Pen and Parchment: Drawing in the Middle Ages
Shows To SeePublished July 14, 2009 at 8:53 am No CommentsThe Metropolitan Museum has put on another amazing drawing show. This one is called; Pen and Parchment: Drawing in the Middle Ages.
So many things about this show had a great influence on me but I will try to name just a few. The first is the intimacy of the work. Viewers must lean nose-close to the glass encased books to absorb all the rich details and incredible craftsmanship on display. It is hard to comprehend, to my modern mind, the level of graphic knowledge, creativity and daring the artisans practiced. Perhaps the sum total of our current knowledge is less than a fraction of what has been lost since the masters worked.
As an artist who loves to draw, I was overjoyed with the fact that drawing and writing, held such an important place in the Middle Ages. Drawing reached an amazing height in Renaissance, Italy but was not considered an art in itself. It was more of a trade secret closely guarded, where masters worked out problems for sculpture, architecture and painting. It is a modern notion that a drawing can be a masterpiece in itself and hung on a wall as a piece of art. Yet in the Middle Ages, drawings held a very important place in book and print arts, illuminating and illustrating stories, from creation tales to astrology. It is so moving to connect through the love of this craft with those from so long ago.
Finally, the inventiveness in both technique and subject matter is quite frankly “wild”. There is no limit to the unbelievable graphic daring to the images. Note the picture of the descendants of Jesus. This reminds me of Americana art, Folk art, African art, or Naive art. As far as subject matter, the show is filled with wild astrological imagery mixed with religious work which was a surprise to me. But as a student of basic anatomy I fell in love with these wonderful images. Which reminds me of something I read by DaVinci, claiming that the sixth sense, was where the other five senses met up and were processed and this sense was called the common sense as it was made of all the others.
The images show a completely different world, and understanding of the world. I was transported in my imagination to monks quarters where they toiled by candle or day light creating the masterpieces that many hundreds of years later still speak to your eyes like a whisper does to your ears. What I would give to flip the pages of these amazing books often containing almost five hundred pages but only revealing one in this special show.
