Strokes of Genius: Rembrandt’s Prints and Drawings (through March 18th)
Streets of New York: American Photographs from the Collection, 1938 - 1958
(through 1/15)
The stuff or ordinary life is by terms repellent and irresistible; small and grand; impossible to love yet curiously endearing. We profess not to like it: hence our well-planned vacations and Super Bowl weekends. We dance around it, we look in mostly with trepidation, we escape.
It is very lucky for us that a small number of artists over the centuries could study everyday life with an unflinching appreciation. It is equally fortunate that we can stroll from one showcase of the mundane-obsessed to another without breaking our stride. Two very different schools and perceptions can be seen today at the National Gallery’s West Wing; and, again, all we have to do get to either is to walk from one room to another.
Let’s talk about Rembrandt first. Here is a man whose tragic life is well-known to almost everyone: his birth into a middle-class family; his early years as a hotshot; a troubled midlife; and a neglected old age. In his last years, Rembrandt became the Shakespeare of our painting, dissecting his own frailty with a sternly compassionate sensibility that, in the eyes of the grandiose, may seem unduly critical. Rembrandt’s fall from grace had made him a thoughtful man, but his humanist stance hardly suffered. Rembrandt’s personal suffering, in fact, broadened it, just as Shakespeare’s had. He took from the raw material of his own life its whips and scorns and transmuted it; Rembrandt’s later self-portraits are nothing less than touchstones of human progress.
However, Rembrandt “did” Van Gogh long before Van Gogh did. He had a natural affection for ordinary people and drew them without condescension. Since this particular exhibit deals with Rembrandt’s drawings and etchings, we are privileged to see Rembrandt working directly: at himself, his mother, his neighbors, his wife – a living community that is replicated on every block in every city or town in the entirety of human civilization.
Without going into particulars of subject or technique, I can’t recommend this show enough, particularly in tandem with Streets of New York. You need to hurry to see the next one; it only runs through January 15th.
Their possibly fortuitous pairing may have been incidental, dunno. But it was a master-stroke to give us such a timeless spectrum of human activity, first with chalk, crayon, and etching needle: and, finally, by means of the photographic lense.
Without going into a great many particulars, the exhibit is about embracing the moment while revolting against popular conceptions that define beauty (whatever that is.) When you see the photographs of Walker Evans and Helen Levitt, you see people as they are – that is to say, they’re not dressing themselves up psychologically for A Portrait. They’re there and you see them as they are by, and to, themselves. That is both the essence and charm of their photo. A more joyously experimental group was affiliated with teacher and photographer, Sid Grossman, and felt that the medium of photography was interesting unto itself. And why not? Painting had been liberated, as it were, from representation for some time. However, even in the most wildly experimental of their photographs, there is still the human stain, as Phillip Roth put it, which mirrors and represents not only a particular time, but a timeless condition.
Among the best-known of these photographers, Diane Arbus, is here – as is Weegee, whose police radio gave him access to on-the-spot criminality. He set up one of his most memorable images: of a homeless lady squawking at two simpering socialites about to go to the opera.
Robert Frank bookends the show; because these photos deal with only a twenty year period, his landmark volume, The Americans, was, I believe, the last such work to appear. It is also significant that he brought photography back to its documentary function, though his personal lyricism sets him easily apartment from Evans and Levitt.
The show is well-planned, with a decent historical overview and more than adequate spacing between images.
In a broader sense, I can only hope that the images I saw help engender a spirit of inquiry among viewers. So much art today deals with political realities or technological gamesmanship. There is a school of sanitized realism which can be paralleled with the political blinders we are just beginning to yank off. Seeing these two exhibits is, for me, a possible sign of an emerging consciousness that we are indeed a community and not just a bunch of ragged – and not necessarily rugged – individualists.
Strokes of Genius: Rembrandt’s Prints and Drawings (through March 18th)
The stuff or ordinary life is by terms repellent and irresistible; small and grand; impossible to love yet curiously endearing. We profess not to like it: hence our well-planned vacations and Super Bowl weekends. We dance around it, we look in mostly with trepidation, we escape.
It is very lucky for us that a small number of artists over the centuries could study everyday life with an unflinching appreciation. The mundane-obsessed artists of the past have been given, for the most part, a bad rap – unless they’re among the art stars historians have singled out for art appreciation courses, or blockbuster exhibits of a sort people stand in line for all over the country. Yet sometimes there is a fortuitous collision of the prestigious and the plebian; great, glittering success and artistic gravitas. Aside from Andrew Wyeth, the punching-bag of choice for the post WW II era, no living artist might warrant that description. Rembrandt is doubly useful: as a poster boy for the Great Artist Gone Bad and as a genuinely tragic figure about whose life a great deal more is known than Shakespeare, for example. (Shakespeare was never a figure, tragic or otherwise; he was just a good guy who showed up for work every day and knew how to make a dollar. The plays he wrote, well, they were pretty good, but what’s this about his fellow actors printing them? Hubris, pure hubris, I say!)
Among long-dead artists, Rembrandt is perhaps the epitome of what the French call the artiste manque. He lived larger than his means, fell out of popularity, and was damned for it. (No second act for him either.) He could not marry his mistress because of legal complications. And, finally, he was evicted from the house his earnings as a fashionable portrait painter built – a crowning humiliation from which few men in those days recovered completely. Rembrandt is perhaps our greatest household word, next to the public relations-minded Picasso, who wanted to be.
His personal life is well-known: his birth into a middle-class family; his early years as a hotshot; a troubled midlife; and a neglected old age. In his last years, Rembrandt became the Shakespeare of our painting, dissecting his own frailty with a sternly compassionate sensibility that can seem unduly critical. You don’t see self-portraits like his these days. Rembrandt’s fall from grace had made him a thoughtful man, but his humanist stance hardly suffered. Rembrandt’s personal suffering, in fact, broadened it, just as Shakespeare’s had. He took from the raw material of his own life its whips and scorns and transmuted it; Rembrandt’s later self-portraits are nothing less than touchstones of human progress.
However, Rembrandt “did” Van Gogh long before Van Gogh did. He had a natural affection for ordinary people and drew them without condescension. Since this particular exhibit deals with Rembrandt’s drawings and etchings, we are privileged to see Rembrandt working directly: at himself, his mother, his neighbors, his mistress, his wife – a living community that is replicated on every block in every city or town in the entirety of human civilization.
Without going into particulars of subject or technique, I can’t recommend this show enough. I’m only sorry that Streets of New York, an excellent counterpoint, could not have run longer. But it was a master-stroke to give us such a timeless spectrum of human activity, first with chalk, crayon, and etching needle: and, finally, by means of the photographic lense.
Like any conscientious photo-journalist, Rembrandt embraced the moment while revolting against popular conceptions that define beauty – even if they were not yet codified. Rembrandt’s people appear as they are – that is to say, they’re not dressing themselves up psychologically for A Portrait. They’re there and you see them as they and their neighbors saw them. Immediacy is Rembrandt’s forte; it is, in fact, the essence, charm, and profundity of his art overall. Rembrandt unintentionally liberated painting from the conventions of representation, though, as his graphic work easily demonstrates, his sensitive draftsmanship was unerring. His sometimes scratchy, searching line scoped out a physiognomy with a kind of tender precision, charting for us an inimitable personality. The human stain, as Phillip Roth put it, is everywhere in these faces. In mirroring the particular, Rembrandt walked into a timeless dimension – a privilege few artists ever know.
It is regrettable that Weegee’s photographs have been taken down. Though his milieu was New York City’s thriving underbelly, I think Rembrandt would have gotten a kick out of the man. In one of his best photo-narratives, a homeless lady squawks at two simpering socialites heading for their seats at the opera. By his own admission, Weegee staged this picture. A master orchestrator himself, Rembrandt might have said: “Hmmm. You can do that, huh? Why not?”
Why not indeed?
The show is well-planned, with a decent historical overview and more than adequate spacing between images.
In a broader sense, I can only hope that the “real” Rembrandt might get people talking. So much art today deals with political realities or technological gamesmanship. There is a school of sanitized realism which can be paralleled with the political blinders we are just beginning to yank off. An exhibit that is so plainly illustrative – apart from whatever artistic values can be attached to it – is a possible sign of an emerging consciousness, a shift toward a perception of us as a community and not just a bunch of ragged – and not necessarily rugged – individualists.
