lunedì 12 marzo 2012
Disegni
On my return home I found one of my old books of drawings which I bought in Rome. I think back then I liked finding quotes from odd sources to add to them.
martedì 6 marzo 2012
Last week before a holiday - Villa Reale and Klimt
I'm going back to Oxford and Leeds on thursday, which will be quite a welcome break in some ways. Which means it's probably a good time to upload some of the sketches and drawings I've done over the last couple of weeks.
These drawings were all done in Pavia and Milano - at the Villa Reale, the Klimt exhibition at Spazio Oberdan, and in the city in general.
http://www.klimtmilano.com/
http://www.gam-milano.com/
1. Fausto Melotti in Milano - Giardino Inglese. The Villa Reale is situated in the middle of some of the nicer parks in Milano, one being the Giardino Inglese. I'm not sure quite how much it actually resembles an English Garden if I'm entirely truthful, but despite the rules stipulating that adults are only allowed entry with children under twelve, we went in and saw I Setti Savi by Melotti. Apparently they were once in a school but were uprooted and broken by unruly students, and another group replaced in a rather secluded spot in the garden.
2. The Villa Reale is one of my new favourite museums in Milano, maybe because the Villa itself is stunning, and very over the top. One of the guides told me that Napoleon stayed there for a while, and this explains the symbolic eagles (Napoleon) eating the serpents (the crest of Milano) which adorn the ceilings. Maybe my favourite stuff in there was the Medardo Rosso - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medardo_Rosso - which was a huge contrast to the polished marble sculptures. These heads are quite discomforting, made of wax, and reminded me to some extent of Michelangelo's Prigioni in that the forms seem to be struggling to free themselves.
In some senses, they reminded me of the post-injury photo of Henry Ralph Lumley, a young soldier who was burnt on his graduation day during WW1, when the plane he was flying crashed. I can never work out if it's more or less sad that he didn't die in action. His case was crucial to the development of facial reconstructive surgery during the war, but sadly for him, being the first patient to be given this kind of treatment, he died of infection shortly after a full face transplant. After that, surgeons realised it would be best to transplant faces in pieces and not as a whole, and went on to successfully treat other wounded soldiers.
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4. Sketches of some of Rosso's metal/wax busts in the Villa Reale.
5. Giovanni Strazza, Villa Reale - Ishmael abandoned in the desert. Looking at this gave me a similar feeling to looking at la Pieta' - the marble is carved so fluidly that it loses the stiffness which a lot of the more monumental figures had.
6. Sketch of a draft for a monumental wall painting, and very rough sketch of Segantini's 'L'Angelo della Vita'.
In Milano there seems to be quite a lot of divisionist painting around - Segantini was the favourite of the guide at Villa Reale, and I did especially like this work - http://www.frammentiarte.it/dall'Impressionismo/Segantini%20opere/41%20l'angelo%20della%20vita.htm
- although the reproductions do nothing for it. Divisionist painting was supposedly based on a scientific optic principle in which certain coloured dots were placed next to each other to create a certain effect - like pointilism in some senses, but with more emphasis placed on the 'scientific' part of things. My personal favourite of the divisionists in Milano is Pellizza da Volpedo - http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuseppe_Pellizza_da_Volpedo - who had a rather tragic life, killing himself after his wife died and his now relatively famous painting of socialist utopia, 'Il Quarto Stato', failed to achieve the recognition he desired. There's a draft of it at the Brera which I may actually prefer to the finished version at the Museo del Novecento, moved from the Villa Reale, much to the chagrin of my guide who dislikes the fact it is now behind a glass window.
These drawings were all done in Pavia and Milano - at the Villa Reale, the Klimt exhibition at Spazio Oberdan, and in the city in general.
http://www.klimtmilano.com/
http://www.gam-milano.com/
A photo (not mine) of the Setti Savi in the Giardino -
In some senses, they reminded me of the post-injury photo of Henry Ralph Lumley, a young soldier who was burnt on his graduation day during WW1, when the plane he was flying crashed. I can never work out if it's more or less sad that he didn't die in action. His case was crucial to the development of facial reconstructive surgery during the war, but sadly for him, being the first patient to be given this kind of treatment, he died of infection shortly after a full face transplant. After that, surgeons realised it would be best to transplant faces in pieces and not as a whole, and went on to successfully treat other wounded soldiers.
.jpg)
3. Original image above of Henry Ralph Lumley, who died of heart failure related to infection, March 11, 1918.
5. Giovanni Strazza, Villa Reale - Ishmael abandoned in the desert. Looking at this gave me a similar feeling to looking at la Pieta' - the marble is carved so fluidly that it loses the stiffness which a lot of the more monumental figures had.
6. Sketch of a draft for a monumental wall painting, and very rough sketch of Segantini's 'L'Angelo della Vita'.
In Milano there seems to be quite a lot of divisionist painting around - Segantini was the favourite of the guide at Villa Reale, and I did especially like this work - http://www.frammentiarte.it/dall'Impressionismo/Segantini%20opere/41%20l'angelo%20della%20vita.htm
- although the reproductions do nothing for it. Divisionist painting was supposedly based on a scientific optic principle in which certain coloured dots were placed next to each other to create a certain effect - like pointilism in some senses, but with more emphasis placed on the 'scientific' part of things. My personal favourite of the divisionists in Milano is Pellizza da Volpedo - http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuseppe_Pellizza_da_Volpedo - who had a rather tragic life, killing himself after his wife died and his now relatively famous painting of socialist utopia, 'Il Quarto Stato', failed to achieve the recognition he desired. There's a draft of it at the Brera which I may actually prefer to the finished version at the Museo del Novecento, moved from the Villa Reale, much to the chagrin of my guide who dislikes the fact it is now behind a glass window.
PAVIA
Rather bizarrely, we have parrots in college, brought back by a Rettore once opon a time, we seem to have spread around the rest of the city. They make a rather bizarre change from pigeons, seeing as we're near the Alps and it's not the warmest in winter, to say the least.
There was a week - now seemingly gone - of the most amazing weather last week, so we took the chance to get out into the nicer bits of Pavia, by which I mean the terraces in college, the Castello Visconteo and the river Ticino. The river is lovely but sadly frequented by the usual mix of nutters and men who like to shout lewd things to women, so I prefer the Castello, which is a wonderful heap of ruins with a lot of wind and leaves which makes it feel slightly odd in that there's life everywhere in the middle of dead stones.
KLIMT A SPAZIO OBERDAN, PORTA VENEZIA, MILANO
I'm quite sure that this must be a touring exhibition, because I'm sure that when I was much younger I saw some of this stuff at the Tate in Liverpool. The reproductions of some murals were there, as were the drawings of women masturbating which, at the time, caused some confusion ('Dad, why are those women diddling with themselves?'). Either way it was good to see them again in not quite such a flippant way.
Below are the pictures I came home and drew after the exhibition when I had a bit more time. I've recently found that the knicker shop Tezenis sells lovely socks, beside the point, but the card they come in is very shiny and drawing on it seems almost like painting on glass or how I'd imagine drawing on porcelain to be.
Below are one or two of the rough sketches I made in the exhibition
Klimt's women seem to have quite emphatic eyebrows. My friend David found this ugly, but as a fellow non-eyebrow plucker, I found them rather attractive. The head of the woman was one of my favourite sketches in the exhibition.
After seeing the woman's head turned to the side, I came home and drew a series of tiny heads on the last of the Tezenis card. I especially like it for smudging purposes, you can do red cheeks with ease.
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