Philadelphia.3

This building makes me think of how Greek sculptures used to be painted--in bright colors and patterns.

I went to the Philadelphia Museum of Art today. I think maybe I've been there before, but it's been a long time. It is an enormous and wonderful museum.

The museum was more integrated than any museum I've ever seen--it was full of entire rooms from different countries and times. There were not only paintings and sculptures, but furniture and rugs and wallpaper and doorways. In addition, the museum does Pennsylvania proud--it has exhibits of Shaker furniture, Pennsylvania Dutch painted designs, Thomas Eakins, and even Pennsylvania impressionism (who knew there was such a thing?!). I noticed that the contemporary art wing was basically empty--as I walked through, one of the people who worked at the museum asked me if I was lost.


This is the strangest use of antlers I've ever seen, and, being from central Pennsylvania, I've seen my fair share. That's right--they're the tail of a merman.

There's an exhibit at the Philadelphia Art Exhibit at the moment called "Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus." The exhibit came highly recommended and was actually pretty amazing. The point of the exhibit is that Rembrandt originally followed traditional interpretations of Jesus' appearance, but later switched to a more realistic depiction of Jesus based on Jewish men in Amsterdam. This is one of the most thoroughly argued and proved theses I've ever seen. In this WSJ review, the exhibit is described:

"...'Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus' makes its central point well and clearly... In Philadelphia, the cavernous galleries devoted to the exhibition leave many works seeming marooned, and the extensive use of large, didactic wall texts compounds this problem."

Well and clearly and didactic wall texts can't be overemphasized. It was really heavy-handed--the same thing was emphasized repeatedly on the wall and on the little phones that tell you about the art. Also, the wall repeatedly maintained that whatever painting it was that you were looking at was one of Rembrandt's favorite Bible scenes to paint--Mary and Martha, The road to Emmaus, raising Lazarus from the dead, Jesus healing the sick, and the list goes on. And the galleries were cavernous--it was far too large a space for the exhibit.

But, the exhibit itself was excellent. There were countless sketches and etchings and studies (Jesus' face with tons of different emotions on it for different Bible scenes) and a few masterpieces:


"The Road to Emmaus"


The Hundred Guilder Print


"Christ with Arms Folded"

One thing that Rembrandt does excellently is depict the varying reactions of the crowd to Jesus. You could see expressions that ranged from oblivion to surprise to adoration.

The other thing that stuck out to me was the inclusion in the exhibit of so many works by members of Rembrandt's school. In many cases it's unclear whether Rembrandt or one of his students painted the painting. His students copied his works and made (relatively small) changes to them. Two thoughts: 1) Clearly having students is important to the immortality of the work of the teacher--I think Strauss and Rawls are two examples of this in political theory; 2) I wonder if Rembrandt's students copying his works was the best thing for the development of their own artistic talent. Only one of the works of the exhibition was by a student who clearly brought his own genius to the work. (I keep thinking about the relationship of the artist/teacher to the student--it's also in Artist of the Floating World and Friday Night Lights and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.)


(picture, picture, picture)