T S Eliot, Ash Wednesday

Today is Ash Wednesday, and so a  good moment to find some time to read and think about Eliot's beautiful poem. As ever, the first thing is to read it for ourselves, trust it, and trust ourselves to respond to it without any initial external aid. Eliot believed that a poem could have multiple meanings; and we can give the rich images of 'Ash Wednesday' our own private meanings, letting its oblique narrative us take us on a personal journey.

Here is an audio of Eliot reading 'Ash Wednesday'.

After which, of course, listening to other readers and learning from them is a sane and sensible thing to do. From the mountain of academic commentaries (most of them unread by me)  here are a few that I have found helpful and stimulating.

T S Eliot's Ash Wednesday: Conversion and the Transcendent - short online commentary. I can't find an author's name.

Denis Donoghue, T S Eliot and the Poem Itself. Donoghue writes beautifully about Eliot (I recommend his book Words Alone) and this is a long and rewarding essay about and around 'Ash Wednesday', originally published in the Partisan Review.

Theodore Morrison, 'Ash Wednesday': A Religious History. Very clear article, from 1938. [JSTOR]

Two articles tracing parallels between Eliot and Dante:

Audrey T Rogers, T S Eliot's "Purgatorio": the Structure of "Ash Wednesday". Detailed commentary, linking it to the 'mythic structure' of Dante. There is no need to know the Dante to follow the article. [JSTOR]

Sister M Cleophas, Ash Wednesday: the Purgatorio in a Modern Mode [JSTOR]

Barcelona: Reading Suggestions

There are a fair few posts with the 'Barcelona' tag on this blog now, most with links and suggestions for reading. But a straight reading list on the city and its art might also be useful, so here it is - limited to English language publications, not counting guidebooks etc. which can be bought on site, and aimed at those whose interest is principally in art history.
Robert Hughes, Barcelona. A mighty tome which covers the city's history from its origins to the late nineteenth century. There's a huge amount of interest here. The early chapters might have been pruned a bit - lengthy quotations from Spanish Latin poets seems a little indulgent - but Hughes writes brilliantly about Romanesque and Gothic art. The later chapters, on the nineteenth century and Gaudí, are the sharpest.

Colm Toíbin, Homage to Barcelona. Picks up after Hughes leaves off, concentrating on the twentieth century and drawing on the author's experiences of living there. By no means just about art - there are great passages on food and out-of-town clubs under Franco - but there is a good deal on the visuals of the city too. Some lovely writing on Miró here. Toíbin is a distinguished critic and novelist, and the book is a masterclass in observational writing.

Bahamón and Losantos, Barcelona: Historical Atlas of Architecture. Beautifully produced book, which takes us through the history of the city, pointing out many buildings along the way, from the Roman walls to 2006. Sections on the different districts of BCN take us well beyond the usual tourist routes.

Manuel Gausa and others, BCN: Barcelona, a Guide to its Modern Architecture. Handbook to architecture between 1860 and 2002, with key facts on a huge number of buildings. These last two books show there is a lot more to Barcelona's architecture than Gaudí!

Marilyn McCully, ed., Homage to Barcelona: The City and its Art, 1888-1936. Exhibition catalogue for a Hayward Gallery exhibition of 1985. Covers the period where the city saw most expansion and development, and probably the richest profusion of artistic movements. Digestible chapters on many topics, well illustrated.  Out of print, but well worth tracking down.

William H Robinson and Jordi Falg, Barcelona and Modernity: Gaudí, Picasso, Miró, Dalí.  Another exhibition catalogue, big and beautiful, covering the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Online

Most of these links are given elsewhere in the blog, but I repeat them here for convenience.

The Culturcat site has detailed accounts of the major periods and movements in art in Catalonia.

Barcelona One and Only is an entry-level pdf guide to the main works in the city.

Routes of Gothic covers civil and ecclesiastical buildings in the Gothic style across Barcelona.

Modernism in Barcelona - another pdf guide, this time to the Modernist works of Gaudí and his contemporaries.

David Mackay, Modern Architecture in Barcelona (1854-1939). Monograph which goes well beyond the usual guidebook level.

See the Art Public link on the sidebar opposite for an invaluable source of information on public monuments.

Antoni Tàpies

The Catalan artist Antoni Tàpies (1923-2012) died on February 6th. He was one of the most important Spanish artists of the postwar (post 1936-39 Civil War, that is) period, bringing Arte Povera and other vanguard ideas into Spain throughout the insular years of the Franco dictatorship. This post is limited to some  links, including some of the longer English-language obituaries. The ABC radio programme is especially recommended.

Obituaries
Christopher Masters in The Guardian
Marcus Williamson in The Independent
Claudia Massie in The Spectator
William Grimes in The NY Times


Other
Article by Martin Gayford, 'From earth to eternity'
Article by Katherine Jentlesen in ArtInfo
Radio discussion on the Australian ABC Channel (30 minutes)
Biographical and other information on the Tàpies Foundation site.

Programme on radio series Documentos (50 minutes, Spanish).

Image from Tàpies Foundation.

Close Reading of Poetry

Close reading at its best is reading with a careful scrutiny of what Cleanth Brooks called the 'well-wrought urn' of the poem. It involves a quasi-religious attention to the text and the ways we respond to it. The close reader practises becoming attuned to the meanings and energies released by the content and form of each individual poem, and is rewarded, on a good day, with a feeling akin to exaltation: the flexion of these mental muscles releases us from our usual routines of processing language and reminds us of the full spectrum of thoughts and feelings of which we are capable, but which are usually smothered by a culture that promotes emotional and intellectual inarticulacy.  On a bad day, close reading is a dry-as-dust pseudo-scientific analysis of the formal aspects of a poem, paying no attention to what a text might be saying to us, or how we respond to it on a personal level. Reading, like writing, traverses a tightrope between richness on one side and redundancy on the other. Anyway, for those who wish - or find themselves obliged - to pay some close attention to poetry, here are a few recommendations. For browsing and selecting.

Reading
First and foremost, we have to read poetry until it feels like a normal thing to do. Classroom analysis can lead us to think that every poem has to be laboured over, line by line, which makes any anthology seem intimidating. Reading at a normal speaking rate is probably about right. We can 'let a poem go' even if we feel we haven't extracted every bit of its juice, and come back to it later if we wish (it's not going to go anywhere).

As a way of getting into poetry, and making the whole enterprise seem important on a personal level, the anthologies by Neil Astley of Bloodaxe Books, have had a phenomenal success. In order: Staying Alive, Being Alive and Being Human.

Then we have to learn to read historically, to understand what we can expect from a seventeenth-century religious meditation or an Augustan satire, and what we need to bring to that meeting. The fullest single-volume anthology of English poetry that I know is the Norton Anthology of Poetry, and the accompanying Teaching with the Norton Anthology of Poetry covers aspects from versification to genre and form. That's unfortunately out of print, but Furniss and Bath, Reading Poetry: an Introduction is not. Downsides to the Norton book: it's massive, expensive and the paper is very thin. None of which can be said against the excellent website, which is a whole course in itself.

For other anthologies, the thing is to browse around and find a couple that feel right.

Introductions to Poetry
There are many books introducing us to poetry and the skills of reading it. Here are a few personal recommendations.

James Fenton, An Introduction to English Poetry. Mostly on metre and other formal properties and their importance, which Fenton explains and illustrated very clearly.

Stephen Fry, The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within. Versification and form followed to arcane recesses, with lively guidance from a national treasure. Exercises for the apprentice craftsman.

John Lennard, The Poetry Handbook is an engaging book. Lennard covers the central features of poetic language and form, and has an unusual amount to say about punctuation, telling us along the way about printer's terms like 'leading' (the space between lines).

Barry Spurr, Studying Poetry is a dull title for a consistently interesting book. Unlike Fenton and Lennard, Spurr organises his book according to historical periods, with example readings and exercises.

Peck and Coyle, Practical Criticism, covers prose and drama as well as poetry. It is aimed squarely at students facing an exam, and offers a very helpful methodical approach to the discipline. I like their advice to look for any implicit tension in a text. Lindy Miller, Practical Criticism also concentrates on building up skills to tackle essays and exams. My own Mastering the Language of Literature takes a more linguistic approach to the topic: more on syntax than some other guides, less on verse forms.

There are many others out there. There's a post in the early days of this blog on Eagleton, How to Read a Poem. It's a valuable book, but I'm not sure it's an ideal introduction. I couldn't get much from Tom Paulin, The Secret Life of Poems, but others may see what I'm missing. The classic  books by I A Richards (Practical Criticism, 1929) and William Empson (Seven Types of Ambiguity, 1930) lie slightly outside the scope of this post, but preside over everything on it.

Examples of Readings
A little method goes a long way. Just as we can learn how to play a game from watching it, so there is much to be learned from reading good examples of poetry reading. I like Ruth Padel's two books, which take us through individual poems: 52 Ways of Looking at a Poem and The Poem and the Journey. Lionel Trilling, Prefaces to the Experience of Literature is a venerable older book.

Online
Some siftings from the net. There should be something here to stimulate all tastes.

Norton poetry website (as above)

For a basic intro, see the short guide by Nicholas Marsh on Palgrave Skills4Study site

Carol Rumens Poem of the Week is published on the Guardian website. Interesting choices, thoughtful readings  and a lively discussion thread.

Introduction to Practical Criticism by Cambridge English Faculty explains what Practical Criticism is and has a couple of lessons.

Tips on Practical Criticism, for Students of English, by J H Prynne. Produced for students at Caius College, Cambridge and posted online. Prynne is regarded by many as one of our leading poets. Once you get past the administrative stuff about the Tripos this is an extremely stimulating account of poetics and the reading experience.

Edward Hirsch, How to Read a Poem, published by the Poetry Foundation.

And a different How to Read a Poem on the American site Poets.org

Short Guide

Finally, an old handout which I wrote years ago, Close Reading of Poetry: An Introduction:

Edward Burra (1905-76)

The Edward Burra exhibition at Chichester's fine Pallant House Gallery is in its last week. It's a good place to view and think about this marvellously eccentric English artist. Burra was based in the nearby town of Ryde - he called it an "overblown gifte shoppe" - and spent his whole creative life trying to escape the deadening clutch of English gentility. Despite a lifetime of ill health, he travelled to Harlem and Marseilles, and painted sailors, prostitutes, lowlife and streetlife, with a manic glee in this teeming, vibrant subject matter. Burra absorbed the graphic language of Hogarth, Beckmann, Grosz and Dix but turned their acerbic vision of humanity into something much warmer: his chaotic letters are alive with excitement at the life he observed in the bars and dives he visited, and this affection comes through in the colour, the jazzy angles and attention to detail. He takes the tubular. His friend the American poet Conrad Aiken reckoned Burra to be the best observer of Harlem life, a tribute all the more impressive when you learn that Burra remembered everything he saw and painted it afterwards. He loved films, and we can see this in his staging of scenes, his use of close-up and long shot. Today he might have made animated movies, I think. His love of the theatrical is illustrated by his stage designs, seductive mixtures of realism and fantasy.

The Spanish Civil War and Second World War inspired some extraordinary visionary pieces, images of dancing skeletons, conquistadors mingling with tanks, a malevolent blue figure blitzing London. Goya is there, and Dalí, and Burra briefly exhibited with the English Surrealists. But he was always too idiosyncratic to belong to any group. Throughout the work there is a Dickensian transformation of humans into objects and the other way around, a living, often violent energy coursing through all phenomena. The later landscapes are neither rural idyll nor a mythic chamber. Burra's nature is a hard place, there to be worked, trees bending beneath the Sussex wind and stumpy clouds. Figures become transparent - he said to a friend that as you get older you see through people - and there is a concern, too, with man's violation of the natural world: one extraordinary late painting has a shrine over a tin mine, where intrusive man seems to be meeting some unpleasant fate, his noisy yellow robotic machines waiting outside. The video int he show shows Burra refusing to answer any questions about his art or influences: 'I can't remember' he says shiftily; he can;t see the point of questions or bringing an artist's personality into it. 'why not just look at the pictures?' One of his contemporaries says that his generation were more frivolous than the serious young of today, and never talked about art: it would have been regarded as vulgar and common to do so. But even to a common vulgarian like me, Burra's art is a constant wonder. He's up there with the great English visionaries like Blake and Palmer. Remarkably, the medium he used most often was watercolour, usually associated with delicate tonal nuance but here employed - often on a large scale, several sheets joined together - for visceral dramatic effect. Another act of defiance against prim English respectability perhaps.

Image from the Tate Gallery. This picture is on display in the Pallant House show. I particualrly liked this review by Andrew Graham-Dixon in the Telegraph.

Götterdämmerung (live from the Met)

The Winchester Screen’s Live from the Met series continued last night with Götterdämmerung, the fourth and last opera of the Ring cycle, in the production by the Canadian Robert Lepage. The gentleman who introduced it (‘We hope the next six hours will fly past’ was greeted with nervous laughter), told us the Met is committed to the Great Tradition while ‘propelling itself into the 21^st century’ (or words to that effect) with inventive state-of-the-art production values.  Both tradition and techno propulsion were certainly on display this evening. The costumes would have been snapped up by Spinal Tap: Lord of the Rings leather tunics, long heavy dresses and big pointy spears and swords, the twenty-first century’s idea of the nineteenth century’s idea of the medieval Teutonic  badlands. The staging (of the singers, that is) was similarly conventional: most scenes were essentially proscenium arch formations, and there was a restrained approach to physical action: some more physical interaction between characters might have brought out the psychological undercurrents a little more, for example the ambiguous relationship between Gunther and Gutrune.  As for the techno side, this is a Ring that will undoubtedly be remembered for the set, Carl Fillion’s remarkable ‘Machine’ made up of 24 aluminium planks that rotate around axles into a myriad of configurations suggesting mountains, halls and the Rhine. The Machine (as it has come to be known) also serves as a screen for Lionel Arnould’s video projections, which are sometimes abstract patterns, and sometimes photographically concrete images: in one of the strongest of these, when Gunther washes Siegfried’s blood from his hands, the whole Rhine is stained red. When Hagen hears the ravens, they flit across the video among the rushing waters. Wagner’s Gesamkunstwerk is here interpreted for the digital video age.

Does the set upstage the action? Yes, to an extent: the mesmerising metamorphoses of the machine have stuck in my mind more than any of the great set-pieces of the drama.  Like a sleeping dragon, it came to life between scenes in dazzling transitions and then slumbered during them, subliminally prompting us to do the same. It was beautiful to behold but sometimes pulled attention away from the music and text rather than towards them. And any gizmo is subject to the law of diminishing returns. I was slack-jawed with wonder for the first act, but over the next five flying hours, awe started to fade.  The final effects were unfortunate:  Brünnhilde rode into Siegfried’s pyre on a mechanised Loge (rather beautifully managed until then), who clearly runs along grooves and then stops; and the destruction of Valhalla was symbolised by giant statues whose heads exploded in the heat, which is not a dignified twilight however suspended your disbelief. It was an expensive price tag for the moments which worked so well, like Siegfried stepping from the Rhine onto Gunther’s land. And with all the excitement of the marvellous mechanics, the messages about Power, Greed, Corruption, Love and Freedom - I take it that's what the work is about - could be missed.

I don't know enough to appraise the singing, or the orchestra. It all seemed suitably turbo-charged to my novice ears.  I can opine with a little mrer confidence that the acting was terrific. Live transmission lets you see the singers’ faces better than just about anyone with their four-hundred dollar tickets can, and there was much fine characterisation to enjoy. Jay Hunter Morris’s Siegfried was boyish and vulnerable (his shy little wave to the Rhinemaidens was a gem of a moment); Gunther (Iain Paterson) came over as the little man (he reminds me of the character in the movie Fargo, a nobody who hires two thugs to carry out his selfish plan); and Gutrune came over in Wendy Bryn Harmer’s performance as a lost soul, trying to make her attachment to Siegfried into something real. Deborah Voigt as Brünnhilde seemed to me to gain in strength at the end, raging against the dying of the light, and then finding the apotheosis of love in death. Hans-Peter Konig’s Hagen seemed more amoral than malevolent, arranging the extraordinary rendition of Brünnhilde with a bureaucrat’s eye for detail. In pure singing terms, the show-stealer for me was Waltraud Meier who played Waltraute (what are the chances ...): her plea to Brünnhilde to return the ring, and her account of Valhalla, was superbly emotive and dramatic, and this scene between the two women was the one in which conflicting feelings came over most strongly. The men’s chorus, left with nothing to do for great stretches of time, occupied themselves in the modern Method fashion with meaningful looks and nods. And their singing, as we expect from the Met, was gloriously full-bodied.

Live from the Met is a great idea, particularly for those of us within a short walk from a participating cinema. In many ways it beats the real thing: no trains, no hikes across town and a seat three miles from the stage. So, looking forward to Verdi’s Ernani next, more Great Tradition with whatever propelling tricks the director and computer team have in store.

Matisse: Drawing with Scissors

Winchester Discovery Centre is currently showing the touring South Bank exhibition, Henri Matisse: Drawing with Scissors, Late Works 1950-54. It comprises 35 lithographs of the large-scale cutouts Matisse made in the last years of his life. The technique of cutting coloured paper with scissors was an answer to the limitations imposed by physical incapacity, but also a perfect means for Matisse to express his ongoing artistic vision as it reached its final stage. With scissors, he could create coloured forms without a preliminary stage of drawing, and this immediacy helped him to release a whole world of joyous, musical life. Dancers, nudes, animals and plants are reduced to their essential forms,  on the threshold between figuration and abstraction. Often they are set against blocks of clashing vibrant colours, overlapping in syncopated rhythms. Sometimes fruit and swaying plants floats over empty space. A series of blue nudes, showing the same figure in slightly altered positions, is a lesson in perceiving feeling shimmering through shifting form.

The atmosphere is one of vitality or serenity: the images are too deeply contemplated to be wild and disordered, and one feels a sense of passionate life lived within the frame, within a proper harmonic pattern. It is festive art but not anarchic, decorative but dramatic, never insipid. The accompanying music by Satie, with simple lines hinting at an ancient, timeless origin, seemed perfect. Within the joyous and dreamy world of these images one sometimes senses a darker note: the mysterious black in Zulma, or the sorrowful king and phantasmal figure in Tristesse du Roi (pictured). So the show is many things. A final and glorious leave-taking. A parting masterclass in exactness: Matisse was very precise over the exact colours his assistants were to prepare, and his sense of form here is the result of a lifetime of clarifying discipline. It is an escape from the confinements of the world and the wheelchair into the boundless world of imagination and grace, a voyage from the modern world to its ancient, mythical roots, a return from the end of life to its beginning, to find the child's eye still lively and intact. The best way to enjoy the cutouts is no doubt to do them yourself, and Sophie Higgs's Education pack has some hints on this, as well as all the essentials on Matisse. We're fortunate to have such a high-class exhibition close at hand. It's a perfect Mediterranean antidote to the February chill.

Romeo and Juliet (Headlong Theatre)

Romeo and Juliet is irresistibly relevant (the ultimate accolade de nos jours): warring families, rebellion, youthful energy expressing itself in violence and passion, bewilderment between the generations, and, like a flower in the desert, the possibility of true love and redemption. All of this is common ground shared by the sixteenth century and our world today. Some aspects of the play even seem shockingly modern: what is Mercutio but a contemporary hyper ADHD kid? Isn't Tybalt a streetwise, feral psychopath ruling the Estate? Arranged marriages and honour killings are still going on, and lovers on the rebound still gatecrash parties and meet someone else the same evening. No wonder that from West Side Story to Romeo + Juliet to the present touring production by Headlong Theatre the play has been presented in contemporary terms.

There are, of course, elements of the play that are remote to us, and which we need to accommodate imaginatively if we are to enjoy a modernising production: not many of us live in a city state under the absolute power of a prince; few teenage lovers would rush off to the Friar, or marry in his cell; not many teenage girls have nurses, and family wars don't, as far as I know, generally lead to the construction of kitsch golden monuments to their victims.  And so the play comes close to us, and then, in an instant, backs off and reminds us it's from somewhere else altogether.

Headlong Theatre's production, directed by Robert Icke, brings out the perennial relevance of the play without trying to hide the strictly Renaissance aspects under a blanket of gimmicks and concepts. We started without the sonnet prologue (a mistake, I think, traditionalist that I am), and went straight into the action with a ticking digital clock. The story was played out with a stress on the compressed action, a narrative energy we recognise from shows like 24 and The Killing. One brilliant idea was to have double takes  (Sliding Doors, Run Lola Run and a staple of video games) of some scenes as alternative scenarios were played out: tiny alterations to events mean the two lovers don't meet at the party, or the Nurse never gets to deliver Juliet's message, or Romeo in Mantua learns of Juliet's plan in time. It brought home the hugely contingent nature of the tragedy, which depends on so many near hits and near misses. A dull brick wall closing off a space on which about the only furniture was the bed (sliding on and off) was enough to suggest the oppressive enclosure in which the young generation are struggling to make something of their lives. The besuited Prince behind a microphone was enough to place it in the modern world of rolling news.

There was a great deal more inventive theatre to admire, some of it refreshingly simple. It was good to see the fights, which are massive choreographed events in the films by Zeffirelli and Luhrmann,  played out as tawdry scuffles (and an opening double take suggested that it was one tiny accident that set the whole train of events in motion). Mercutio (played by Tom Mothersdale) was convincingly brilliant and troubled, the ace student who's still expelled from a new school every year. In the last fifteen minutes or so before the interval acting and directorial ideas came together to create a huge emotional impact: scenes between the Friar and Romeo and the Nurse and Juliet were intercut, played out at the same time on the same space, while a traumatised Benvolio (Danny Kirrane) described the deaths of first Mercutio and then Tybalt from a screen-shaped balcony area. This really brought over the sense of everything happening at once, and the musical accompaniment of Tori Amos singing 'I Don't Like Mondays' expressed the sense of melancholy and alienation beneath the action. It was a triumphant feat of stagecraft, taking us right into the emotional vortex of the play. I also loved the hallucinatory sequence using film as Juliet's potion goes through her system (though I was sorry to lose my favourite line, Capulet's 'Death lies on her ...'). And there was wonderfully simple idea for staging Romeo buying his poison from an apothecary (musical background, and the weirdly blank look of the dealer were typical of the sense of detail in the production).

So there were lots of clever theatrical ideas, but it wasn't over-directed. There was room for the acting to engage us. The star-crossed lovers, played by Daniel Boyd and Catrin Stewart, were gauche teenagers, hardly comprehending or even believing the emotions going through them. I liked Romeo's nervy, trying-to-keep-his-cool body language. Juliet took us through her emotional journey, largely imprisoned on the bed which was her own private theatre of love and death (and full marks to her and to Brigid Zengari's Nurse for perfect diction; some other moments in the evening were a notch too quiet, given the competition of some noisy lighting fans). The production was at its strongest in bringing out the Capulet family drama: I'd never really noticed before the significance of Juliet being the only surviving child, on whom the dreams of the dynasty are pinned. That helped to explain Capulet's furious treatment of her when she goes against his wishes. The idea of Lady Capulet and Tybalt having a fling at the party had a fantastic pay-off later, as we saw Lady C after Tybalt's death crumbling away as she contemplated the expiry of her own chances of happiness. The Capulet parents (Keith Bartlett and Caroline Faber) had a great depth and presence, and the mother-daughter scenes were touchingly played, close yet awkward. Because of this focus on Juliet's family drama the Montague-Capulet feuding had less weight. When Montague appeared at the end, I realised I'd almost forgotten there was an inter-family feud. And the Prince was left with his lines but not integrated into the story in other ways (eg by appearing on the streets, but that is a problem in the script). So private ensemble tragedy came over more powerfully than the public and political. But now that large-scale movies have stressed the political side (LA gangs, immigrants etc) it is surely right for stage productions to remind us that the play is predominantly a small-scale chamber drama.

The production engaged us constantly with inventiveness and detail, while allowing Shakespeare's verse to breathe. Imaginative staging helped to bring out the inner drama of the characters' feelings. But what feelings are they, exactly? Language and love constantly evade each other, as sincerity collapses into cliché. In whatever guise it is presented, Shakespeare's  great tragic love story (though he did not make up the story) casts a shadow. For there is, inescapably, the possibility that this love is just another infatuation of Romeo's, Juliet conveniently taking the place of Rosaline as the latest dreamgirl. A double suicide caused by an infatuation and a series of accidents? That tragedy would be too dark altogether. So we hold onto the notion of mutual adoration that the lyrical poetry offers us, believing that, to be the cause of so much suffering, the passion of the couple must also be real. And perhaps it is believing it that makes it true.

To end with the production, though.  Headlong were in association with Nottingham Playhouse and Hull Truck. They are an exciting company, and the young trio of Daniel Boyd / Catrin Stewart and Robert Icke are names to watch. Great to see such a good Romeo and Juliet just down the road in Southampton's Nuffield Theatre. There's a nice review of it by Lyn Gardner in The Guardian, too. Strongly recommended.

Donatello (1386-1466): Selected Works

This post offers an overview of the life and works of the great fifteenth-century Florentine sculptor Donatello. It covers only a selection of Donatello's works. Most of what follows below consists of notes on a film written by the art historian Charles Avery: Donatello: The First Modern Sculptor (1986). I've added a few  links, mainly to specialised articles on JSTOR. Avery's excellent book Florentine Renaissance Sculpture is a wonderful guide to Donatello, Ghiberti, Lucca della Robbia et al. It is listed as out of print, but there always seem to be copies in the V&A bookshop, if you happen to be in that direction.

Introduction

• Donatello was a hugely versatile artist, who mastered a variety of techniques
• His theme was ‘human life itself’
• His expressive art inspired later sculptors including Michelangelo, Raphael, and Rodin
• Donatello’s art gives form to the Renaissance interest in human character and the individual
• It also realises the expressive value of ancient forms, preserved in Greek and Roman statues. [On Donatello and the antique, see Osvald Sirén, The Importance of the Antique to Donatello,  American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 18, No. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 1914), pp. 438-461]

Early Life

Sources: Anecdotes in Vasari’s life; legal documents in archives. No first-hand sources, such as diaries or letters.

Background: rough, working-class. Father a wool-carder, involved in Ciompi revolt, exiled for murder.

No record of Donatello marrying: did he devote himself as a celibate to art (as some humanists did)? Or was he more interested in boys? In either case, his art can be understood as a pursuit of the Platonic ideal of self-governance, in which spiritual harmony is attained by harnessing the forces of Reason and Passion.

As a teenager, Donatello was apprenticed to a guild. Guilds shared responsibility for maintaining religious buildings: for example, the Wool Merchants looked after the Cathedral and Campanile, while the Cloth Finishers were responsible for the Baptistery.  This prompted fierce competition between the guilds.

Works

1401    Baptistery Doors competition. Donatello is said to have submitted a design. He was then one of Ghiberti’s assistants for 3 years, during which he absorbed G’s largely gothic vision, adapted to classical proportions.

Can D’s hand be traced in the vigorous modelling of Adam and Eve and other figures in some hexagonal panels?

1406    D now working on Cathedral commissions. He had a hand in these marble prophets on the Porta della Mandorla, with Nanni di Banco:

1409    St. John the Evangelist (below left) for Cathedral façade. This commanding figure shows great advance in technique and vision. (Images from Web Gallery of Art (wga)): One issue in this work is the viewing angle: sculptures designed to be placed high up on buildings had to be seen from ground level at an acute angle, and the proportions of the body were consequently altered. [See: Roger Tarr,  Brunelleschi and Donatello: Placement and Meaning in Sculpture, Artibus et Historiae, Vol. 16, No. 32 (1995), pp. 101-140] 1409 David in marble (above right) commissioned for the Palazzo de Priori (town hall). Originally it was painted. Its “swaying elegance and sinuous gothic line” echoes Ghiberti. David, with his “graceful, nonchalant pose”, is not in a conventional heroic stance. The influence of ancient art is visible in Goliath’s head, which looks like that of an ancient Roman god.

 

c.1413 St Louis of Toulouse, commissioned by Guelph party. This is a gilded cast bronze. It had to be refired after casting. The drapery was built up in separate sections, and is used for expressive effect. c. 1416 St George, commissioned by the Guild of Armourers for Orsanmichele. The “calm purpose” and “concentrated simplicity” express youthful devotion, idealism and courage. This piece shows the revelation of ancient sculpture – the sense of life in the stone. The sculpted body becomes the figure in action, convincing and dramatic. It is a style of sculpture which mirrors life itself. See also St Mark (c.1411) also for the Orsanmichele. [See discussion of St Mark on SmartHistory.]

Underneath St George we find the St George relief (1416-17). This is the first dated Renaissance example of figures being placed in a realistic setting of landscape and architecture. It anticipates the use of perspective by Brunelleschi and Masaccio. The technique of shallow carving was also an innovation. (The St George stature and relief are now in the Bargello Museum, Florence).

The later 1420s saw Donatello working on the statues for the Campanile, the great belltower next tot he Cathedral. For this he made lifesize statues of Old Testament prophets. These works show a revolutionary realism. Habbakuk (1427-36) took an obsessive eight years to carve, and Vasari records an anecdote of Donatello telling it to speak.

c.1427 Relief of The Assumption of the Virgin. This work continues the innovation we have already seen int he St George relief, where a sense of space is created through light carving, so-called shallow relief. Usually a sculptor cuts down through the marble. But Donatello reduced his implements to three tools, using the corner of a flat chisel to draw in the marble, with a point chisel to create background. There is a free, flexible level of depth. This is the technique known as schiacciato (which literally means 'squashed').

1427-29           Donatello made several works for the nearby town of Siena. This is his gilded bronze relief, Feast of Herod, for the Siena font. Notice how the perspective is used to evoke the drama, drawing us to the head of Herod. Donatello conveys the brutality of the act, and the shock of outrage of the onlookers. Salome is a sinister figure. She looks rather like a classical bacchante. This relief also compartmentalises different scenes. Possibly this was inspired by Trajan’s column. Donatello was studying and collecting ancient sculpture at this time. Avery compares this work favourably with another treatment by Donatello of the same subject: the marble Herod’s Feast (c.1439), once in the collection of Lorenzo the Magnificent (now in the Musée des Beaux Arts, Lille). Here the space overwhelms the figures, making the actors “subservient to their setting”.

1427-29 Donatello also made for the Siena font, two bronze figures of  the virtues Faith and Hope. These  present "sculptural rhythms in drapery". The lyrical style contrasts with the dramatic treatment of the Herod panel:

1434 saw Cosimo de Medici's return from exile to Florence. Cosimo offered Donatello lodgings, a workshop and sumptuous clothing (in which the artist had very little interest, it would seem).

1428-43 Roundels for the Old Sacristy, San Lorenzo, Florence (building by Brunelleschi), showing scenes from the life of John the Baptist. Note the deft handling of perspective, the depiction of architecture and the sense of the theatrical in the depiction of the characters. There are also four roundels of the Evangelists. Are these pieces in harmony with their setting? Donatello’s highly coloured decorations contrast and perhaps conflict with Brunelleschi’s light grey and white architecture.

The roundels were made straight from the scaffolding. The plaster was applied in layers and immediately worked. Donatello drives across the composition with diagonal lines, and crops figures to suggest a depth beyond the frame. Relief is a very difficult technique. Figures must look as if they are in the round, in perspective, not flattened. Donatello’s backgrounds are lightly modelled, but still convey an effect of deep space. This relief shows St John on Patmos:

1439    Cantoria   In 1431, Luca della Robbia had been commissioned to produce a Cantoria (singers’ gallery) for the Florence Duomo. Possibly his design was influenced by the outdoor pulpit at Prato which Donatello and Michelozzo had made, in fits and starts, between 1428 and 1438. Donatello’s Cantoria (pictured) depicts a wild, bacchic dance, in a continuous scene behind the columns, with a studded mosaic background. There is a comparison of the two cantorie on this art travel site.

 

1430s Atys. The putti of the Cantoria are similar in spirit to the sculpture of a boy known as the Atys. It has a pagan feel, but no one knows who or what the boy symbolises.

c.1435 Annunciation, in gilded grey Tuscan sandstone (pietra serena), for the Cavalcanti Chapel, Sta Croce, Florence. Lifesize figures. The scene is like a stage. Figures are in three-quarter relief in a shallow space. The Virgin looks startled and shy. While the gestures and movements are human, the faces are idealised, like the classical Three Graces. This is different from many other Donatello works already discussed.

1443    Donatello has to abandon his studio, as Cosimo is acquiring and demolishing properties to make way for his palazzo. Donatello goes to Padua, at this time an important place of learning, and governed by Venice. For the next ten years, he works for the basilica of St Anthony.

Padua

1445-53           Gattamelata,  ‘spotted cat’. This was modelled on the bronze horses of St Mark’s, Venice. One problem which equestrian statues have to address is that a lot of weight is placed on the horse’s relatively thin legs. [See: Mary Bergstein, Donatello's"Gattamelata" and Its Humanist Audience, Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 55, No. 3 (Autumn, 2002), pp. 833-868]

 

1449    Crucifix. Notice the strikingly realistic anatomy. With this work, Donatello brings the Renaissance to northern Italy.

 

1446                Commissioned to create sculptures for the high altar, the Altare del Santo: 6 saints, a central Virgin and Child. Donatello supervised all 29 pieces in four years. 16 were entirely by him. Note the frantic grief of the three Maries in the Entombment.

1450                The sculptures were installed. The original high altar was later demolished. It is not known for certain whether the present, reconstructed order of the statues is accurate. The Virgin and Child sculpture uses a device from Byzantine art, in which Christ is represented as if in the womb of the Virgin. 1448, Madonna and Child between St Francis and St Anthony, bronze:

 

The Heart of the Miser (1446-1450). In a number of bronze reliefs, Donatello depicts scenes from the life of St Anthony. The spaces in these are very varied, and the detailed and dramatic action, with skillful stage management of groups, suggests the influence of mystery plays. Notice the fantastic architecture in the Miracle of the Miser’s Heart. In the film, Henry Moore praises Donatello’s “inventive literary mind”. These reliefs would have started as preparatory drawings (only one survives), followed by a sketch modelling in wax and a cast in terracotta. There are a few surviving examples of these in Padua. (Image from Victoria and Albert Museum).

After his work in Padua, Donatello returned to Florence. His works – or those of his workshop - on return include the Roundels in the Medici Palace, for example the Triumph of Eros.

Two other works located in the Palace were the earlier bronze David (c.1430), and Judith and Holofernes (1455-60). [For a detailed study of their political significance, see Sarah Blake McHam,  Donatello's Bronze "David" and "Judith" as Metaphors of Medici Rule in Florence, The Art Bulletin, Vol. 83, No. 1 (Mar., 2001), pp. 32-47] 

 

We should remember that David is a poetic allegory: Goliath represents the death of what is base at the hands of what is beautiful. This work is the first freestanding nude since antiquity (apart from Donatello’s own Crucifix in Padua). The work relates to the symbols of Platonic perfection – Love, Beauty and Virtue. [See Laurie Schneider, Donatello's Bronze David, The Art Bulletin, Vol. 55, No. 2 (Jun., 1973), pp. 213-216; and a discussion on SmartHistory site.] . Judith and Holofernes (1455-60) was originally for the palace garden. Like David, it presents the triumph of beauty over vice. The original inscription helps the viewer to understand this: ‘Behold the neck of pride severed by the hand of humility’. The cushion is in the shape of a wineskin, an emblem of oriental luxury and drunkenness. The putti on the pedestal are also drunk. This is a powerful, monumental work, in part at least because it is a powerful idea: god must triumph over wrong.

The Chellini Madonna (before 1456) is a bronze roundel of the Virgin and Child mentioned as a gift by Donatello’s doctor (Giovanni Chellini Samminiati). This is hollowed on the reverse side, for casting molten glass. (Image from V&A, and see their extensive page, linked above).

c.1457             St Mary Magdalen  This shocking image has a “stark, terrible reality”. Donatello carved into a tree trunk, then added pliable materials to model the surface. Note blue eyes, golden hair, and a bone structure recalling former beauty. But it is not a despairing image: the soul has become ennobled, triumphing over the flesh. [See:  Martha Levine Dunkelman, Donatello's Mary Magdalen: A Model of Courage and Survival, Woman's Art Journal, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Autumn, 2005 - Winter, 2006), pp. 10-13]

 

1457    St John the Baptist, Siena Cathedral. The right forearm was added later. This continues the realist style of Judith and Mary. 

 

The Lamentation for the Dead Christ (c.1456), for the Siena bronze doors scheme shows a hard-hitting realism. Could it be a critique of the sweeter style of Ghiberti?

 

1460s   Bronze pulpits for San Lorenzo. It is thought that these works could be designs for the reliefs for the abortive Siena Cathedral doors scheme. They show that even in old age Donatello was unorthodox, passionate and personal. Notice the relentless diagonal in the Martyrdom of San Lorenzo (below), the feeling for deep space. However, the buttresses at the corner of one relief are clumsy (the work of an assistant?). The composition of the panels may not be as originally intended. [See: Irving Lavin, The Sources of Donatello's Pulpits in San Lorenzo: Revival and Freedom of Choice in the Early Renaissance, The Art Bulletin, Vol. 41, No. 1 (Mar., 1959), pp. 19-38]

 

1466 Donatello dies, and is honoured with burial at San Lorenzo, near the tomb of Cosimo, who had died in 1464.  

For more online tours of Donatello, see:

• A J Tudury's excellent Flickr page
• Web Gallery of Art
• Britannica Online entry
• Charles Avery's biography in Grove Art [subscriber site]
• Heilbrunn Timeline
• Review article (of V&A new galleries, 2009) by Jonathan Jones

John Mills, Guitar Recital

One of the more sensible decisions I've made over the last couple of years was taking up the classical guitar again after a gap of nearly twenty years (I've found out since that this experience isn't that uncommon). And another has been to join the Southampton Classical Guitar Society (SCGS). This society promotes the classical guitar in various ways, and for its members provides sessions of ensemble playing, and the opportunity to perform to a sympathetic audience (both absolutely vital for musical development). The SCGS also arranges recitals by distinguished players, usually in the charming space and warm acoustic of The Point, Eastleigh. In recent months we've had the pleasure and privilege of hearing, among others, Berta Rojas, the Montes-Kircher Duo, Marcin Dylla and Craig Ogden. If you're outside the six-string fraternity that's something like having piano recitals by Daniel Barenboim, Stephen Hough and Angela Hewitt on your doorstep. These are some of the contemporary masters of their art.

On Saturday (a memorably sloshy, sleety night) we had a recital from John Mills. This eminent figure in the guitar world is Life President of the SCGS, and the concert was the first of a series to mark the 40th anniversary of the Society. It brought back memories for me. The first guitar recital I ever heard was by Andrés Segovia, in what must have been one of his last performances (as Segovia ended, so Hebron began). Then I remember a concert by flamenco maestro Juan Martín. Then - I must have been about fifteen - I took a train to hear a recital at the Purcell Room by John Mills (I think my teacher had recommended it). It was probably my first inkling that there were great players out there who weren't called Julian Bream or John Williams. I can't remember what Mills played on that evening. But I do remember that, like yesterday, he had the music on a stand without appearing to look at it once. And I remember him saying 'cardboard has its uses' as he spread some vast score out on an improvised extension.

Mills studied with Segovia, Bream and Williams and over an illustrious career has taken and developed that precious heritage of technical mastery and musical imagination to various corners of the earth (New Zealand, England, Wales) in a series of professorships. Saturday's recital had something of a Segovia flavour to it, with pieces by composers closely associated with that artist, such as Tansman, Torroba, and Ponce. Mills also introduced pieces by Sor and Haydn by telling us they had formed part of Segovia's repertoire. With nothing pre-classical and nothing contemporary, the programme was very much a celebration of the core classical and Hispanic repertory for the instrument.

I find it difficult to 'review' these recitals. How do you review superb technique, beautiful sound, depth of feeling and a huge palette of musical colour? Yet each artist at this level is distinct and listening to them over time you get to recognise their particular sound. One thought that came to my mind listening to Mills was the Latin expression 'Ars celare artum est' - Art is to conceal art. This means, I suppose, that at a certain level of mastery it's hard to see what was difficult about it in the first place. Whatever struggles were involved in the making, they are invisible at the moment of delivery. That was obviously the case here, but also I felt that the expression came to mind because Mills's performance was devoted entirely to letting the music speak for itself. There are some wonderful players who delight us with imaginative, sometimes idiosyncratic touches: some of Yepes' phrasing, Bream's highly dramatic colour changes are instantly recognisable. In Mills's playing I felt a beautiful submission to the score: tempi, tone, dynamics - everything was there to bring out the story each piece told in its full depth. In acting and music, some performers project themselves and others draw us in. Mills drew me in, and then got out of the way, as it were, to let me hear the music properly. Well, that was my personal impression.

There are fuller details of the pieces here, so I'll stick to brief impressions. The recital began with selections from a suite by the Polish composer Alexandre Tansman (1897-1986 - what extraordinary events he must have witnessed). Deeply melodic music, based on Polish folk melodies, as the programme notes told us; but also, it seemed to me, echoing baroque suites too. The contrapuntal lines, bass playing against treble, came over with immaculate clarity. Torroba's Romance de los Pinos and Nocturno brought out different, richly Spanish sounds from Mills's Paul Fischer guitar. Torroba was followed by the earliest pieces in the programme, Sor's gorgeous Andante Largo (from Op.5), played at a stately but not funereal tempo, followed by a transcription of a Haydn minuet. It's very easy for this First Viennese School material to sound dull, as we go round and round the familiar chord sequences. What it demands from the player is an equivalent Viennese charm and elegance, and heaps of musical invention: it was a masterclass in itself to see Mills's right hand constantly varying the attack and tonal quality phrase by phrase. Venezuelan composer Antonio  Lauro's Variations on a Children's Song was a delightful set (though this was my one passing doubt about  the programming: Lauro is in very classical mode here, and after Sor and Haydn was that a little too much in this idiom in one helping?).  Mills has an absolutely winning way with endings, looking up with a smile as he brushes off the last chord or pizzicato note. He brushed off the first half with two standards from the Spanish piano composers, Albéniz (Capricho Catalan) and Granados (Danza Espanola), music that transcribes miraculously to the guitar.

Part Two began with more transcription, Debussy's La Fille aux Cheveux de Lin. Debussy is one of my favourite composers for the piano, and I wondered how those floating sustained harmonies would work on the guitar. But the tone qualities of the instrument - in these hands - took this familiar material to new, perhaps quieter and more inward places.  Roussel's Segovia completed the French set (and continued the Segovia strand), and then we had Eduardo Sainz de la Maza's suite Platero y Yo, inspired by the sequence of prose poems of that title by Juan Ramón Jiménez. This suite was quite new to me (I knew of Castelnuovo-Tedesco's substantial set of 28 pieces, but not this one) and was my highlight of the evening. It started with the kind of lovely cross-string dissonances we all like to play around with in our improvisational moments, and covered moods from La Azotea (a view from a balcony) to walking (Paseo) to the deeply lyrical La Muerte and a warm-hearted salute to the donkey Platero en su Tierra (in his homeland). The final piece in the programme was Ponce's Sonata Mexicana, full of Latin American life, rhythm and passion. A beautiful encore piece defeated me entirely, but I hope to learn what it was shortly. Intriguingly, this was the only recital I have heard in this space using amplification. Sitting in the front row, I couldn't really notice it - perhaps it filled the sound out a little? - but it would be interesting to know why the decision was made.

I'm certainly glad I made the decision to take the Skoda out to do battle with the abysmal weather that evening. And a decent-sized audience was testimony to the large number of music lovers who weren't going to be deterred by the big freeze either. But SCGS Chairman Wayne Lines tells me that our attendance record as a society leaves room for improvement. It's all rather baffling. Consider the effort football fans make to see their heroes, and imagine what would happen if they had the opportunity to see Messi and Drogba for a tenner! That is the luxurious position we guitarists are in, in this part of the country (we're also served by the Winchester Guitar Festival, and a short car journey from the West Dean Guitar Festival, which is run, incidentally, by John Mills). So why would we not go and see a top-class recital like this one? My own record is not 100%, so I cannot get into the pulpit on this one, but here, after due reflection, are Hebron's reasons for forking out and turning up to live performance.

1. To hear the music. Digital music is compressed, MP3 files drastically so (coincidentally, a day or so earlier, I heard a sound engineer on the radio say about 90% of the range of sound is lost in a download), and all recordings (including live ones) are edited, altered and generally fiddled about with. The only way of hearing the full range of sounds a classical guitar can produce is to listen to a good player with a good instrument in a concert hall.
2. To see the performer. If you play the instrument yourself, a concert is a masterclass in things like posture (admittedly, there are some concert artists with decidedly quirky ones), hand position, and the art of keeping in touch with your audience. It's also much easier to follow things like changes in volume and colour if you can actually watch the performer's hands. Before recorded sound, all music was a visual as well as an aural experience, and a social one too. These are dimensions that only a concert can offer. If you don't play the instrument, the magic of seeing it all happen in front of your eyes is if anything even more magical.
3. To learn about music. Every recital I have been to has taught me more about the repertoire and musical styles. And, of course, how to set about playing them. All the things listed above  - posture, dynamics - we can immediately bring to our (in my case, at least) simpler repertoire. I read somewhere that a good aim for an amateur player is to play a simple piece as beautifully as a master would play it, and that seems a reasonable goal. Even if you ditch the pieces that require years in a conservatoire, there is still a huge amount of great music left.
4. To be inspired. Some people say hearing blindingly good players makes them feel rather worthless. Oddly, I've never felt that way. (Has anyone been put off playing football themselves by watching the Premiership?)  I remember watching Bream's Guitarra series when it was first on TV and playing the guitar afterwards - a little better than usual, I think, since some of that passion and concentration surely gets into you. I was fascinated to hear Mills say he heard Segovia play 33 or 34 times! It reminded me of an interview with Bream where he said the first time he saw Segovia, as a boy, he spent the entire concert watching the maestro's right hand through opera glasses. Well, if watching and learning is as important as this to players of the highest calibre, it suggests to me that it wouldn't do the rest of us any harm to do the same.
5. To support the instrument. The classical guitar flourishes as a concert instrument only for as long as people actually go to the concerts. It's a moot point, I believe, whether sounds exist without anyone to hear them, but recitals certainly don't. Anyone who attends a concert has done something important in support of the instrument and its future. When performers thank us for coming, they really mean it.

On which rather righteous note, I remind myself again that I haven't managed to get to everything myself, and end by looking forward to the next one: Modern Guitar Trio, Sat 19th May. Without sleet, I trust.