Mes amis, Degas et DaVinci

The DaVinci exhibit was so amazing, I have to write a bit about it. Lasting about 2 and a half hours, it recounted the story leading up to DaVinci's chef d'oeuvre, La Sainte Anne. The painting, never completed, was apparantly the culmination of many of his studies: of human anatamony, of landscapes, mountains, water and nature. It depicts St Anne, the mother of Mary, holding her daughter back who is reaching out to an infant Jesus who is embracing a lamb, symbolic of his fate.

It took almost 20 years to paint (1500-1519). It was disctinct from his contemporaries theological depictions because DaVinci used realism to ilustrate a nonreal scene, as these 3 characters would never have been these ages at the same time. DaVinci often depicted theological scenes in a natural way giving credibility to the scene.

In his research DaVinci dissected human corpses on many occasions to uinderstand the body, intently studied water, and conducted his own experiments with science and nature. As he was an illegitimate son and therefore wasn't educated and didn't speak Latin his access to exisiting information was very limited.

The exhibit showed DaVinci's progression from preliminary sketches to "preparatory cartoons," large drawings made from several pieces of paper pasted together and mounted on wood.

Although hisprincipal draft, done in this style, exhibited in Florence in 1501 is lost, the Louvre had dozens of copies done by his contemporaries following DaVinci's exhibition, thought to be almost exact copies, like this one by Bernardino Luini.

The St. Anne ushered in a new age of art and was an immediate success. In Florence at the same time were also Michaelangelo, and Raphael.

The whole exhibit led up to the actual restored work that is truly mesmerising. The details of the sediment and rock bed that the three characters are standing on is incredible, the smile of St. Anne is unmistakably reticent of the Mona Lisa's.

The painting underwent massive restoration, although they were never able to bring back the vibrant green of the tree in the foreground as it had been paited with copper that tarnishes irreversibly. On the back of the giant frame DaVinci also sketched a skull and a horse head on the back that infrared lighting revealed.

Francois the First bought all of DaVinci's paintings he brought with him to France towards the end of his life which he lived out in Amboise, a chateau I visited a few years ago, and where DaVinci is buried. The painting was brought to the Louvre post-Revolution in 1797, and this is the first time it has been truly exhibitied. The exhibit at the Louvre now, going on until June 25th, is the culmination of curators research on this paitining.

The St. Anne has been widely replicated, from artists ranging from Degas to Delacroix to Ernst.

Probably the most impressive exhibit I've ever seen, I highly recomment it.

After this I was quite spoiled, and didn't appreciate the Degas exhibit as much as I thought I would. The exhibit at the Orsay was entitled Degas and the Nude, and after a while was quite repetitive.

The first third of the exhibit showed his sketches that he had made imrints of on metal plaques then stamped onto paper. Then the exhibit progressed to his charcoal and pastel works.

The first part focused on his works that depicted women during times of war and torture, and although I didn't find the subjects or the works very pleasant, his study of the female body and anatomy is undeniably stunning. Some of the content of the metal imprints reminded me of Lautrec's fixation with prostitutes and brothels at a time when female prostitutes were thought to be otherworldly beings having unsatiable desires and prone to female homosexuality. Pretty racy stuff. The dark and blurry element to these imprints added to the feeling of looking into some forbidden scene, captured hurriedly and still rough around the edges.

After the exhibit moved on to show his (maybe more well known) study of women doing everyday activities, usualy centering around grooming: bathing, dessing, brushing their hair. Degas apparantly wanted to portray women without vanity, in their natural beauty in everyday positions. He often called them "creatures" and in the paintings you can see can see the allusion to animals, grooming and preening themselves.

As I said, the exhibit got very repetitive, especially since Degas, like many other artists often created numerous sketches of the same work in order to get it right. By the end, instead of being wowed by the delicateness of his bowed heads, cascading hair, and sloping backs, I was kind of fed up with the voyeuristic side that never showed the women's faces, ever. As much as he showed the natural, unguarded beauty of his subjects he also showed many unflattering positions of everyday working women's bodies.

I don't know, I mean, who are you Degas to be showing the world all of our nooks and crannies? Artist or not, some things are meant to stay between women. And the fact that the images were decapitated images too. I felt like the women had no entities in his scenes and were just objects of the (male) spectators regard. Personally. However, the Orsay since they've redone it this year is most definitely still worth a visit.

Anyway, voilà and à bientôt!

Linz