I'd like to preface this blog by saying that I adore art. I don't know a whole lot about it, but I adore it. I love visiting galleries and museums and spending the day wandering amongst artwork, regardless of whether it's three hundred years old or three years old. I've had the immense pleasure of standing in front of original works by Botticelli and Caravaggio, as well as Blake and Lowry. However, I've recently discovered a slight internal problem that may well ruin my enjoyment of art forever.
Let me explain...
In March 2006, I had the good fortune to be invited to spend a few days in Florence with Mairead, her parents and her aunt. I didn't need to be asked twice. I'd always wanted to visit Italy and I'd heard that Firenze is one of the most beautiful cities in Italia, as well as being the bithplace of the Italian Renaissance and the hometown of the art-loving Medici family. Well, I'd be a fool to turn that down, wouldn't I?
Oh yeah, and I'd also get to spend five days with my best friend doing what we do best - drinking coffee, sipping wine, sitting in the sun and commenting on the talent walking past. It's a good life!
Anyhoo, Mairead and I arranged to meet in Pisa on the Friday night, which we did. Exhausted after our respective full day's work, flights, travel to the hotel, etc., we got ourselves checked in and set out to find someplace that could offer us a nice glass of Italian vino. Wandering around the streets near the hotel, we turned a corner and were faced with the leaning tower in all its magnificent glory.
Most of the time, when you see pictures of the tower, it looks something like this:
i.e., surrounded by tourists all yabbering away and making silly poses in front of the tower. However, due to the fact that it was around about midnight, the Campo dei Miracoli was completely deserted, allowing us to drink in the sight of this beautiful marble structure in peace. It was a beautiful night and the white tower and incredible Baptistry beside it looked almost painted onto the clear, navy blue sky behind. When we got back to the hotel (with a couple of bottles of red), we realised that we had a perfect view of the tower from the balcony in Mairead's room. As we sat and drank our wine and chatted, every now and then we would wander over to the balcony and just stare at the magnificent view. It was hypnotic.
Anyhoo, that's not the point of this story.
So, the next day we hopped on the train and made our merry (if slightly hungover) way to Firenze. Mairead's dad met us off the train, hustled us along to the hotel to drop off our bags and then rushed us over to the Uffizi where Mairead's mum and aunt were waiting for us, tickets in hand, to go explore one of the most incredible art museums in the world. The Uffizi houses a stunning collection of artwork and sculptures that would take days to investigate thoroughly. However, and now we're getting closer to the point of the story, as we wandered through the rooms, being bombarded from all sides by incredible works of art, we found ourselves becoming more and more blasé about what we were seeing. Our conversation rapidly degenerated from: "Wow! Look at this one! God, that's incredible! Look at the detail!" and: "Bloody hell! That must have taken years to finish!" to: "Oh, look.... another painting of the Madonna and child. Nice." and: "Hmmm...... sensing a slight obsession with religion here...." eventually, two hours later, to: "What's in there? More religious crap? Ah, let's skip it."
I mean, there's only so much of this you can take in at any one time:
Nice paintings, but after about two hundred of 'em, you get a bit overloaded.
Eventually, we got to the good stuff, but even then, we were beyond redemption. About three hours after entering the museum, we arrived in the Botticelli room, and saw the absolutely astounding Birth of Venus:
To say I was awestruck in the presence of this painting would be an understatement. I mean, the thing is huge! It would be difficult to not be impressed by it. And Venus is absolutely beautiful, as you can see. But... then I noticed that... well, Botticelli is a bit rubbish at painting feet. If you look at the feet of the two angels on the left, they look a bit weird. And Venus herself looks as if she's been a victim of Chinese foot binding. As for the wave-effect on the water - seriously, I could do better than that.
With my eyes closed.
And my arms hacked off.
And no lips with which to steady the paintbrush.
But, then, maybe I was just still pissed off about the billions of religious paintings I'd just had to wade through. So, we continued on. I'm happy to say that by the time we reached Botticelli's Primavera, he'd gotten much better at painting toes, which is strange because Venus was actually painted after Primavera.
Anyway...
We carried on throughout the rest of the musem, including an exhibition on the life and works of Leonardo da Vinci (more on this in a moment), and by the time we left, many, many hours later, we had been rendered pretty much speechless by the sheer talent we had witnessed inside. To think these were painted hundreds of years ago... wow! Luckily, a couple of glasses of wine later and speech had returned full force, although slightly slurred.
The next day, we made our way along to the Accademia to see Michelangelo's David:
Breathtaking. Absolutely stunning, from every angle. The fact that the statue is 17 feet tall makes it impressive by itself, but the attention to detail is what makes it for me. Not only can you see every rippling muscle in this beautiful example of the male form, but Michelangelo even carved out cuticles on the hands of the statue. Incredible.
And then we noticed.... aren't his hands and feet a bit.... out of proportion? In fact, is it just me or is his head kind of huge*?
Goddamnit.
Why were we suddenly noticing these things? Why were we suddenly looking at beautiful pieces of art created hundreds of years ago by world class masters, and only able to see the flaws? Personally, I blame Leonardo da Vinci. You see, in the Uffizi, we had visited a special exhibition entitled "The Mind of Leonardo - The Universal Genius at Work" in which there were presentations about the rules of geometry and proportion that Leonardo applied to all of his art. He explained how all of nature conforms, naturally, to these rules, and how they can be applied to create absolutely perfect works of art. Take, for example, the famous Vitruvian Man:
Leondardo's drawing displays the exact proportions of the average or ideal man. Whilst there is no such thing as universal proportions for the human body ("We're all individuals!"), I really like this idea of logically and systematically creating the perfect being. I like to think of myself as a logical person (most of the time), and so this idea sits well with me. Unfortunately, I think a result of this is that I've become very pedantic when viewing art. I've become a major fan of perspective and proportion, and I find it difficult to enjoy art that doesn't employ these two rules.
Picasso wrecks my head.
So, when viewing the statue of David, with his disproportionate hands, feet and head, I couldn't help but wonder am I being a complete philistine, standing here in front of one of the most superb works of art in the world and pointing out its flaws, or am I merely being pedantic in my persuit of beauty and thus unable to accept anything less than perfection?
Will I ever be able to fully enjoy art again**?!?
...
...
[End]
* I've since found out that: "The proportions (of the statue of David) are not quite true to the human form; the head and upper body are somewhat larger than the proportions of the lower body. While some have suggested that this is of the mannerist style, the most commonly accepted explanation is that the statue was originally intended to be placed on a church façade or high pedestal, and that the proportions would appear correct when the statue was viewed from some distance below." -- source: Wikipedia
** Claire has since gone on to enjoy many lovely works of art, most of which have not been proportionally correct, so one must presume that the answer to this question is: "Yes."
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