Happy Birthday Michelangelo

I don't think there is any other artist in history who is as well known for painting a massive fresco by himself.The loner. The genius. The perfectionist. The terribilitá. The homosexual (if he was indeed gay, which is still being debated). We think we know him, but we really don't know him at all.

His genius was based on a solid training with a fanatical attention to anatomy. His perfectionism comes from a father who was probably pretty hard on him for most of his life. His personality was probably not as dramatic as history conveys him— in fact, I suspect he was quite introverted, preferring to observe rather than talk excessively. Just don't piss the guy off. Even so, the labours of his art reveal he had to have had an inordinate amount of patience, or he would not have been able to deal with the many projects from Pope Julius II and their problems.

Although I do love sculpture very much, it's painting that I want to talk about in this blog, and since Michelangelo changed the face of western painting with one ceiling fresco (despite not being a painter) I just want to make a couple of observations as to what makes him awesome.

1. Master of character
The amount of thought he put into his subject's facial expressions as a way of revealing who they are cannot be understated. If you can't see what your subject is thinking or feeling, the painting is ruined. The fact that he did this with the added genius of foreshortening and powerful musculature to convey the strength of his characters was taking it to the next level.

2. Musicality of figure composition
The twisting forms of his work, which later inspired Mannerism is only part of the story. His figures have rhythm. His use of color in the prophets often reveal cools and warms together. His ignudi have grace and movement that is visual music, and each one is completely unique (even though many of the faces are similar, probably a time saver). All his figures seem to have a dance-like element because his use of line makes the figures flow, whether serious or whimsical.

3. Dynamic body language
In most of his figures, no limb points points exactly in the same direction or angle and yet he makes it look natural. This sounds like rhythm but its something more: Asymmetry. The left side of the body is completely different than the right side. How the figure occupies space determines the asymmetry.

Comments

Isaac Levitan, Russian Poet of Nature

Before the Storm, 1890 Born August 30, 1860, Isaac Ilyich Levitan was a Russian landscape painter. Born in Congress Poland to a Jewish family, Levitan would study art in Moscow where he would become friends with Anton Chekov and his brother, Nikolay who was also an artist. Levitan's work has a unique mood that is very distinct from the Impressionism of France and the Classicism of Russia...sometimes compared to Monet but still different. Levitan has a rare presence with astute attention to detail and a fascination with light at different times of day. At times highly accurate, while in his more personal work deeply Impressionistic and imbued with rich tone and color. There is something about Levitan that lingers in your mind long after seeing his work...in a way that is individual and personal, not attached to a specific genre or movement, but to the world around him. In Before the Storm , Levitan captures a moment so stunning it seems to defy words...of sunlight piercing ...

Bouguereau

Nymphs and Satyr, 1873 If there is one artist today that hardly needs an introduction, it would be William-Adolphe Bouguereau , supreme giant of 19th century Academic art. Born on November 30, 1825 in La Rochelle on the southwest of France, his talent would define the era he lived in only to fall into obscurity for decades after his death in 1905 until as recent as the early 1980's, shockingly. Today he has the distinction of being lionized by the Art Renewal Center as one of the greatest artists of all time while at the other end of the spectrum vilified by modernists as artificially perfect and sentimental. In fact it is quite rare to see such polarization over an artist of a calibre like Bouguereau, whose bravura is difficult to equal yet at the same time thematically his work admittedly tends toward women and children, a subject matter that sold well and he had endless patience for. Over the vast array of his oeuvre, some 820 paintings, I have tried to find some of his v...

Guercino il Magnifico

Self-Portrait of the Artist holding a Palette, ca.1635 Giovanni Francesco Barbieri , known as Guercino was born on February 8, 1591 in Cento, a small city near Ferrara. He is one of the great masters of the Italian Baroque and poet of painters. Noted for his speed and efficiency, Guercino also worked in a number of mediums with equal passion whether ink, chalk, charcoal, or oils. His nickname, which means 'little cross-eyes' in Italian, derives in part from an apocryphal childhood accident where he supposedly awoke from a deep sleep as a child from a loud scream that caused his eyes to cross. Another story says something was thrown into his eyes. At any rate, he was self-taught as an artist from as early as nine years old and by his early teens was discovered by the eldest of the Carracci where he would spend some time at the Accademia Degli Incamminati before venturing out on his own. Despite his apparent 'handicap', his vision and talent would make him a giant t...

beside the easel

Search This Blog