|
Showing 1 - 1 of
1 matches in All Departments
Classification and qualification seem almost to be the enemy of
artistic endeavour. Yet in The Natural History of Vedovamazzei, the
curator Mirta D'Argenzio has produced an elliptical collation of
the artists' ideas and hopes that offers a remarkable insight into
a rarely defined world, that of Vedovamazzei's creative process.
Simeone and Stella were lovers, from Naples. They were, and are,
artists, painters, sculptors. As a matter of course they sketched
out ideas in drawings and watercolors, produced cartoons for future
projects, dallied with line and colour for experimental concepts.
Some of them didn't work or were put away for another day. These
sketches, sometimes no more than doodles or jokes, were also their
means of communication when one was away, so that at any moment, on
their return, they would find a scrap with an illustration to muse
over pinned to the wall. Mirta D'Argenzio, the art historian and
curator, came across these fleeting memoranda and resolved to make
sense of them, like an Egyptologist deciphering hieroglyphs or an
entomologist ordering the development of the Wing-tailed Cabbage
White. She set about classifying them into an almost scientific
order, from their larval forms through the pupae to the first
spread of wings. She has produced a collection of the sketches in
eight sections that makes up a visual record of the nascent ideas
of Vedova and Mazzei, even in the 21st century cognisant of the
traditions of Leonardo. The result of her work is as if one were
treading the hallowed halls of the Natural History Museum, with its
polished cases of botanical and insect collections, minutely marked
and classified by the scientist's copperplate hand. It is a
dazzlingdisplay.
|
You may like...
Loot
Nadine Gordimer
Paperback
(2)
R398
R369
Discovery Miles 3 690
|
Email address subscribed successfully.
A activation email has been sent to you.
Please click the link in that email to activate your subscription.