23 August 2009

Mikhail Vruble and his imagination

One of my favour Russian painters is defiantly Mikhail Aleksandrovich Vrubel
(Russian: Михаил Александрович Врубель, March 17, 1856 - April 14, 1910).

He is usually regarded as the greatest Russian painter of the Symbolist movement. His art is so unique and original that he shouldn't be label to any movement at all. In reality, he deliberately stood aloof from contemporary art trends, so that the origin of his unusual manner should be sought probably in the Late Byzantine and Early Renaissance painting.


Seraph based on Pushkin poem

For me personally he is a personality with a great imagination, fantasy and originality. He perfectly fits in my private gallery of unusual, bizzar, different, fantastic in art.

Vrubel was born in the Omsk city (Siberia), in a military lawyer's family and graduated from the Law Faculty of St Petersburg University in 1880. Next year he entered the Imperial Academy of Arts. In his earliest works, he exhibited striking talent for drawing and highly idiosyncratic outlook. Although he still relished academic monumentality, he would later develop a penchant for fragmentory composition and "unfinished touch".

In 1884, he was summoned to replace the lost 12th-century murals and mosaics in the St. Cyril's Church of Kiev with the new ones. In order to execute this commission, he went to Venice to study the medieval Christian art. It was here that, in the words of an art historian, "his palette acquired new strong saturated tones resembling the iridescent play of precious stones". Most of his works painted in Venice have been lost, because the artist was more interested in creative process than in promoting his artwork. In 1886, he returned to Kiev, where he submitted some monumental designs to the newly-built St Volodymir Cathedral. The jury, however, failed to appreciate the striking novelty of his works, and they were rejected. At that period, he executed some delightful illustrations for Hamlet and Anna Karenina which had little in common with his later dark meditations on the Demon and Prophet themes.

While in Kiev, Vrubel started painting sketches and watercolours illustrating the Demon, a long Romantic poem by Mikhail Lermontov. The poem described the carnal passion of "an eternal nihilistic spirit" to a Georgian girl Tamara. At that period Vrubel developed a keen interest in Oriental arts, and particularly Persian carpets, and even attempted to imitate their texture in his paintings.

In 1890, Vrubel moved to Moscow. Like other artists associated with the Art Nouveau, he excelled not only in painting but also in applied arts, such as ceramics, majolics, and stained glass. He also produced architectural masks, stage sets, and costumes.

Seated Demon

In 1890 he finished his large painting of Seated Demon in the Garden (It is to see in Moscow, in Tretyakov Gallery). This painting brought notoriety to Vrubel. Most conservative critics accused him of "wild ugliness", I LOVE IT! Others like art patron Savva Mamontov praised the Demon series as "fascinating symphonies of a genius". Unfortunately the Demon, like other Vrubel's works, doesn't look as it did when it was painted, as the artist added bronze powder to his oils in order to achieve particularly luminous, glistening effects.

In 1896, he fell in love with the famous opera singer Nadezhda Zabela. Half a year later they married and settled in Moscow, where Zabela was invited by Mamontov to perform in his private opera theatre. While in Moscow, Vrubel designed stage sets and costumes for his wife, who sang the parts of the Snow Maiden, the Swan Princess, and Princess Volkhova in Rimsky-Korsakov's operas. Falling under the spell of Russian fairy tales, he executed some of his most acclaimed pieces, including Pan (1899), The Swan Princess (1900), and Lilacs (1900). In 1901, Vrubel returned to the demonic themes in the large canvas Demon Downcast. In order to astound the public with underlying spiritual message, he repeatedly repainted the demon's ominous face, even after the painting had been exhibited to the overwhelmed audience.

The last decade of his life was a very difficult one; he had a severe nervous breakdown, he was hospitalized in mental clinic. While there, he painted a mystical Pearl Oyster (1904) and striking variations on the themes of Pushkin's poem The Prophet. In 1906, overpowered by mental disease and approaching blindness, he had to give up painting.

Pan
By the way if you love movies, see Guillermo Del Toro's The Pan Labirynt. There is a such of atmosphere in this masterpiece that reminded me some of Vrubel's paintings.

2 August 2009

James Ensor, medieval art and death.

Medieval art is one of my favourite art periods, I just love it.

The whole spectrum of medieval art in Europe was dominated by the Christian ideology. The architecture, the astounding Gothic cathedrals, the sculptures, the tapestries, the manuscripts, the paintings, almost every form of visual display was associated with numerous aspects of cultural behaviour, custom and communication used to illustrate Christian philosophy and dogma.

I am not a Christian and I am not a religious person but I adore medieval art even if it is full of God, Saints, religious symbols, devils, angels, and bizarre creatures – maybe all those things are the reason for my adoration of this period.

I love the colours which the artists use in their paintings, manuscripts, tapestries and the roof carvings. I find irresistible the absence of perspective however I find more irresistible the imagination of the artists who created the most incredible fantastic/ surreal paintings and ideas about the heaven’s, hell’s and the world’s hierarchies.

I am fascinated by the fact that the people of the medieval period could have lived in such intimacy with death. Life was never-ending; death was a mere interruption of the continuum; after which the soul would await the Last Judgment (heaven or the hell).


The Dance of Death by Vincent of Kastav

One of the most interesting images of death in the medieval art besides the Last Judgment is the dance macabre, the Dance of Death. It is a strange fantasy for us, but probably very consistent with the medieval acknowledgement of death and life as a continuum.


The Dance of Death by Vincent of Kasta, fragment and copy
One of the best and astonishing images of the Dance of Death is in . It is a fresco made by Vincent of Kastav around 1474. It is a very strange yet wonderful image full of all classes of men, women, children, and between them skeletons walk in procession. There are ten characters in this dance; each one is accompanied by Death. In-between the skeletons dance the pope, the cardinal, the bishop, the king, the queen, the innkeeper, the child, the maimed, the knight, and finally the merchant, who stands by a table covered with goods. The skeletons are naked and some of them play music; bagpipes, mandolins and wind instruments. The merchant, who is last in joining the dance, tries to bribe Death by pointing at his money. His efforts are futile; Death will never spare a "dancer" in exchange for mere riches.

Now it is time for me to show how James Ensor fits in to medieval art and death.

James Ensor (April 13, 1860 – November 19, 1949), one of the most famous Belgian artists was obsessed with death, grotesque masquerades, and fantastic allegories. In some point in his artistic development he turned towards religious themes as well. He interpreted them as a personal disgust for the inhumanity of the world.

The most famous painting of him is the immense "Christ's Entry into Brussels". In this painting he took on religion, politics, and art by depicting Christ entering contemporary Brussels in a Mardi gras parade. It is a vast carnival crowd in grotesque masks advancing towards the viewer. Nearly lost amid the teeming throng is Christ on his donkey. Although Ensor was an atheist, he identified with Christ as a victim of mockery.


Christ's Entry into Brussels by James Ensor


His other famous painting "Tribulation of Saint Anthony" could be seen as a modern version of the famous painting "The Temptation of St. Anthony" by Hieronymus Bosch. The work features a hooded holy man inundated by Boschian creatures floating in swampy skies -- devils and demons that fart on him and defecate. In my humble opinion this is one of his masterpieces.


Tribulation of Saint Anthony by James Ensor
I think that Ensor owes debts to medieval art, medieval artists and the medieval view of the world. The attitudes and images of the period between 500-1.000 years ago are the origin of many of his paintings.

There is a major Ensor exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City at the moment. Unfortunately "Christ's Entry into Brussels" isn't included in the Show in MoMA. But I saw it once in the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

The exhibition will travel to the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, October 2009–February 2010.