The Age of Rembrandt An exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
 
Every painter in the exhibit entitled The Age of Rembrandt, which is currently at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, is essential to the history of western art. Indeed the exhibit itself is a kind of compendious catalog of 17th century Holland's true greatness. The exhibit shows every Dutch painting that the museum possesses from the time of Rembrandt, so the art is out of this world. An aspect of the exhibit I've never seen before, though, is the attention it pays to the wealthy contributors who in the last century and a half amassed all these paintings. If you like Vermeer, you'll find the reason his painting "Young Woman with a Water Pitcher" is in the Met's collection is that a man named Henry G. Marquand gave it to the museum. If you care for Vermeer's "Study of a Young Woman," you'll learn about the gift that Mr. And Mrs. Charles Wrightsman made of it to the museum in 1979. Rembrandt? Well, all sorts of people gave paintings by him to the Met. This is interesting because these people are interesting, and by studying them you get a short course in how great art gets preserved and protected, and how it becomes available to a public that would otherwise be unable to see it. The reason you're here, though, is really the art itself. You're going to see many very special things in this exhibit, and one of my favorites is Franz Hals. Hals' brushwork is justifiably famous. Every book you read about him, every article, and every museum catalogue at least mentions it, and more often than not a substantial portion of whatever it is you're reading will be devoted to it. His brushwork is famous in part because it appears so savage. Frans Hals: "Young Man and Woman in an Inn" (aka "Yonker Ramp and His Sweetheart"), 1623 He was a painter quite capable of great care. In the faces of Yonker Ramp and his sweetheart, his brushwork is precise, chiseled and even delicate - at least by Hals's own standards. No pedestrian artist could portray with such skill the emotions that Hals' gives to his subjects, and very often these are fun-loving emotions. Hals painted hilarity better than anyone, and laughter and joy abound in his work. Elsewhere in his paintings, though, the brushwork seems to splatter and lurch. The clothing that many of his subjects wear appears almost slap-dash, with blurred pigments indicating the way a coat sleeve folds at the elbow when an arm is bent or the manner in which one of those starched Dutch lace collars weaves in and out of itself as it circles the subject's neck. I imagine the brush in Hals's hand literally flying about the canvas, quick and harried by his intensities. I know this brushwork is not "slap-dash." I've looked at several Hals paintings, and I don't believe I've discovered any place in any of them that would indicate uncertainty on Hals' part. They appear, in a way, unprincipled, in the sense that no other painter of his time was taking the chances that he was with his brushwork. Every stroke appears to be necessary, though, to the final piece. His brush may have been flying, but Hals was allowing it to land exactly where and how he wished. Yonker Ramp's clothes and those of the barmaid are disheveled where they are because they have been drinking and caressing each other. The brushwork implies the sensuous freedom, the passion, and humor both of them are seeking. This brushwork of his presages the 20th century and abstract expressionism. If you photographed in close detail one of Hals' coat sleeves, you might think it was actually done by Willem DeKooning or some other lionized champion of abstract art. Few of those champions paint with his precision, though. Hals is the greatest abstract expressionist who ever lived, and he died in 1666. Incidentally, a "Jonker" in 17th century Holland was a young boisterous lad and sometimes a propertied gentleman. One of the most important early Dutch settlers of New York was named Adrian Van der Donck. In 1645, he received a tract of 24,000 acres to the north of Manhattan Island, and developed it into several business and farming operations. Known to everyone as "The Yonker," he was remembered as such after he died, and the town he founded became known as Yonkers. What the Indians thought about all this can perhaps be surmised from the speculation by historians that they killed him. Another artist represented in this show is the very humorous Jan Steen. A genre painter who specialized in showing debauchery as the Dutch practiced it in those times, Steen is famous for the way his interiors are crowded with detritus: half-empty bowls of partially eaten food, egg shells on the floor, lemon peels on the floor, musical instruments cast aside in favor of profane conversation, shoes knocked over on theirs sides, and books tossed willy-nilly to the floor. Jan Steen: "The Dissolute Household," 1663-1664 My sister Kate, who lives in Rotterdam and first showed me Steen's work, told me once that there is an expression in the Dutch language that states, "Mrs. So-and-So's house is like a Steen kitchen." In Holland, where a spotless home is almost a requirement, this remark is a grave dismissal of poor Mrs. So-and-so. Gerard ter Borch: "Curiosity," circa 1660 I have always been amazed by how Gerard ter Borch was able to portray bright silk and velvet in silver and gold. He was famous for this ability in his lifetime and made an entire career out of painting women dressed in such finery. "Curiosity" is an example in this show, and is a painting I usually visit whenever I'm at The Met. The center of the piece is taken up by a young woman fabulously dressed in red and silver, so luxurious looking, so attractive that you'd like to have a long moment of conversation with her, hopefully alone with two glasses of fine French burgundy. Indeed, she has her eye on you, but she's looking at you as though surprised that you've caught her attention. The trouble, at least for me, is that she's probably about to look away uninterested. I contemplate her every time I see the painting, and hope her glance at me will linger a while. She's not really the subject of the painting, though. Another woman at a table is writing a letter, and a third woman is clamorously looking over her shoulder to see what the letter is about. The woman in silver is the sensuous trinket, and we are well advised to give her as much attention as possible. But the other two women are doing something. They're in action. Something will surely come about because of what they're writing. The dog on the little chair by the table doesn't realize this, and he too is transfixed by the woman in silver. He's important because he is so richly painted by ter Borch, but really, he is -- as am I -- too taken by her physical beauty and not interested enough in the back story. Despite my reservations, I finally take my eye off the silver-frocked young woman and turn to the two others. They are the plot-driven ones. They are making things happen. Willem van de Velde the Younger: "Entrance to a Dutch Port," ca. 1665 It happens that I like seascapes and landscapes when they are masterfully painted. I like cows. I like sky and windmills. There are many examples of these sorts of things in this show. The Dutch were perhaps the most persistent when it came to painting such things. It's as though they had such love for where they lived that they felt compelled to show it in every detail. Willem van de Velde the Younger was a quite well known sea painter in his own lifetime, and his work makes sails, clouds, rigging, masts, flags, and decks into sensuous, feeling objects. Finally there is Rembrandt Van Rijn. Surely there has been as much written about other artists and their lives as has been written about Rembrandt, but no artist deserves to be written about more than he does. A look at his self portraits alone is enough to convince you that this man so well understood the difficulties of life that few others could even approach his emotional knowledge. Rembrandt van Rijn: "Self-portrait," 1660 In the same moment you exclaim about Franz Hals' brush work, you must do so just as loudly for that of Rembrandt. Many of his paintings are extremely dark, and I interpret this darkness to be a further comment on the emotional pain that marked so much of Rembrandt's life. The way he paints what is lit in his subjects is careful, extremely well thought out, and emotionally joyful almost beyond measure. One of the real treasures of this show is his "Man in Oriental Costume" (aka "The Noble Slav"). Rembrandt van Rijn: "Man in Oriental Costume," 1632 Who knows where that headpiece came from? Was it made up by Rembrandt, or did something like it belong to him or to the subject? Whatever it was, the headpiece is an early nod to the Orientalism that would be the subject of so much European art in the late 18th and 19th centuries. It is also, in my opinion, the most beautifully painted Orientalist object in the history of western art -- but that's not all. The neckpiece this man is wearing is painted with the same attention to the very smallest detail with which Rembrandt paints the headpiece. I do not see his brush flying. Rather I see the artist studying with great care and very slowly the particular detail that he is painting, and he paints it with the same slowness. The quality he seeks is all that matters, and the contemplative brightness of these accoutrements serves only to emphasize the emotional devastation in the man's face. His right hand also has much to do with these troubles. It is painted with so little detail that it resembles a carved block of wood or something made of stone. That hand symbolizes for me all the things this man has missed in his life, despite his obvious wealth, taste, and thoughtfulness. If you see the painting itself, live, you realize how important the hand is to Rembrandt's overall purpose in this painting. This exhibit is really a must-see. It is by no means a complete survey of all that Dutch art in the 17th century accomplished, but The Met's collection is a very large one, with examples from many, many superb painters, and the entirety of the collection is shown. It is important that you see it because the art here is just so vividly arresting. (teryclarke@hotmail.com)
Terence Clarke: Books, Art, Music, Film, Style
Thursday, November 29, 2007