Week 2: The Sacred Made Real/The National Gallery

Hello faithful readers and happy Monday (!?)

Welcome back to Eliza’s One a Week; the Cultural Exploration of Eliza – Week 2. Firstly please can I reiterate that no research or art historical knowledge goes into these entries– for example I’m now pretty sure that the exhibition I went to last week was just 18th and 19th century paintings and not 17th, 18th and 19th centuries as I stated at the time – oops! Luckily seems like none of you noticed - JOKES ON YOU SUCKERS!

For week 2 of the Cultural Exploration of Eliza I decided to visit the current, and soon to be ending National Gallery show ‘The Sacred Made Real: Spanish Painting and Sculpture 1600 – 1700’. Now, before I go further please let me explain that my knowledge of this period is a big black hole. I believe it was covered in term 2 of the survey lectures in first year Courtauld and for any of you who knew me during that (happy) time you may remember that during that period I was somewhat distracted: that term was a bit of a write-off to say the least. So, please may I strongly state in advance that I went to, and sadly no doubt came away from this exhibition as ignorant as could be. Further more, I wish I had read a bit about what this exhibition was before I went as, sadly, I don’t think I would have bothered to spend £12 (including £3 for the not great audio guide) on it if I had known!

So, to begin; ooh, how lovely, thought I, a nice exhibition full of pretty Velasquezs and Francisco de Zurbaráns and no doubt some very lovely sculptures from the period, ooh I canny wait. Huh!! Imagine my shock and consternation when I entered the dingy basement of the National Gallery to find myself in some kind of warped Madame Tussauds of death; a mix of kitsch theme park from the 1970s called something like ‘Lancashire World’ and a creepy haunted toy shop of hell.

It all seemed ok to begin with, more than ok as when I initially entered before me was one of my all time favorite paintings: The Vision of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, also known as
‘The Miracle of the Lactation’ by Alonso Cano. Please see below. I heartily recommend doing so as it’s hilarious.

http://therule.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/miraculous-lactation-of-st-bernard-1302.jpg

Briefly; this is an image of St Bernard praying before a polychrome (multi-coloured to all you hoodlums out there) statue of the Virgin Mary. As he was such a good monk said statue comes to life and shoots a big old stream of milk from the holy nipples right into his mouth, oh lucky him! Funnily enough, this is not intended just to freak out viewers but demonstrates the bodily, palpable nourishment provided by the mother of god to her worshippers, apparently. It also demonstrates an interesting dichotomy upon which the whole exhibition was based; namely that during this period strict guild systems controlled the production of arts and crafts in Spain, no great surprise there. Polychrome religious sculptures were, it seems, incredibly popular during this time and it was decreed that only sculptors would carve the statues (out of wood) whilst painters were the ones who must colour them in. Because of this many painters trained in sculpture work shops to learn the technique, including Velasquez. This has lead many, including it seems the curator of this exhibition, to argue that this close collaboration of painter and sculptor lead to major breakthroughs in painting during this period, namely the development of realism and the lending of sculptural three-dimensionality to the painted surface. If I knew more about this I would argue the (surely) massive tenuousness of this claim, luckily I don’t but in short: really??? Michelangelo??? Hmm.

As amusing as St Bernard is it’s about as far as I go in terms of appreciating the creepier strands of Catholicism in art - little did I realise this was a portent of the freaky shit soon to come. On turning my back on the thirst quenched St Bernard I beheld a severed head, of John the Baptist, in a glass box. In the next room life sized full length, dressed, statues of various monks, saints and other historical religious figures bore down at me from the corners of the room brandishing crosses and looking really fucking pissed off. Later there were similar images of Christ in various stages of death. No offense but I have seriously never seen such a collection of hideous lumps of wood in my entire life. It was totally freakish and sick. The audio guide explained the significance of these as inspiring worship and humility etc through the shocking images which viewer/worshipper could relate to in a physical sense, but fucking hell. One, which I will attempt to attach an image of, was a torso and head of Christ literally COVERED in blood with glazed eyes made out of glass and finger nails made out of horn etc, It was vomit inducing – please see image below.

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2009/6/9/1244541882672/Sacred-Made-Real-Christ-a-016.jpg

There were a few parts of the exhibition where the curator successfully demonstrated this dichotomy between painting and sculpture such as in the room dedicated to Zurbarán where 2 beautiful paintings by him were exhibited (see below) and shown next to a sculpture by Pedro de Mena; Saint Francis standing in Ecstasy, which was based on one of the paintings. This reminded me of the freaky wax dolls used to exhibit the latest Paris fashions back in the day which you can see at the V&A and funnily enough back in the 19th century when both paintings and sculpture found huge fame the V&A tried to buy a copy of this statue. Mini-monk is possibly the weirdest part of the exhibition but I can see why these paintings found such popularity during the 19th century as they really are very beautiful~;

http://images.suite101.com/1326897_com_stfrancisi.jpg

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4mQ7lXgX39_FEbzFNTCJWxxpguWUKDdwZNo6xVs9eSPhSqB2wQwnY1TAtxWaio_XR_ikoCWlEbPSiLyDKyBzIBDacGQAu6pgERm5H-Pbq-WdZLZto4YCI-aSbtYgunRfWpKtyrLRzVcI/s400/240_450_zurbaran-francois.jpg

Anyway that’s me gone on plenty long enough so I will wrap it up here but basically this exhibition gave me to heebie-jeebies and would NOT recommend taking children. I guess it’s good that sculptures which was massively popular at the time should be given the attention they’re due but frankly I think a whole show at the National Gallery may have been over-egging it a bit because they really were absolutely disgusting. There were a few lovely paintings but by no means enough to make up for that collection of dusty tat. Back to some nice pretty Victorian stuff next week if possible.