Finding shadows in unexpected places!

Once again, June 6th in Florence provided us with great food, architecture and plenty of information. We began our morning by back tracking to the library designed by Michelangelo that is attached to the San Lorenzo Basilica. Passing by a charming orange tree in the middle of a highly manicured courtyard, one enters into a dark and revered lobby occupied by a three part staircase intended to lift you to enlightenment. As you look up at the walls you notice that all the square niches are left empty, not only as a nod to Brunelleschi, my new hero of design, but also to invite each user of the bibliotheca to fill their own empty page with knowledge. It would seem that I am loving this challenge.

Once inside, the desks are wonderfully upright, which seemed very smart to me in that one would not be able to put their head down and fall asleep. Lightly coloured stained glass window align with each row of desks on either side of the hall so that there is ample lighting from dusk to dawn. What was really neat was that each desk was affixed with books of different learning. A reader would need to move from desk to desk to read up on different subjects, with the books chained to the sturdy wood shelves beneath the tilted work surfaces. Past the study hall was what I thought was going to be a boring exhibition of important bound illuminated manuscripts adorned with columns of beautiful hand written script and impressive illustration. Surprised, what I discovered were more interpretations of the shadow and how it relates to text, the page, or the book. I began by trying to document the shadow beneath the open covers of the book, but the Plexiglas

covers hindered capturing the dark space atop of red velvet. Then I began to recognize within the pages themselves. Stains, fading, wrinkles and writing within the margins worked to obliterate what and how we saw the original text. Examining the exquisite shapes of the Latin calligraphy, I then began to see each dark letter as a shadow of the negative space around it. Additionally, I started to reflect on how writing is architecture and that each work or letter that comes before the next serves to cast a shadow of knowledge or provides context of understanding onto the reading of the next. This notion could also ring true with the approach of the reader, for every new reader becomes a new interpreter or translator for the text and hence a new author through the reading of the work. Hmm…this sounds familiar. (Death of an Author by Roland Barthes)

We also visited the Orsanmichele which the city’s grainery constructed on the site of the kitchen garden of the monastery of San Michele in 1337. It began its conversion to a church in 1380. Over the years “guilds were charged by the city to commission statues of their patron saints to embellish the facades of the church.” Now replicas, they surround the church carefully perched within their perspective niches. You can still recognize many of these guilds still present in the streets of Florence today through the selling of textiles, baked goods, roses, stone work, leather goods (Way too many dead cows in the form of leather here!), shoemakers ( more leather) and butchers (more cows). The inside is hauntingly beautiful and as Geoff said, “impressive and oppressive simultaneously”. This duplicity of nature lurks in the shadows of each one of us and for those of you who told me to read Jung, thank you.

Upon entering the upper levels of the church, now the museo for the original sculptures I started to think about the word niche and how they physically cast shadows or hide aspects of that which they contain. I also thought about niche in relation to focused realms of study and how perhaps those who reside within these niches continue to exist within Plato’s Cave of knowledge in that they are isolated from other forms of culture and their audiences. I spoke this to my professor and she suggested that there is comfort to be found in the niches as we can’t ever begin to know or understand everything.

So this brings me to copies or adaptations. It would seem that both are shadows of an original work and depending on the audience, medium, cost or context, they may reach further or wider than their predecessor. So how did I arrive at this? The majority of sculptures you see in Florence in public spheres are copies of originals which now lie inside museums. Each of the copies would have been cast from the originals just as shadows are cast from original forms. The only difference is the medium used in this creative process. So this begs to be asked, am I simply copying if my work is to be derived from shadows?

I will let you fill the rest of the page with your answer.

When the Inside doesn't match the Outside

Yesterday morning was interesting in that I started off waiting at the wrong church for our morning history lesson. It turns out there are 5 churches within 3 blocks of where I am staying. Once at Basilica San Lorenzo, a very modest building from the outside, we headed into the museum in its basement. Although dark, there were many fascinating things to be found including the grave of Donatello, the family tree of the Medici's and a large pillar serving as the Tomb of Cosimo the Elder. One of the big guys of the Medici family, who's legacy is apparently strong enough to hold up the entire church.

The significance of the Medici's is found everywhere you look from the tomb monuments to the commissioned architecture and the elaborate décor, all done in marble of course. As you walk by the elaborate works of artists such as Michelangelo, Donatello, Vasari and Brunelleschi you begin to think of the works as shadows themselves, in that they serve as traces of the great minds that once occupied the space you are in. Think in this way would imply that our shadows are our legacies.

Back then it would seem that people wanted their shadows to be grand, but in a time where we need to reduce our consumption of resources, is it ethical to design such opulent legacies / shadows? Does this mean that today's artists and designers will always live in the shadows of such Masters in that they were of a time where economic responsibility and the depletion of resources were of little concern?

As we walked through the baptistery we learned that some of the marble can no longer be found as it was used all up during those times. I also learned that when we are able to see an artist's corrections within a drawing it is referred to as "penti menti", sort of translated as visual regrets. Again, this idea sort of related to shadows for me as we can see traces of the artists process or movement within the work.

After our tour we went to a lovely patio for lunch where I had the most exquisite mussels. Here we learned more about one another's personal shadows over bread, water and wine.

From there I headed to the market to get some fresh basil for the tomatoes I bought yesterday and then packed up some things to take to the studio before heading to the train station to meet Geoff.

After walking around the Duomo to share in its magnificence, we enjoyed sharing fresh stone oven pizza, wine and gelato before retreating to the apartment for some much need sleep. Of course I woke up at midnight and began to think / reflect / critique the project I had started, and so began my four hours of lying awake listening to the sounds of Florence at night while pondering my thesis. I wonder what revelations today will bring?

Cultural Mashup inside Gothic Church!

Today started off with a jolt of adrenalin as I woke up only 35 minutes before I needed to be across the city for our second art history lecture! Upon arriving at the Santa Croce Cathedral I was greeted by an amazing sculpture of Dante towering over me. We entered into the church to find more exquisite stained glass, grave markers of the rich and influential beneath our feet and shrines carefully plotted around the room. Between the paintings, crypts, family crests, decorative accents and sculptural arrangements it was the beginning of our visual and historical overload for today. It became clear very shortly into the tour that Ranciere was right when all of the art movements have always existed just in different forms. We could see modernism, surrealism, minimalism and abstraction all at work as we moved from one work to the next.

Conversations about personal beliefs arose during the day and the learning curve was high for most of us. Giotto gained a whole lot of respect from me today and I learned that Michelangelo had his face punched in by an artistic rival very early in his life that left him with breathing problems his whole life. And I thought critiques were rough!

Despite the churches humble beginnings, patrons of the churches were starting to make their way into the religious paintings and sure enough, the full half front of the nave was reserved for the banking / commerce families who helped pay for the building and upkeep of the cathedral. As we moved throughout the site we were able to see many damaged frescoes on the walls. At one point, many of the paintings on the wall were painted over in favour of a more minimal and less opulent aesthetic. I began to think of these remnants, sometimes just the underpaintings, as shadows. Often dark brown or raw umber in colour, the organic plaster fragments were quite figurative in form.

My most favourite relics seen today were wonderful cartoons rubbed onto fresco panels that were unpainted. The quality and rendering of line makes me want to draw large figurative contour drawings back in the studio, but I haven’t been able to arrive at how that would fit into my research. Ha! Just had an idea.

I think the biggest surprise today was coming across a Henry Moore today in the outdoor courtyard of Santa Croce. “Warrior with Shield” gleaned regardless of the lack of sun, simply due to its simplistic rendering and powerful attention to the surface of the sculpture. The marks somewhat reminded me of the crude rendering of Michelangelo’s intended pieta, that he violently destroyed while working on it.

As it was another rainy day, architectural spaces with their shadows began to stick out for me. I know Gaston Bachelard would have been pointing out each and every one of them today if he were on the tour. The good news is that I am not short of ideas. The bad news is that we are busy touring until next Sunday and I am not sure how I will get any substantial work done. Also, it turns out the webcam I ordered for part of my planned works has not arrived on time so my honey, Geoff, won’t be able to bring it with him tomorrow. He arrives tomorrow!

Other good news is that I am starting to get the hang of the Italian language. Menus in Italian and English menus are helping with this. Also, everyone here is very kind and generous when pronouncing things for us. This happened over lunch when we ducked into a small bistro after hours of walking both north and south of the river.

Tomorrow the group is meeting at Piazza di Madonna degli Aldobrandini where the Medici chapel is located. I am sure it will be a good review of Brunelleschi for me, but really I just want to hang out in the studio and get some playing out of the way before hubby arrives. We have just been notified by OCAD that we need to get our TA requests in, so that will also need to get done this weekend, not to mention me typing up my didactic draft for the next exhibition at Quest Art. My guess is that I will have some time while Geoff catches up on his sleep over the next couple of days. That being said, good night sweet Florence.