Friday, December 5, 2014

Met Museum: El Greco in New York

The title of the current Met Museum exhibit, El Greco in New York, is not the most felicitous.  It creates the unfortunate impression that the artist at some point managed a trip to the city and perhaps left behind some paintings to commemorate his visit.  In the event, this is a relatively small installation of some sixteen paintings, most of them completed during the final years of El Greco's life while he was resident in Spain.  Many of the artist's most famous paintings, most notably The Burial of the Count of Orgaz, are missing.  Nevertheless, all the works shown here are masterpieces and every effort should be made to view them.  Collectively, they demonstrate the appearance of a totally new vision in European art.

It should first of all be remembered that El Greco was in no sense a Spanish artist.  He was already age 37, the exact midpoint of his life, when he arrived in that country.  If he spent the remainder of his days there, it was only because he had no practical alternative.  He had already failed in Rome.  During the seven years he had spent in that city, he had received no major commissions from the Church but had instead earned his living as a miniaturist.  Compared to the Italian capital, Toledo was a cultural backwater and the artist may very well have felt himself an exile there.

Much has been made over the years of El Greco's "eccentricity," and certainly his art was so unique that he could not be said to belong to any school.  But the painter's eccentricity extended to his personal life as well.  How else can one describe an artist who made an offer to the pope to paint over Michelangelo's Sistine Ceiling?  It was probably his politically incorrect character as much as anything else that was responsible for El Greco's move from Italy to Spain.  To an extent, it also accounted for the lack of recognition given him in his own lifetime.  In fact, it was not until the beginning of the twentieth century that the artist's greatness first began to be widely appreciated.

If one wishes to discover the basis of El Greco's inspiration, one must look first of all to Venice.  Even if 1541 (the year of the artist's birth in Crete, a Venetian possession) coincided almost exactly with the beginning of the city's decline (1530, according to John Julius Norwich's A History of Venice), the republic remained a world power and Europe's most important cultural center during the brief period El Greco resided there.  Its greatest painter Titian was still active, though already in his 80's, and the aspiring artist quickly became his "disciple."  Anyone seeking to discover at least one source of El Greco's style need only glance at Titian's final painting, the 1575 Pietà.  

Beyond the influence of other artists, much of what viewers find most striking in El Greco's work may very well derive from his singular appreciation of light.  According to Wikipedia:
"Clovio reports visiting El Greco on a summer's day while the artist was still in Rome. El Greco was sitting in a darkened room, because he found the darkness more conducive to thought than the light of the day, which disturbed his 'inner light'."
I think it is possible that El Greco was able to visualize the properties of light in an entirely different manner than did his contemporaries.  Perhaps the turbulent skies so often seen in the background of El Greco's paintings were depicted as such principally for the lighting effects they offered.  Further, when I studied one of the paintings on display at the Met, The Adoration of the Shepherds, what struck me most forcibly was the lighting used.  It is the infant in the manger that is the actual light source.  The figures surrounding him are lit from below by the glow from the baby at the center of the image.

Other major works shown at the Met include The Vision of St. John, also known as The Opening of the Fifth Seal, (1609-1614) and View of Toledo (1598-1599).  The former is often cited as a source of inspiration for Picasso when he was preparing to paint Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.

The exhibit continues through February 1, 2015.

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