Bowdoin College in Maine currently has a show up called
Beauty and Duty: The Art and Business of Renaissance Marriage. Built around a selection of painted bridal chests and portraiture, the exhibition includes various other artifacts related to Renaissance marriage, as part of an initiative to examine the cultural context of the production of the "Old Masters".
The exhibition certainly makes for a fascinating collection of objects, and allows for a glimpse into the social fabric. The power structures and institutions of Renaissance Europe, especially Renaissance art, left little room for female self-expression. Thus the Bowdoin exhibit provides a key to understanding some of the deeper gender politics of the age.
Bridal chest, attributed to Fra Angelico.
Through various Biblical and mythological scenes, artists reflected and cultivated expectations about the way married couples should act. In oft repeated episodes from the stories of Cupid and Psyche, or Solomon and Sheba, artists such as Andrea di Gusto and Paolo Schaivo painted scenes to emulate or eschew. As Susan Wegner writes in the catalogue, "Italian writers of advice manuals have a great deal to say about the inherent qualities of men and women and ideal modes of behavior for each." Painters of bridal chests picked up this theme. Their choice of subject matter reflects both the social demands of their art as
exempla as well as the decorative aspects of an object designed for a living space.
For an exhibition so rich in opportunity however, the catalogue fails to stimulate. Susan Wegner comes close on many occasion to tackling the key issues of relationships and gendered depiction, but shies away into the realms of description and summary.
Second, Radiohead's video for House of Cards. Filmed entirely without cameras, it was created by lasers that detect the distance between objects and record the data.
int still lifes after seeing the Caravaggios (right). Rather, that a culture - or at least a subset of artists and audience - learned to see fruit and flowers in a different way. E.H. Gombrich argues in Art and Illusion that perception and depiction are performed through patterns - schemata - and Bellori's observation would seem to support this.
The Klaus Moje retrospective has been up at PAM for a while now, and after several visits I've grown more impressed. Moje's process, which pushes the technical limits of glass-making, is a fine example of a craftsman applying rigorous material exploration to the creation of a visual aesthetic. His art is distinguished by a lack of frivolity, and it's apparent simplicity belies a spatial harmony that can be mesmerizing. Also, props to PAM for devoting such a large exhibition space to what is effectively a craft show. It's a nice break from the blockbuster shows that are driving many large institutions.
My favorite moment of the display is the line-up of portraits on the end wall, from Rembrandt to Robert Bechte via James MacNeill Whistler and three others. From the transfixing stare of Stephen Hayes' Oisha Williams to Rembrandt's typically dour self-portrait (above), they "illuminate the 'call and response' between one work and another" as the catalog puts it.
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