't remember size without seeing it. This painting is big, the figures are probably half to three quarter size. The detail is just amazing, I spent a long time looking a the globe. You can tell what things are, but it is very different to artists impression of a globe today.

When I was at school we only had school trips in the summer term just before the long summer holiday. Apparently that has changed. There were several groups of school children visiting the gallery. We stopped to listen to one of the talks they were having. The painting they were studying was The Supper at Emmaus by
CARAVAGGIO, Michelangelo Merisi da. Apparently the teacher had asked for paintings with food and drink in and this one has a wonderful fruit basket in it. I was fascinated by the way the staff member was leading the children through the painting. Taking about who might be in the picture and what was happening. There was a whole story that I don't think I would have guessed without some guidance.

Throughout the trip I became increasingly aware that I really like pictures of architecture, especially when they are very detailed. One artist who seems to constantly produce this kind of work is CLAUDE. I loved the fact that I could keep looking and finding new details. My favorite artist of the day does much the same things, in his pictures of Venice. CANALETTO. I was captivated by two paintings of the regatta. They are essentially the same view but painted a few years apart. There were many subtle changes. I liked the energy of all the people in the pictures, I could feel the excitement of the crowds. In the distance you can just see the end of one of the traditional tall bridges, and as you probably know I do like my bridges. Nat on the other hand preferred one of his other paintings. It was a similar canal scene, but much calmer and quieter.

I would love to carry on with this report, but it is getting late and I am tired. I'll post the rest tomorrow.

2 comments:

Dormouse said...

Sounds like you had a good trip. I was interested, looking at the links, to notice that although none of the titles of the pictures were familiar I actually recognised all of them.

Finally got hold of a copy of Popular Patchwork. Nice write up they gave you. Really decent pictures too. You're starting to be a regular. :)

Ferret said...

Funny isn't it. I kept finding pictures in the gallery that I had seen before, but I couldn't have told you their names or who painted them.

It is a great write up isn't it, I am so thrilled with it.