Laura Jeanne Grimes, artist
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Michelangelo's Matthew

10/24/2020

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Looking at art history.  Michelangelo's unfinished sculpture of St. Matthew.  I have seen it in Florence, at the Accademia where the more famous David stands on display.  I find this sculpture profoundly moving in his rough, unfinished state.  The artist himself once wrote: "Every block of stone has a statue inside it, and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it." Matthew, the tax collector who dropped everything to follow Christ, emerges from the marble, muscled, powerful, the book of the Gospel in his hand.

When looking at a preparatory drawing and the painting based on it, I almost always prefer the drawing.  We see the artist's hand at work, the mind thinking. In the same way, in this unfinished work, we see Michelangelo's hand, holding the chisel, his mind making choices of just where to place the tool. The unfinished work is "in the rough," but not imperfect, not found wanting.

The website Michelango.org (https://www.michelangelo.org/the-saint-matthew.jsp) describes it thus: "The standing pose includes a cube-shaped base on which the left foot is raised forcing the knee to protrude; this results in the unusual spiraling that passes into every part of the anatomy, in fieri, of the Evangelist apostle, all the way up to the upwards turn of his head towards divine inspiration -- at once the calling the the source of the book he hold in his left hand. The daring contrapposto, the dynamism pervading the saint's body in every direction, a body that is tense and distressed as it harks the divine inspiration." In fieri: in process, underway, beginning to have existence.

And now a perhaps relevant quote from St. Paul of the Cross: "The statue must be chiseled with very sharp tools before it is fit to be placed in the grand gallery."  

And my own thought. We don't like being chiseled ourselves. We chose how to respond: to become bitter or better, serene or sour. 
Picture
#michelangelo #matthew #michelangelomatthew
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Van Gogh, the Missionary

10/19/2020

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Art History. Not one of Vincent van Gogh’s most well known paintings — Prisoners' Round, painted in February 1890 at Saint-Paul Asylum in Saint-Rémy, inspired by an 1872 engraving by Gustave Doré of the exercise yard at Newgate Prison.

And, here is a part of Vincent’s life unknown to most people, from Wikipedia: “In January 1879 he took up a post as a missionary at Petit-Wasmes in the coal-mining district of Borinage in Belgium. To show support for his impoverished congregation, he gave up his comfortable lodgings at a bakery to a homeless person and moved to a small hut, where he slept on straw. His squalid living conditions did not endear him to church authorities, who dismissed him for "undermining the dignity of the priesthood.”

Let that sink in. He went to minister to the poor and the church authorities fired him for doing just that. His father believed Vincent was insane and should be committed to an asylum. Instead, as Wikipedia tells us, “Van Gogh returned to Cuesmes in August 1880, where he lodged with a miner until October. He became interested in the people and scenes around him, recording them in drawings after Theo's suggestion that he take up art in earnest.” His sweet brother Theo, always so kind and encouraging to him. But, at the end of Vincent’s life, he did end up in an asylum where he took his own life. His artistic career lasted 10 years. He started painting when he was 27, died at 37, poor as a church mouse, as the old saying goes.

Later this month, Sotheby's New York offers his painting Still Life: Glass with Wild Flowers, for auction.  The estimated sale price stands at 14 to 18 million dollars.  Vincent most likely would  say the money would be better spent helping the poor.  

Prisoners' Round, by Vincent van Gogh

Picture
#vincentvangogh #vangogh #vangoghmissionary #vincent
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