Spaceman

A6 sketchbook doodle.

The artist and the automation

I had some time before the Bruegel exhibition, so I looked at the two nearby rooms. So I stand in front of Titian's Danae, and my automation turns on uninvited: 'This shadow under the left breast should be deeper... and this forearm is too long... and this hand was clearly painted by an apprentice from a male model..." Shut up, automation, you are interfering with my enjoyment of painting!

(Illustrations: the Vienna version of Danae I was looking at, and Bruegel's wonderful 'The Artist and the Buyer'. Or, in this case, the artist and the automation.

Brueghel exhibition report

I had returned from the big exhibition of Bruegel the Elder at the Vienna art history museum.

They've shown, besides their own collection (they have a whole room of Bruegel, including The Tower of Babel, The Massacre of the Innocents and the Seasons series) works from Britain, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Vienna Albertina and so on. A roomful and a half of drawings and woodcuts, five rooms of paintings, a little historical context and thematic exhibitions on Bruegel's painting techniques and restoration. 

Overall impression was great: not just the pictures, but there also was an educational component. Some paintings were exhibited in multiple versions: e.g., two variants of The Massacre of the Innocents and both Towers of Babel - their own and the Rotterdam one. There were no Blind Leading the Blind, but they brought the newly (and excellently) restored Mad Meg (Dulle Griet) and two of the three Adorations of the Magi. That was easily two thirds of Bruegel's known paintings.

Of drawings and prints there were the Sins and Virtues series, early studies, miscellany, and the wonderful Artist and Connoisseur drawing from Albertina. Especially nice was hanging many of the woodcuts next to the preliminary drawings they were made from. There were also several preparatory drawings for elements used in paintings.

Overall, everything was picked and presented very well. My favorites are still the Babel Tower and especially The Hunters in the Snow, but Mad Meg is also great, and the Swiss variant of Adoration of the Magi with the snow and The Triumph of Death. Bruegel was clearly a forerunner of the zombie apocalypse genre.

More impressions:

Bruegel, in places, is quite a Bosch. They both must have gotten some of their weed from the same vendor.

The younger Bruegels were for the most part pathetic imitators.

Some minuses: the descriptions would have been better placed to the side of each painting, not in front: in such dense crowd the readers had been causing unnecessary jams. The audioguide must die especially; I do understand it is extra profit for the museum, but it makes four or five m...useum-goers stand before each painting listening to their paddles and block the access. But overall the museum handled such heavy crowd well; it was much worse in Albertina in every regard. The hardcover catalog was available only in German; would it have killed them to make some in other languages?

To the Hunters, the Tower and the Artist and Connoisseur I treated myself twice.

Bruegel was wise but terribly sarcastic. To the level of truly poisonous caricature. And not just in his treatment of the characters; in the middle of the Procession to Calvary painting, which features hundreds of figures in furious action (Bruegel the dad was certainly not lazy), one suddenly notices a white horse with a rider standing still, staring directly with a viewer with an awfully cynical grin. A real troll.

Bruegel's drawing is plain, almost medieval, none of the Italian prettifying, and his painting is likewise simple, done in clean spots, early Renaissance wise; but his color and atmosphere sing like few painters could ever manage. He obviously loved to paint tiny detail, with all the hair-thin branches and matchstick-tall soldiers, but it never turns into noisiness. Everything done masterfully, freshly, appropriately.

It was good.