by matthias wivel & friends
In The National Gallery’s ongoing offering of online ten-minute talks, I’m chipping in with 6 and half minutes on Giorgio Vasari’s great Allegory of Patience, which we have on loan from The Kletsch Collection. Enjoy!
See more ten-minute talks and other video content from the Gallery here.
I recently had the pleasure of sitting down (online) with Howard Burton of Ideas Roadshow podcast to discuss my life and work, particularly at The National Gallery in London. The resulting podcast is now online! Clocking it at over two hours, it’s rather wide-ranging covering in particularly how my life in comics intersects with that in art and how hip hop changed my life. Check it out here:
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The exhibition of Titian’s six great so-called poesie for King Philip II (c. 1551-1562) that I helped organise at the National Gallery in London, and which showed in modified form at the Prado earlier this year, has now opened at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston under the title Titian: Women, Myth & Power.
From what I’ve seen in the press and online, I’m greatly impressed with their installation and didactic material they’ve put together, and it pleases me greatly to see these great Titians united in my American home away from home in Boston. I can’t wait hopefully to see it later in the autumn.
If you’re anyway near it, do go see it. It is truely and without hyperbole a once-in-a-lifetime chance. These are some of the great paintings of the Western tradition and they haven’t been seen together since the 1570s.
I sidste uge måtte vi sige farvel til Kurt Westergaard, manden der tegnede Profeten Muhammed med en bombe i turbanen og dermed var med til på godt og ondt at ændre verdens gang. Thomas, Frederik og jeg diskuterer tegningen, manden og krisen i den seneste episode fra Radio Rackham og jeg synes vi kommer både godt og vidt omkring.
Karikaturkrisen har påvirket os Rackhamitter meget, så det var en episode vi længe har haft i os. Og ligesom de fleste andre danskere, er det stensikkert ikke gjort med det: de tegninger er på sin vis mareridtet, der aldrig går væk. En torn i siden, der aftvinger stillingtagen og sjælekvaler. Læs mere på Nummer9 og lyt her!
Den her episode er tæt på. Frederiksbergmuseerne har besluttet sig for at udskille den unikke tegneseriesamling, de i form at Storm P.-museet i 2012 have overtaget fra Anders Hjorth-Jørgensen og hans Tegneseriemuseet i Danmark. Jeg var, samme med Louise C. Larsen og Søren Vinterberg med til at forhandle aftalen på plads dengang og vi troede den hellige grav var velforvaret — at samlingen var sikret for eftertiden og at Storm P.-museet nu havde grundlaget for skabelsen af et egentlig tegneseriemuseum i Danmark.
Det viste sig ikke at være tilfældet. Storm P.-museet fusionerede under Frederiksbergmuseerne i 2013 og det blev efterhånden tydeligt, at midlerne og viljen manglede. i 2018 besluttede bestyrelsen sig så for at udskille Anders Hjorth Jørgensens samling, som de til både vores og Anders Hjorth Jørgensens store overraskelse alligevel ikke havde forpligtet sig til at beholde og udvikle. Der er tale om to fundamentalt forskellige læsninger af overdragelsesdokumentet, som vi oplevede som forpligtende på museumsloven, mens de ser det som en hensigtserklæring. Det eneste bindende i den aftale, er åbenbart at Frederiksbergmuseerne har den fulde råderet og derfor nu arbejder på at afhænde samlingen på bedste vis.
Det er hele dette problemfelt vores episode analyserer nærmere, med venlig deltagelse af inspektør ved Storm P.-museet Nikolaj Brandt, forlægger Carsten Søndergaard og John Kenn Mortensen fra Dansk Tegneserieråds desværre snarligt afgående bestyrelse. Vi stiller os selv spørgsmålet om hvad et dansk tegneseriemuseum kunne være og hvilke konkrete muligheder, der er for fremtiden. Det er grove løjer, men hvis episoden kan inspirere folk til at engagere sig — helst som ny kandidat til bestyrelsen i Dansk tegneserieråd, som jeg stadig opfatter som den bedste mulighed for at formidle en redningsplan — vil noget da være nået.
Lyt med her og læs mere på Nummer9.
Postponed by Covid, the exhibition La forma del tempo (‘The Shape of Time’) at the Poldi Pezzoli in Milan finally opened last month and runs till 27 September. Centred around the museum’s extraodinary collection of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century clocks, it examines conceptions of time in the renaissance as expressed in the visual arts. The National Gallery has lent Titian’s Allegory of Prudence, a picture that grapples with issues of family, succession, memory and time through a creative interpretation of a traditional iconography that represents time in the form of three heads, either human or animal. Anyway, I wrote the entry for the painting and would encourage readers who are in MIlan or find themselves there to go see the show. It looks fascinating. Check our Works section for info on the catalogue.
One of Lorenzo Lotto’s greatest altarpieces can be found in the small church of Santa Maria della Pietà in the town of Monte San Giusto in the Marche. Painted in 1528-29, it is a stunningly ambitious representation of the Crucifixion, conceived by a master at the height of his powers, but also an artist who was increasingly struggling to find work in his native Venice leading him to seek employment elsewehere, especially in the Marche where many of the greatest of his later works can still be seen today.
In preparation for the twin Lotto exhibitions of 2018-19, Lorenzo Lotto Portraits at the Museo del Prado and the National Gallery and Lorenzo Lotto: Il richiamo delle Marche, Prof. Enrico Maria Dal Pozzolo and I visited Monte San Giusto to see the altarpiece in July 2018. It was a great experience and we susequently agreed to help produce videos on the work for the Commune. These have now been released to the public and will hopefully help attract people to the altarpiece, the town and the region. I cannot recommend it highly enough. For help, check this guide to seeing Lotto in the region.
Continue reading ‘Lorenzo Lotto’s Monte San Giusto Crucifixion’
Over at Apollo, I’ve reviewed Florent Ruppert, Jérôme Mulot and Bastien Vivès’ comic The Grande Odalisque, which mobilises the art heist subgenre as a commentary on shallow elitism. The glamour of the old masters and commodification of art themtised in a modern action comic. The review also gives me the occasion to formulate a few thoughts on the emerging subgenre of museum comics and didactiic artist’s biographies in comics form.
Here, by the way, is the Laurent de la Hyre painting that gets confused with a Titian in the comic, after which it is machine-gunned:
(It’s from 1647 and can be seen at the Louvre)
Originally relesed in 2012, La grande odalisque is now available in English translation from Fantagraphics. See also my 2011 interview with Ruppert and Mulot. If you read Danish and subscribe to Information, I also discuss museum comics in this review of Peter Wandel and Rasmus Meislers Den magiske spinel.
Titian, The Rape of Europa, 1559-62, Boston, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
The show at the Prado is a kind of homecoming for these masterworks, a return to the royal Spanish collection to which they belonged and in which they became a cornerstone, influencing generations of artists. The Prado is therefore uniquely positioned to tell a broader story of the development of European painting in the early modern era and Titian’s crucial role in it. They have also taken the opportunity to tell the story of the development of secular, mythological genres of painting in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as kind of liberating format that encouraged experimentation.
Diego Velázquez, Las hilanderas (The Spinners), 1655-60. Madrid, Museo del Prado
It seemed to come out of nowhere. Thought lost, Giorgio Vasari’s Allegory of Patience of 1542 popped up on the art market. It was acquired by the Klesch Collection in London where I first went to see it. Greatly impressed with the picture, we expressed an interest in taking it on loan at the National Gallery and the owners kindly agreed: it has been on display at Trafalgar Square since March last year, finding a natural place among the Florentine sixteenth-century pictures and significantly complementing the collection. In my opinion, it’s as good as Vasari gets as an easel painter — a monumental picture with great wall power. This may in part be due to the probable involvement in its design by Michelangelo, but it is in any case a bravura piece of painting.
Now, the Klesch Collection has published a small book on it, authored by the distinguished scholar of Florentine renaissance art Carlo Falciani. He, my colleague at the Gallery Caroline Campbell, and I also contributed to a short film on it. Check it out, and do come see the picture if you’re in London when the Gallery is open again!
Order the book via its publisher, Paul Holberton.
Dosso Dossi, The Adoration of the Kings, about 1527-9, London, The National Gallery
The video posted here is my contribution to a lecture series on Raphael, organised to mark the 500th anniversary of his death in 1520 by the Istituto Italiano di Cultura of Toronto. Partly by happenstance, it turned into a series of lectures on Raphael and his relationship with or significance for other Italian renaissance artists, all of them Venetians. My talk, given in early October, was on his fraught relationship with Sebastiano del Piombo, who became Raphael’s main competitor in painting after he arrived in Rome in 1511, not least because he quickly allied himself with Raphael’s most severe rival, Michelangelo. Anyway, do check it out.
Do also tune into the contributions by my colleagues Thomas Dalla Costa and Giorgio Tagliaferro who talked about Raphael and Titian and Raphael and Paolo Veronese, respectively.
This November, we staging a large virtual conference devoted to Titian’s late mythological paintings at the National Gallery. Organised by Thomas Dalla Costa and myself on the occasion of the exhibition Titian: Love Desire Death, which is still on view at Trafalgar Square (until 17 January), it will bring together scholars, conservators and scientists from Europe and North America to speak on a wide variety of topics relating to Titian and his mythological paintings, from technique to meaning and the wider context: from politics and identity to sex and violence!
The conference It will also feature four artist’s talks, with Nalini Malani, Michael Armitage, Phoebe Gloeckner and Tom de Freston — all reflecting on what Titian means to their practice and how they grapple with the enduring issues so central to his work.
The dates are 3, 10 and 17 November. You can see the full programme and register here.
Min anmeldelse af Peter Wandel og Rasmus Meislers tegneserie Den magiske spinel kan læses i fredagens bogtillæg til Information eller online her, hvis du betaler. Det er en kompetent men McGraphic novel-agtig tegneserie, der primært er sat i verden for at højne opmærksomheden omkring Davids samling i København, hvilket bestemt er en værdig sag — Davids samling er en perle i dansk kulturliv, en samling på absolut internationalt niveau. Besøg!
Interview: El-P & Aesop Rock
Click here to read our 2003 in-depth interview with two of New York’s finest.
Continuous Creation — Titian’s Nuova Natura
On Titian’s aesthetic of the unfinished and Renaissance notions of the subjective.
Bleed Runner
On Blade Runner: The Final Cut. Also, read producer Charles de Lauzirika’s comments here.
Hergé and the Order of Things
Hooded Utilitarian column on Hergé’s vision and the necessity of comics criticism that engages deep form
Bruegel, Rembrandt, Crumb and Cartooning
Extended Hooded Utilitarian piece on R. Crumb’s Genesis and the cartoon tradition.
New Yorker Cartoons: A Legacy of Mediocrity
A deadening force at the heart of the art form, smothering the field in bourgeois mediocrity
Raphael’s Portrait of Lorenzo de’Medici
The Metabunker summarizes the problems of attribution surrounding the Raphael portrait sold at Christie’s in 2007
Hogarth’s Chicken Fat
An analysis of Hogarth’s rich imagery as both support and counterpoint to his storytelling
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Radio Rackham: Piranesi
Vi afslutter året på Radio Rackham med et afsnit om Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778) i anledning af den store udstilling, der pt. kan ses på Statens Museum for Kunst (når der ikke, som lige nu, er corona-lukket). Det er en fornøjelse på den måde at udvide feltet i podcastet til at omfatte anden kunst og andre kulturfænomener end dem, der stringent kan kaldes tegneserier. Det har altid været vores ambition på Rackham at se kunstformen i en større sammenhæng.
Lyt her og læs mere på Nummer9.