Google Art Project – Page 3

Hector Guimard elevations

Design for the Facade of Societé Immobilière de la Rue Modern, No. 6 (1909).

Drawings by French architect and designer Hector Guimard (1867–1942), the man who gave Paris those plant-like entrances to the Metro stations. The examples here can be seen in greater detail at the Google Art Project where there’s a few more of his works including his typically organic smoking bench. One thing I like about the architectural drawings is seeing the way he stylised his lettering. Frank Lloyd Wright used to do the same on his plans but I doubt there are any architects today who do the same.

Elevation of an Apartment Building, Société Immobilière, rue Moderne (now rue Agar) (1909–11).

Rear Facade, Castel d’Orgeval, Parc Beauséjour, near Paris: Elevation (1904).

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Hector Guimard sketches
• Temples for Future Religions by François Garas
• Elizabetes Iela 10b, Riga
• Atelier Elvira
• Louis Bonnier’s exposition dreams
• The Maison Lavirotte
• The House with Chimaeras

Melencolia details

The idle question “Where can you find the best reproduction of Albrecht Dürer’s Melencolia I?” was answered at the Google Art Project where there are four different prints to examine. As usual it seems churlish to complain but I would have preferred one decent copy and a few more Dürer engravings in place of the duplicates; his Knight, Death and the Devil, for example, is absent. There are several other engravings, however, all of whose minute details and shading benefit from close scrutiny. Dürer is well-represented compared to other artists, there are several paintings there as well. The only oddity is the inclusion of this drawing of three witches by Dürer’s pupil Hans Baldung Grien. The museum that owns the drawing credits Grien but a search isn’t really necessary when it’s signed with the artist’s “HBG” monogram in place of Dürer’s famous “AD”. Does Google have any art historians proofing these entries or is it solely the work of technicians copying and pasting information?

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Max Klinger’s New Salomé

The New Salomé (1887–1888) by Max Klinger.

The German Symbolist Max Klinger (1857–1920) is celebrated today for the etchings which comprise his Ein Handschuh (A Glove) series, ten prints that in their curious details and dream-like quality prefigure Surrealism and Giorgio de Chirico’s “metaphysical” paintings. During his life Klinger was highly regarded for his sculpture as well as his etchings: his Beethoven was a centrepiece of the Secession building in Vienna in 1902. His New Salomé is one of the handful of Klinger works at the Google Art Project where I still feel we ought to be able to view sculpture in the round. I’ve seen many photos of this piece before but hadn’t realised until now that the eyes were…what? Rubies? Amber? Whatever they are, their fiery cast ensures that his imperious female sits unequivocally with the Evil Women that proliferated in the late 19th century.

Salomé (c.1910) by Julio Borrell Pla.

Klinger’s sculpture may have been fashionably misogynist but it was at least a serious piece of art. Twenty years later the Salomé theme had devolved to little more than titillating exotica, as with this vaporous painting by Julio Borrell Pla which I hadn’t come across before. The last gasp of this exhausted trend is William Dieterle’s 1953 film in which Rita Hayworth plays Herod’s daughter as all titillation and little else.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The Salomé archive

Frederic Leighton’s sculptures

An Athlete Wrestling with a Python (1877).

The python wrestler by Frederic Leighton (1830–1896) has appeared here before, and it’s one sculpture that always catches my eye for having appeared in my adaptation of The Call of Cthulhu in 1988. It’s now one of the Leighton works available for close viewing at the Google Art Project although only from a single angle, something that seems a flaw in web presentation of three-dimensional art.

The Sluggard (c. 1895).

In the same collection is a copy of Leighton’s The Sluggard from the Yale Center for British Art. What’s notable about this piece is that it’s generally offered as Exhibit A for the homo-prosecution during discussion of the artist’s sexuality. The Sluggard to which most people refer is the life-size bronze which is a lot more robust and muscular than this lithe and twinky specimen. According to a note at the V&A Yale’s copy is one of many cast from the clay model for the life-size version. What was excused at the time as a late Victorian exercise in contrapossto looks even more camp—in the Philip Core definition—than the finished piece which makes me wonder whether Leighton beefed up the original to disguise something. Core defined camp as “the lie that tells the truth”; camp art always pretends to be one thing whilst simultaneously telegraphing a very different message about its creator. Leighton’s sexuality is a source of continual speculation which means it’s unlikely now to be resolved in any direction, and the artist himself would loathe our prurience, but it’s only by reappraising works in this way that we’re able to show that gay people didn’t magically erupt via some process of spontaneous generation in 1967. If Leighton had any dalliances whilst holidaying in the gay resort of Capri then he was perfectly circumspect. Back at home, as a President of the Royal Academy he had a rather pompous and remote reputation, being memorably described by Violet Paget as “something between an Olympian Jove and a head waiter.” For more camp, see The Narcissus Hall in the artist’s incredibly lavish home, Leighton House in London, where 1st Baron Leighton, PRA, lived splendidly alone.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Angelo Colarossi and son
• Men with snakes

Google Art Project revisited

The Deluge (1834) by John Martin.

One of John Martin’s Biblical cataclysms succumbs to a Turner-like nebulosity at the Yale Center for British Art, something that can now be viewed in detail thanks to Google’s expansion of its Art Project. 151 additional galleries have been added, and the collections of those already present expanded, which means there are now 30,000 paintings and other art objects waiting to be examined. The examples here are those picked from a very cursory look at what’s on offer. Good to see the Musée d’Orsay is now one of the featured galleries where I ignored all the Van Goghs, Monets and the rest in order to select one of Gustave Moreau’s Salomés. Blake’s Ghost of a Flea is actually a lot more visible in its online state than in the original. Many of the works in the Blake collection at Tate Britain are so fragile the lights are kept low to avoid damaging their pigments. Most of Blake’s paintings are also very small, Ghost of a Flea included. Even peering at it up close doesn’t yield as much as the opportunity we now have to explore its frosted craquelure.

Saint John the Baptist in the Wilderness (1604–1605) Michelangelo Merisi, called Caravaggio.

The Ghost of a Flea (c. 1819) by William Blake.

The Apparition (c. 1876) by Gustave Moreau.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Ambassadors in detail