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From: blp
Category: Art
Date: 28 January 2007
Time: 04:28 PM
Review:
You have to go to these shows because, queues of naice middle class old ladies notwithstanding, they are never never what
you think. I thought I was going to hate the El Greco and it simply kicked. I thought I'd love Vermeer, but got to the end still
waiting for the thrill to hit. The only one that met my generally positive expectations was Caravaggio, but still, 'generally positive'
is only accurate about what I actually experienced in the sense that 'hot and dry' might be an accurate description of the Sahara
desert (it was a brilliant shocker; it made me go quiet).
I bumped into a friendly acquaintance in the Velázquez who said he loved it, but was skipping the earlier rooms because what
he particularly wanted was to see it 'all fall apart' at the end. I'd like to know if he was disappointed. It's such a truism that the late
brushwork is incredibly free that you can sort of expect it to be some deliciously swishing mass of proto-impressionist light and
flesh, and reproductions leave enough to the imagination not to disabuse you, but it's not really what you get . The effect is
subtler and tighter. All the way through, except maybe in some of the early, more trad religious paintings, where he seems to be
coasting and lazily edges into kitsch, he's an incredibly adroit, unpedantic painter who makes forms more than he delineates
them and it's true that by the end he can knock out the frills on a dress with simple marks that look almost caligraphic close up,
but absolutely resolve themselves representationally just a few steps back. But it's not like late Titian or Goya. The form always
stays absolutely solid and the paint is never allowed to go off message.
And I have to admit, when I say subtle, I mean sort of boring and this is the surprise of this show for me. I thought I was going to
start off quite liking it and then it was going to get better in the way an orgasm does. Actually, if anything, it worked in reverse,
wowing me with the early 'Kitchen Scene Christ in the House of Martha and Mary' picture and the two pictures of a negro
looking serving maid that are similar. These are odd, hard to read pictures with what might be windows or pictures within the
picture and traces of Caraggio's influence in the painting of darkness.
I feel totally unfair saying any of it was boring because it almost all had things to recommend it and nearing the end some
interesting quirks were sneaking in. Quite possibly, I just need more time with some of these pictures. It's just that, for all the
virtuosity, so many of them seem so lacking in personality compared to almost any other great painters I can think of. Funny that
a lot of the nice middle class type around me were mainly talking about personalities - those of the sitters. I was feeling a bit art
student huffy about this ('Look at the paint, you fools!'), then hit the Pope Innocent picture Francis Bacon was so obsessed with
and the guy's scowl really is a punch in the gut. Maybe both I and my painter acquaintance were looking too much through the
lens of 20th C formal fixation and looking too much for painterly personality, when the trick here is how it's kept out. The flesh of
this pope's face is amazing and you can't work out how it was done, but the big thing really is that it doesn't fall apart, but stays
together and feels like such a glowering, scarily malignant presence.