The problem with Michelangelo Public and Private: Drawings for the Sistine Chapel and Other Treasures from the Casa Buonarroti isn’t the core of the exhibit itself. Had the Seattle Art Museum stripped it of lard and presented it with the modesty it deserves, it would have been a fine thing to see in a small gallery on a rainy afternoon.
Instead, Michelangelo comes with the trappings of a major moment: a wall-sized time-line of the artist’s life, extensive text, copious illustrations and an attempt to create titillating controversy.
Flashing on the Web site:
Michelangelo burned most of his sketches. Come see 12 drawings that escaped the fire.
They escaped the fire but not their admirers. The Casa Buonarroti Web site explains why the drawings are ghostly. The best of the 200 in the collection were on view from 1566 to 1960 with no time out for good behavior. The Uffizi undertook their restoration, returning them 15 years later.
Surely the Uffizi is not responsible for what happened to a preliminary sketch for The Last Judgment. The wall label notes that the artist created it in black chalk, reinforced later with pen and ink. In other words, it’s an original traced into a forgery.
Make that 11 sketches. Still, they’re Michelangelo’s. Not for nothing did he regret his work when he was a pious old man, inclined to agree with the cleric Pietro Aretino that some of his nude figures would be “at home in some voluptuous bathhouse, certainly not the highest chapel of the world.”
As a colorist Michelangelo was the equal of Raphael, and his forms have no peers.
This show screams minor museum in a provincial town.
I see what you’re saying, but I didn’t feel ripped off. I dig the drawings. The only thing is, if SAM hadn’t made such a big fricking deal of it, there wouldn’t be as many people there and I could enjoy the drawings in peace. Isn’t your review more about packaging than the art? I get why the Seattle Art Museum didn’t want to undersell its show. If they’d slipped it into the lineup without notice, maybe you would have been happy but I wouldn’t have seen it. It’s funny to be in the show and see people staring at the reproductions and skipping the art. I wanted to tell them to get a book and leave me alone.
P.S. I paid $1 to get in, pay what you will admission. I don’t know who Betsey is in your comments, but I tried to pay less than the full admission at the Henry and was denied. Maybe I’ll try again, but it’s embarrassing to try and be turned away. There are a lot of poor people like me interested in art. When people say it costs more for a movie, I say, I don’t go to first run movies and pay $10 or more. Art museums should be free.