Masters

Journal Entry 7/4/2023

Today I spent the an hour in the belly of Windsor Castle holding (truthfully only grazing the mountings with my fingertips while holding in my heart) something like 18 Leonardos, 9 Michaleangelos and 8 Holbeins …. Real Ones. 

The ark, Pandora’s box. Locked in, locked out. Ironically it’s called the Print Room in an era when “print” has lost its meaning. Reproductions, reductions, repeating, resemblances and replicas. “Merch.” Post copyright.  Poster. Pirates. We have lost the primacy of the original. Made by The Creator.

I ought to dedicate myself to making original copies of the old masters. I know, I know. 

… What am I afraid I might learn? 

Plus a private tour of Saint George’s chapel and Queen Elizabeth’s tomb. Yesterday I saw Annigoni’s later portrait of the queen at the National Portrait Gallery and felt lucky to have a connection to the artist - for better or worse I, like the queen, have a lineage. My grandfather’s dna and life reproduced, replicated with myself resembling some conversations he and the artist had while my uncle studied with the master. I looked for a print in the gift shop. 

I rested for a moment as a stranger knight under the banners and heraldic symbols of the Order of the Garter, believing the family’s collective fiction/fact that I am directly descended from King Arthur via the last Duke of Argyle. It’s in my grandfather’s memoir. 

And a PRIVATE tour of Windsor.

As in …. We had a whole changing of the guards just for us with bagpipes and red coats and fuzzy hats and machine guns and bayonets. Just for them because they do it regardless of the presence of an audience. It’s the purpose of the guards on ceremonial rotation. I cracked a stupid joke about trees falling in the forest with no one watching making the sound of screeching bagpipes. 

We went around the Palace turning on and off the lights. Nobody bothered to switch on the light in the Rubens room … the rainy day outside making the images moody in the gloom. 

The curator in charge of the Print Room gave me his email and said I could make an appointment and come back. “Our mission is to make these works available to as many people as possible.” A statement that reframes questions about insecurity, worthiness, and value both of the viewer and the viewed. 

I stood 2 inches away from the cabinet holding 500 Leonardo drawings … there are something like 600 in the world. He only made 20 paintings in his life. Leonardo’s last art projects were drawing costumes for the theatre and visions of the end of the world. Remind you of anyone, Karima? 

He thought his career was a disappointment. Goosebumps.

Plus I got to see one of his botany studies that I wrote about when I was studying art history and botany and the intersection of the two at Brown. 

The room started spinning and I found myself leaning on the cabinets to keep myself from falling. Very aware of the thinness of the glass in the cabinets. To be honest if I wake up from a dream, I won’t be surprised. 

I thought of my beloved teacher Koo as the curator held Leonardo’s silverpoint drawing of horses up to the light to show how he, or someone, had applied the indigo tinted ground sloppily over the paper. The layered brushstrokes glowing like a lantern, revealing the hand and labor that made them. I imagined my one inch mop loaded with gesso. The intimate relationship of an artist with their tools; extensions of our bodies and spirit. Not only do I look at a tool and feel it loaded with medium and know the marks it can make, I can look at the marks and know which tool and how it would feel in my hand. Also illuminated are the values (pun intended) of the artist. An adequate ground, a painstaking study of the horses. The curator then tilted the drawing in the light to dazzle us with the shining magic of silverpoint. gasp. The drawing glimmered and winked. Science, material, artistry and delight. Which I think sums up the artist. Winking at our imaginations for the last 500 years, like the Mona Lisa. Or a dragon hidden among cats. 

Two of the most most moving works were drawings by Michaelangelo depicting Jesus hanging on the cross. A touch of red ochre on the foot. Struggling to figure out the form. Not because Michelangelo would struggle with drawing a body after a lifetime of drawing and sculpting bodies, but because what is the form of the Beloved changing shape from life to death? From temporal to immortal. What is the weight of our heavy soul as it hangs in the balance….

Which reminded me also of my teacher Koo’s wise words. “Our job as artists is to get comfortable being uncomfortable.” Michelangelo’s crucifixion drawings are a meditation on that theme.