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The best portraits look as if the subject could step right out of the frame and walk among us, maybe even sign an autograph or two. Recently, something like that happened in the austere galleries of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Two nembers of an improvisational comedy group stood in front of Diego Velázquez’s 1623 portrait of King Philip IV of Spain—one claiming to be the king himself (shown above) and the other announcing the king’s presence and willingness to sign autographs for the crowd. Fun, irreverent, oddly respectful, and ultimately harmless, this escapade (or “mission,” as the improvs call it) shows that museums can be places of humor and liveliness and not dread catacombs of culture. Can this king-sized prank and the positive press it’s brought prove to museums that it’s OK to be fun? Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "King-Sized Prank."
[Many thanks to Roy for passing on this story to me.]
In 1886, shortly after his dismissal as director of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in a cloud of scandal, Thomas Eakins changed the title of his 1880 painting Crucifixion (shown above) to Ecce Homo, “Behold the Man,” the words Pilate used to announce Christ to the public that would call for his execution. In the eyes of Akela Reason in her Thomas Eakins and the Uses of History, the change represents how Eakins viewed and used history to his own ends. “Eakins’s new title not only reinforced the corporeal presence of the subject but also pointedly alluded to the injustice of Christ’s execution at the hands of an unruly mob,” Reason writes, “a situation that he may have believed, perhaps even unconsciously, paralleled his own.” According to Reason, Eakins used history to his own ends, stretching and altering it to support his view of the study of the human form as the centerpiece of all art—a humanism that touched not only upon religion, but also upon who would rise to the pantheon of art history, a goal Eakins never gave up even at his lowest moments. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Behold the Man."
[Many thanks to the University of Pennsylvania Press for providing me with a review copy of Akela Reason’s Thomas Eakins and the Uses of History.]
“I tend to think of the exhibitions I do as a loose accumulation of paintings with no single theme—like a variety show,” artist Glenn Brown said in 2007. “A comedy act, a magician, dancing girls, a ventriloquist, and of course a good impressionist make, I think, a reasonable show.” Glenn Brown: Three Exhibitions, a survey of shows from 2004, 2007, and 2009 published by Rizzoli and the Gagosian Gallery, gives you a front row seat at the variety show that is Brown’s art. The cast of characters comes from the collected imagery of art history’s past. But rather than a mere revival show, Brown’s revue is something new. “Brown has likened himself to Dr. Frankenstein,” Rochelle Steiner writes in her essay, “creatively piecing together sections of figures, backgrounds, colour palettes, shadows, and compositions, among other elements—but his approach goes far beyond that of cutting and pasting to create works of art that are without doubt his own.” It’s alive, you’ll scream, as you see the good doctor slice and dice past masters into a modern mastery of his own. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Variety Show."
[Many thanks to Rizzoli and for providing me with a review copy of Glenn Brown: Three Exhibitions and to Gagosian Gallery for providing me with the cover image above.]
