2008 Woodie Awards
Does Rubens Worship False Gods?
How to Paint God's Portrait (Without Lightning Bolt Retaliation)
Menachem Wecker
Issue date: 2/15/05 Section: Arts & Culture
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Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640): The Drawings
January 15, 2005-April 3, 2005
Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Exhibition Hall, 2nd floor
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street
http://metmuseum.org/
Perhaps Garcia Marquez's greatest literary character is Jose Arcadio Buendia, the senile patriarch of "One Hundred Years of Solitude," who becomes so irascible that his family sees no choice but to bind him to a tree. But before his unification with the tree, Buendia-who has taken up photography as a hobby-develops the project of producing a daguerreotype of God. His strategy? Sneak up on God, jump out from around the corner suddenly and snap the picture in an attempt to capture the deity unawares. This raises a number of questions. What does it mean to photograph God? To paint Her? Is it heresy? Must a piece of art necessarily possess the subject via mimesis, or can it respectfully refer to it, while maintaining a respectful distance?
In the same gallery where it bought us Mabuse's "Saint Luke Drawing the Virgin"-a piece that explores the angel allowing St. Luke to develop a literal, religious iconography to the dismay of a cross Moses looming above pointing to the Second Commandment-during the Byzantine exhibit, the Metropolitan now hosts Flemish artist, Peter Paul Rubens. Like Mabuse, Rubens has an affinity for drawing the godhead.
Rubens was the Paul McCartney of his day. He would have been awarded the stage at the Super Bowl, and millions would have watched him set up his paints and capture a lion or a little boy. He was the Matthew Barney of his era; he would have gotten the Guggenheim exhibit, but he was way too normal to marry Bjork, and way too modest to conceive of the Cremaster Cycle. He was the John Currin, but he knew how to paint, and the Lucien Freud, but Freud is the better colorist (though Rubens could draw him under the table). Rubens was a celebrity in a television-less and internet-less world where artists could do that sort of thing, and his portfolio not only boasted experience in painting-including court painter to the duke of Mantua-but also diplomacy. He proved instrumental in negotiating a resolution to the 1625 war between the Spanish Netherlands and the Dutch Republic for his patron, Archduke Ferdinand. Charles I of England knighted Rubens and commissioned a ceiling painting.
January 15, 2005-April 3, 2005
Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Exhibition Hall, 2nd floor
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street
http://metmuseum.org/
Perhaps Garcia Marquez's greatest literary character is Jose Arcadio Buendia, the senile patriarch of "One Hundred Years of Solitude," who becomes so irascible that his family sees no choice but to bind him to a tree. But before his unification with the tree, Buendia-who has taken up photography as a hobby-develops the project of producing a daguerreotype of God. His strategy? Sneak up on God, jump out from around the corner suddenly and snap the picture in an attempt to capture the deity unawares. This raises a number of questions. What does it mean to photograph God? To paint Her? Is it heresy? Must a piece of art necessarily possess the subject via mimesis, or can it respectfully refer to it, while maintaining a respectful distance?
In the same gallery where it bought us Mabuse's "Saint Luke Drawing the Virgin"-a piece that explores the angel allowing St. Luke to develop a literal, religious iconography to the dismay of a cross Moses looming above pointing to the Second Commandment-during the Byzantine exhibit, the Metropolitan now hosts Flemish artist, Peter Paul Rubens. Like Mabuse, Rubens has an affinity for drawing the godhead.
Rubens was the Paul McCartney of his day. He would have been awarded the stage at the Super Bowl, and millions would have watched him set up his paints and capture a lion or a little boy. He was the Matthew Barney of his era; he would have gotten the Guggenheim exhibit, but he was way too normal to marry Bjork, and way too modest to conceive of the Cremaster Cycle. He was the John Currin, but he knew how to paint, and the Lucien Freud, but Freud is the better colorist (though Rubens could draw him under the table). Rubens was a celebrity in a television-less and internet-less world where artists could do that sort of thing, and his portfolio not only boasted experience in painting-including court painter to the duke of Mantua-but also diplomacy. He proved instrumental in negotiating a resolution to the 1625 war between the Spanish Netherlands and the Dutch Republic for his patron, Archduke Ferdinand. Charles I of England knighted Rubens and commissioned a ceiling painting.
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