Day 252 - Prints and drawings

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June 25, 2021

I have almost invariably treated gallery 690 as a passthrough, to get from one set of galleries to another. I've been aware that,  along with galleries 691-6 93, the gallery displays a rotating assortment of prints and drawings, but I rarely stopped to look at them with any care Today I realize how much I 've been shortchanging myself. and the visit confirms my sense of the museum's incomparable richness. 

The exhibit currently on view is the fourth and last of a series of shows of prints and drawings marking the Met's 150th anniversary. The exhibit focuses on techniques of printmaking (woodcuts, engravings, mezzotints, screenprints, lithographs) and materials used in drawing (watercolor, pastels, chalk, graphite), with examples of each genre, many of which span the centuries. The explanations of these techniques are brief but so lucid I almost understand them. 

Among the works I'm  struck by: 

  • a highly detailed woodcut by a 16th century Italian, Domenico delle Greche, depicting a rather fantastic Church of the Holy Sepulcher,  filled with groups of people who appear to have congregated there to chat, not to pray 
  • woodcuts by Kathe Kollwitz and Leonard Baskin. I've known Baskin's name from the time I was a teenager (a Northampton landsman!) and encountered his illustrations in Richmond Lattimore's  translation of the Iliad, so it was great to see that the Met owns his work; 
  • an engraving by Hendrick Goltzius of a massively muscled, nude Hercules, who wears a very 16th- century Dutch walrus mustache  and wields a highly phallic club (I read later that Hercules represented the Dutch nation's struggle against Spain) 
  • a mezzotint  by Rubens showing an executioner grasping the head of Saint John the Baptist, all shrouded in darkness
  • two lithographs: one of a loon by an Inuit artist, Pitaloosie Saila, and a self-portrait by David Alfaro Siqueros (he looks very Jewish, with his strong nose and halo - not to say Jewfro - of curly hair) 
  • a set of screenprints made in 2015 by a contemporary American artist, Derrick Adams, consisting of images of four playing cards: an ace, king, queen, and jack. Each print is entitled "Game Changing..."  plus the name of the card- a highly appropriate play on words, because all four face card figures are Black.
Today's work is a drawing in pastel and charcoal, perhaps 18" high and 14" wide, entitled Violinist.  I'm impressed by the draftsmanship, with its combination of thick and thin lines, as well as by the sensitive use of color, especially of white pastel to highlight the musician's high forehead and to indicate the shape of his nose. As I looked at it, I thought, "I should be able to identify this artist. Where have I seen this restrained palette, this combination of dark outlines and sensitive modeling?" I thought "This looks like a Degas," and I was thrilled to discover that it is! The placard says that it's a study for Degas' painting The Dance Lesson,  so my identification of the artist may be based on having seen that painting, rather than on any particular connoisseurship.  Still, I also identified the Kollwitz work before looking at the signage. So I am learning something from all this!

I did look a bit at one of the three earlier special anniversary exhibits - prints and drawings of New York City - but I am now so sorry to have missed the other two shows. What other treasures do I miss as I walk determinedly to the gallery of the day?



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