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Drawings in Dialogue:
The Art Institute of Chicago
This is a well-annotated exhibition, a sweeping survey of the history of the drawing from the Renaissance to the 20th century. But take a challenge if you will. Look aside from the excellent wall texts, the texts which tell what one is seeing and what to look for, and approaching each work gaze first, firmly and squarely, at what is meant to be seen: the drawings. The delicate pen and brown ink wash of Ercole Letti's Coronation of the Virgin (1575), with the sweetness of its figures mounded on masses of elegantly observed drapery; the subtle effects of light and atmosphere in Paulus von Liender's The City Walls of Utrecht by the "Plompetoren" (1763), a canal scene also executed in pen and ink with wash, but with a minute precision more associated with engraving; and, jumping ahead in time, the jumbled, jazzy elements of Roger de La Fresnaye's black-and-white cubist composition The Bugle and the Drum, or, Composition with a Trumpet (1918). There are times in museum viewing when the accompanying texts tell us much that is logical and literal about what we are seeing, even before we look at it. That's not to say one should avoid the texts; to the contrary, these are annotated with care, and each one has something to say in depth about its accompanying work. But let the drawings move you, first. These are some of the best, and they are here in abundance. Drawings in Dialogue: Old Master through Modern may well be the sleeper of the summer. Its modest title hardly hints at the riches of what is, in the end, a comprehensive study of drawing through the past 500 years, unfolding from gallery to gallery in what turns out to be a surprisingly substantial exhibition, in size rivaling many of the 'blockbuster' draws the Art Institute has hosted in recent years. Drawings in Dialogue presents 166 works on paper from the Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Collection, a generous gift of works promised or already given to the museum by collector Dorothy Braude Edinburg. The works include Renaissance preparatory studies; accomplished works by 18th- and early 19th-century European and American artists; and a thorough study of modern 20th-century movements, including rare works by German Expressionists and a special section on Picasso and Matisse. The drawings are organized chronologically into three main sections, "Renaissance to Romanticism", "Realism to Symbolism" and "Modernism". On exhibition through July 30, 2006, this important collection has much to say about the evolution of the drawing, its diverse styles and techniques, its changing role in the history of art. It speaks as well of the nature of collections and collecting, and what a collector with focus may accomplish. And finally, at its most basic, it is a remarkably complete survey of drawings by important artists through time. It is well worth seeing on that basis alone. One of the aspects highlighted by Drawings in Dialogue is that the function of the drawing has evolved over time. "Renaissance to Romanticism" follows this evolution from the 16th to the 19th century, beginning with 16th century Italy (the initial work is actually a 15th century manuscript illumination dating to 1430/40). The idea of Renaissance drawings as important collectable works is a modern association. In their own time they were regarded as preparatory materials, useful tools; other artists might collect such sketches as part of their working library of imagery and style, but they were on the whole disposable preliminaries to the more permanent and serious work. At times, as in Bernardino Campi's God the Father (1567/70), an artist might use a drawing, here in black chalk enlivened with white gouache, as a means of working out elements within a larger composition. At other times, a drawing was part of preparing a proposal for a wealthy patron. Drawing was also an artist's method of personal study of a celebrated work, as in the detailed pen and ink study reproducing the tumultuous rending of Heaven and Hell in an artist's concise, jewel-like rendition of Tintoretto's large-scale Last Judgement (no date; early 17th cent.). As with Giulio Romano's Daedalus and Icarus (no date; 16th cent.) a drawing might further survive as the only reference to a work proposed, yet either lost, or never executed in its final form. All in all, a drawing generally referenced a work to be completed in a more durable medium, such as oil or fresco.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, the rise in prosperity created the phenomenon of the wealthy collector. Drawings, particularly landscape studies, began to be regarded as collectible pieces in their own right. In 17th-century Holland, artists began producing "independent" still-life and landscape drawings, drawings made as their own contained work, and not as preparation for some other project. Works on paper were small, intimate, and portable, all of which made them ideal for collecting. A Peasant Seated in a Shed (1800/09) by French artist Jean-Jacques de Boissieu shows the exquisite draftsmanship which became a characteristic of these highly refined works. Virtuoso effects of light, shadow and texture provide strong contrasts that delight the eye in this rustic scene, in which low raking light casts across a barren tree and the many elements surrounding the rough-hewn shed. Works such as Boissieu's reveal as well the evolution of accepted subjects, which had moved from primarily religious and Classical subjects to including evocations of landscape, still lifes, or scenes of rustic life. Landscape was to eventually figure strongly in the Romantic movement, with ruins and evocative scenes of wilderness showing a new emotional sensibility infusing natural scenes. Drawings such as Joseph Mallord William Turner's Castle on a Height near Geneva (1836/41), Karl Friedrich Schinkel's Gothic Cathedral behind a Pond with Swans (1810/15), and Rodolphe Bresdin's Mountainous Landscape with Horsemen (n.d., 19th cent.) illustrate some of the common elements of this new sensibility as embodied by artists throughout Europe. In "Realism to Symbolism" the selection moves onward to late 19th- and early 20th-century artists. As their bodies of paintings are far more well known and well represented than their drawings, it is a delightful surprise to come across images such as the academic nudes by Paul Cezanne (1862), Edgar Degas (1858), and Gustav Klimt (1880), showing the thorough grounding in draftsmanship and figure study of artists associated more with the expressive freedom and innovation of their oil works. Within the exhibition, one may also compare Degas' highly finished Study of a Male Nude (1858) with his more bold, strongly sculptural charcoal drawing of After the Bath (c. 1900), and the free gestures evoking posture in Three Dancers (1895/1900), to see three very different approaches by the same artist. Among a variety of further treasures from the late 19th- and early 20th-century are Jan Toorop's Joan of Arc in an Initial E (1898), an amalgam of Symbolism and the return to tradition of the Arts and Crafts movement in its representation of an manuscript-style illuminated capital letter framing a figure of Joan of Arc in armor, barefoot, head bowed in prayer or defeat. Aristide Maillol's The Two Wrestlers (c. 1939), a playful cover for the art and literary magazine Verve, displays a forward yet kittenish sensuality with its two nude females coyly wrestling. The final segment, "Modernism", highlights drawings from the great names and great movements of 20th-century art, showing the pluralism that became fully established as artists, growing more and more experimental, began to explore new and diverse areas. The drawing had been firmly established as an art work in its own right; now it served as a playground for experimentation and expression. The fragmentation of Cubism and Futurism, the ultra-rational geometries of Suprematism, the dark emotional draftsmanship of the German Expressionists, and the weird fantasies of Surrealism all represent the contrasts and diversity of vision in works by artists such as Fernand Léger and Robert Delaunay, Kasimir Malevich and Vasily Kandinsky, Ernest Barlach and Kathe Kollwitz, Salvador Dali and Max Ernst. That artists headed out in a multitude of directions may be seen by such diverse selections as Oskar Kokoschka's Dream Vision (1908/09), with its bold, woodcut-like crudeness, and the sleek, compelling authority of machine forms in Fernand Leger's Study for "The Ball Bearing" (1926). Picasso and Matisse are particularly well represented, with a wide selection of drawings from Picasso's protean output of distinct styles. The two World Wars further influenced the growth of the market for works on paper, particularly during World War II in the case of German artists categorized as 'degenerate' by the Nazis and forbidden to paint. Drawings (the term as used in this exhibition also encompasses watercolor and other media on paper) provided a small-scale, easily concealed means by which an artist might still make art, in direct defiance of the Nazis' proscription of abstract and expressionist style. Emil Nolde's The Old Men Talking (c. 1938), with Landscape on its reverse, are two such works, produced in secret on a scrap of Japanese paper, thriftily used on both sides: small compositions, the landscape rich with brooding color, the study of the old men a brief yet evocative moment of narrative. Once again the portability, intimate size, swiftness of production (compared to an oil painting, for example) and modest price enabled artists to sell and collectors to purchase, even within the shattered prosperity of wartime, and even when their art had been directly prohibited on pain of death.
Drawings in Dialogue is a near-complete survey of Western drawing, in 166 works, with one or more but generally only a single work by each artist. Its diversity brings up reflections on the nature of collections and collecting. A good collection has focus. Without it, it is simply a grab-bag of individually desirable items. The collection represented by Drawings in Dialogue might seem almost too diverse in scope were one not aware that in assembling these works, accomplished collector Dorothy Braude Edinburg exhibited a very singular focus. Having approached the Art Institute's curator of drawings, she proposed the idea of ultimately donating these important works on paper as a gift to the museum. With this as a goal, Ms. Edinburg worked with museum curatorial staff in identifying areas in which the museum's drawings department were less well represented, and focused her collecting aims toward building up these areas. She further chose to select works which represented the highest point of an artist's achievement. The result is a collection with remarkable chronological and stylistic scope, many of these works already donated to, and others promised to, the Art Institute in a gift of priceless works from a private donor, specifically chosen to enhance the museum's collections. (Drawings in Dialogue features 166 of the 240 total drawings being donated.) The exhibition closes with a work in lithographic crayon and charcoal with brush and black ink, by American artist George Wesley Bellows. Counted Out (1912) exhibits in bold graphics Bellows' rendition of a boxing defeat, a journalistic realism capturing the tension, brutality and excitement of the moment. Unlike the fractured subjects of the Cubists or the loosely-gestured primitivism of some of the Picasso drawings which immediately precede it, in which the artist is illustrating an expression or evoking a mood, the Bellows drawing, like the studies of the Renaissance artists, returns attention to a work depicting a scene, no longer a religious episode, or the devotion of a wealthy ducal patron, but still a fragment of narrative. It lends a touch of completion, linking with its parallels to the work of the Renaissance which opens the exhibition. Comprehensive and diverse, Drawings in Dialogue does indeed invite 'conversations' between its various works. Though well-annotated, it is highly recommended to let the drawings retain their upper hand in one's focus, let them act on a visceral level, before reading the details. What is Picasso 'saying,' versus what the Renaissance artists are 'saying?' Who succeeds, and why? The formalism of the Renaissance and intervening centuries gives way to the 20th century artists, whose digressions of form reveal a model as masses of shading, or simply present geometric forms. We can note our reactions in comparison to artists who show us tumbling cherubs and visions of glory, referencing Biblical and devotional scenes with whose vocabulary we may no longer be familiar; we can compare drawings made as sales pieces for prospective wealthy patrons, with drawings made by the artist for personal pleasure or expression. These are all fine works, diverse in style, subject, and intent. Drawings in Dialogue successfully combines them into a cohesive whole. This is the sleeper of the summer: modestly presented, one might miss it. Don't. Drawings in Dialogue: Old Master through Modern is well worth a special trip. A comprehensive survey of drawing in Western art in 166 works on paper, this is a detailed exhibition; give yourself time to savor. The exhibition runs through July 30, 2006. A 233-page catalogue, Drawings in Dialogue: Old Master through Modern (Yale University Press: 2006) accompanies the exhibition. This is a full-color survey of each of the 166 works in the exhibition, with annotation and commentary on each piece. Priced at $60.00, it is available at the museum as well as through booksellers such as Amazon.com. --Katherine R. Lieber Katherine R. Lieber has edited ArtScope.net's Visual Arts reviews since 1998. Ms. Lieber is Editor and Associate Producer for ArtScope.net.
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