Nowhere. Copenhagen Author(S): Tony Godfrey Source: the Burlington Magazine, Vol
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NowHere. Copenhagen Author(s): Tony Godfrey Source: The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 138, No. 1124 (Nov., 1996), pp. 769-770 Published by: The Burlington Magazine Publications, Ltd. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/887234 Accessed: 13/11/2008 09:28 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=bmpl. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The Burlington Magazine Publications, Ltd. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Burlington Magazine. http://www.jstor.org EXHIBITION REVIEWS my eye, that these are the work of Pisanello. pared to re-use, according to earlier prac- made and thought about in the 1990s, with They are very close and if, as Schmitt tice, the designs of others. The bear, for recourseneither to the 'artistas staror hero', believes, they too are the work of Michelino, example, in the St Eustaceclearly relies on a nor to the spurious 'isms' that, for Nittve, then Pisanello's contact with the older artist drawingby another artist- althoughhere it characterisedthe big exhibitionsof the 80s. was intimate, and Pisanello's pen-and-ink is given to Pisanello (Parisno. 185). He also From the moment of its inceptionit was also technique was based on his. had a large workshop,and he needed to be assumedthat this exhibitionwould involvea Other works should be entirely disassoci- able to rely on its membersto reproducehis critiqueof the Museum itself. ated from Pisanello. A large chalk drawing motifs and his techniques.To this end they Indeed one of these five constituentsec- near the beginning of both exhibitions were trained, partly in the traditionalway, tions, '?', curated by Ute Meta Bauer, was should more properly be associated with by copying drawings. But Pisanello also no more than a tendentiousdeconstruction Jacopo Bellini, as it has been in the past appears to have taught his pupils to draw of the Louisiana,putting a spotlight(literal- (Paris no.38, Verona no.7). This attribution from life. There is a horse drawing,given to ly) on locked storage doors and gallery is adduced to support that of a series of large Pisanello in the exhibitions, employing his installationdetails. Most of this attemptwas black-chalk portrait drawings, relating to pen and ink technique, but not his mastery upstagedby the inclusionof a section devot- the medals. The early drawing of Sigismund of the equine form (Paris no.150, Verona ed toJoseph Beuys whose concern with the and the later ones of Alfonso d'Aragona (not no.55). The foreshorteningis botched, and social role of art is as strong as Bauer's,but all by Pisanello, but all by members of his the shape of the skullmisunderstood. At the whose work remainsvisually far more com- shop) do nothing to support the attribution bottom of the drawing,however, is a quick pelling than any of her contemporaryselec- to Pisanello of this series. The heads have sketchof the horse'shead, typicalof Pisanel- tions. been rearranged, lengthened in the cases lo himself, and it may be deduced that this 'Incandescent',curated by the American of Filippo Maria Visconti (Paris no.125, sheet reveals the artist as teacher. He may Laura Cottingham (the title was derived Verona no.81) and Niccolo Piccinino (Paris even have used members of his shop, once from Virginia Woolf), was ostensibly an no. 121), and feebly flattened out in the case trained,to collect designsfrom elsewhere.It investigationinto how women artiststoday of Palaeologus (Paris no. 118, Verona seems likelythat this was the functionof the can transcend their social and political no.79), although the damage to this last drawingsbelonging to the so-called'Taccuino impedimentsto make a pure or transfigured makes judgment difficult. Fossi Todorow di viaggio'with its studies of costume and art. The combinationof such a vague cura- held that they were copies after Pisanello's copies afterthe antique.It was, therefore,as torialpremise and the selectionof too many medals, made in Lombardy at the end of the a collection of models that these drawings artists (all too often merely representedby Quattrocento, and this view must be cor- were prized. They, and therefore,in a sense one work) made for an unsatisfactorypot- rect. Similarly Cordellier has included a Pisanellohimself, could even be taken over pourri. One of the few signal successes(and group of black-chalk (or chalk and water- as sourcesfor later artists,as the connexion one of the few 'discoveries'of VowHerewas a colour) drawings of animals and heads, with the Bible illuminatedby Taddeo Criv- film, BeforeWe Wake Up of 1976, continuous- which can only be later works (Paris elli and his team for Borso d'Este in Ferrara ly shown in the lecture theatre,by the Dan- nos.242-53). It seems dubious, in fact, that would seem to demonstrate. ish film-maker Lizzie Corfixen. It was a Pisanello ever used the medium. LUKE SYSON remarkable prefiguration of Sher- At Cindy the Paris colloquium Mikl6s Boskovits BritishMuseum, London man's Untitledfilm stills,showing a sequence expressed his doubts about the authorship of vignettes,each of a of 'The are: Pisanello.Edited Paola Marini. stereotypicalimage of the Madonna of the quail (Paris no.35, catalogues by a woman: running naked down a street, 537 pp. incl. num. col. pls. + b. & w. ills. (Electa,Milan, Verona no.4). Its attribution to Pisanello ironing, waiting, talking,lying by a stream, relies on since it is 1996; here referred to as the Verona catalogue) and working backwards, Pisanello: aux Vertus.519 incl. 95 col. etc. But generallythis section with its rather in the 1420s. It is true lepeintre Sept pp. pls. always placed early + 352 b. & w. ills. (Editionsde la Reunion des Mus6es testyfeminist line (indicatively,Sue Williams that the head bears some resem- Virgin's Nationaux, Paris, 1996), FF 390. ISBN 2-7118- was representedby her earlierangry paint- blance to the Annunciate in the Brenzoni 3139-6 (the Louvrecatalogue). ings ratherthan her more sophisticated,and but the monument, Child, with His enor- 'See S.K.SCHER, ed.: The Currencyof Fame: PortraitMedals more ambivalent, recent work) seemed mous is too the exh. head, different from the Child of Renaissance, cat., National Gallery of Art, strangelyold-fashioned and inappropriate, floating down towards the Brenzoni Virgin. Washington, Frick Collecton, New York, NY, 1994, that the other four sections as no.7. given showed, Neither Mother nor Child look anything pp.52-53, a matterof course, as many female artistsas like the National Gallery picture, which I male. in as an work. persist seeing early In the end, Bruce Ferguson's selection, 'Walking, the attribution of neither this picture nor the Thinking, Walking', was centred on the Virginand Childfrom the Palazzo Venezia in Copenhagen notion of walking,but the was con- Rome is a concept (which anyway ruin) stands up NowHere fused by being made to cover how walking (Paris no.34, Verona no.3). and thinkingcan create art, as well as how So where does this us? in get Missing both The major exhibition of contemporary we walk around a museum. Clearly Gary catalogues was an overview of Pisanello's art in Denmark during Copenhagen'syear Hill's Crux- with its five video screenseach working method, the role of his shop and as 'Culturalcapital of Europe',was NowHere showingthe view from head, foot or hand as the actual function of the drawings, particu- at the Louisiana Museum, Humlebaek Hill walkedthrough a landscape- relatedto larly the Paris group. But the evidence (closed 8th September). For this, virtually the theme, but this was not so with a stackof presented in the exhibitions and their cata- the whole permanentcollection was put into Felix Gonzalez-Torres's of a invites a photographs logues interpretation. Pisanello was storageand four independentcurators from sky, except that one stopped walking in hoarder, but the drawings were preserved Germany, the USA, Canada and England order to one there were too for a pick up. Again, purpose. Certain motifs defined his were each asked to provide an autonomous many one-off pieces, such as a individual and in photograph style, praise his lifetime section of the exhibition,while two curators from a 1985 performance by Mona was focused on his abilities as a portraitist from the Louisianaitself initiated a fifth sec- Hatoum, which neither linked with other even on his skill in the and, more, depiction tion. The result could be viewed either as worksnor representedthe artistadequately. of birds and animals, especially horses. He one very large exhibition,rivalling Dokumen- At the centre of this section was Giacomet- was conscious of his status as a acutely artist, ta in scale and scope, or as a medley of five, ti's life-size Homme qui marcheof 1960 and fact testified the on by prominent signatures involving altogether 124 artists or groups.