Moray Art Centre, Findhorn, until 22 August 2010

One Female and Two Male Heads - Anonymous Venetian Black Chalk Drawing (British Museum)

Nameless – Anonymous Drawings of 15th & 16th Century Italy from The British Museum, The Courtauld Gallery and National Gallery of Scotland

is a significant and provocative exhibition which explores the essential value of art and creativity in an age of celebrity. The exhibition of anonymous drawings forms the centrepiece of a larger interdisciplinary programme of events, performances, talks, workshops and classes exploring concepts of Beauty, Renaissance and Authorship.

Opening concurrently with The British Museum, London, and The Uffizi in Florence’s Fra Angelico to Leonardo and the Courtauld Gallery’s exhibition Michaelangelo’s Dream, the exhibition is imaginative and expansive both in its context and premise, enabling hidden anonymous treasures to be viewed by the public for the first time.

The question of what constitutes “nameless greatness” in an era where branding, fame and celebrity define Western cultural values and aspirations is extremely pertinent and timely. The exhibition team, including Moray Art Centre Founder and Director Randy Klinger, Dr. Alison Wright, Head of Renaissance Art History, University College London, and Freda Matassa, ex-Head of Collections Management, Tate Galleries & Royal Academy, London, have created a wonderful stimulus for artistic engagement, appreciation and debate.

What resonates throughout the exhibition is the value of drawing as an intimate and immediate means of human expression unfettered by the prejudice of attribution.

The concept of authorship and its meaning in the contemporary world is highlighted by the selection of anonymous Renaissance drawings, actively challenging our collective need to value work in accordance with the art market and accepted canons of art history. The validation of a named master is wholly absent, heightening the viewer’s primary experience of the exhibition: that of connection with the timeless universality of human experience and emotion.

Even a contemporary largely secular audience could not fail to read the emotional gravitas contained within each delicate line of The Virgin Mary and Two Holy Women (Metalpoint with white highlighting on lilac prepared paper, British Museum). This arrangement of figures traditionally displayed at the base of the crucifixion becomes all the more powerful in isolation, depicted in a way which articulates human fragility.

Accentuated by the technique of metalpoint which creates an amazing delicacy of line, this inherent vulnerability can be seen in the weeping drapery and compassionate arrangement of the three female figures drawn to each other in grief, their hands converging at the centre of the composition. This human mark is a gesture transcendent of religion and time which finds pure expression here in the immediacy of drawing.

Similarly when viewing Portrait Drawing of A Man (Black chalk on pale brown paper, British Museum) the soft sensuousness of the medium is immediately tactile, linking the crafting of the image with our essential reading of it. Although we do not know the identity of the artist or the subject, their direct gaze meets our own in a way that is immediately arresting and compelling.

Reminiscent of Durer, the fine rendering of detail and facial modelling in chiaroscuro displays enviable draughtsmanship; however, the resounding tone of the exhibition is not intimidation through artistic pedigree or technique but an irresistible invitation to see not just the world of the artist, but ourselves.

Throughout the exhibition the viewer is in awe not of names but of the struggle, curiosity, insight and craft demonstrated by an individual human hand and mind, qualities which the supporting programme of workshops and classes will no doubt enable people to explore for themselves in greater depth.

The tiny red chalk drawing of Virgin and Child and St Anne (Courtauld Gallery, London) is one of the highlights of the exhibition, conveying all the vigour and energy of the artist’s first response to the subject. The drafted sketch lines still visible in this and other works in the exhibition, such as St. John the Evangelist, after Jacopo Sansovino (Red chalk and red wash over traces of black chalk on buff paper, squared in black chalk, National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh), convey the discipline of the medium.

Created at a time when workshop education within a recognised school was the norm, these drawings can be seen simultaneously as visual workings within a larger framework of artistic production and tangible evidence of the singular vision of the artist as maker.

One of the most potent and exciting works in the show, Anamorphic drawing of a rider on a monstrous horse (Pen and ink over traces of black chalk on three pieces of paper stuck together, Courtauld Gallery, London), displays its dynamism not just in the arrangement of the image within an angular trajectory but in the animation and fluidity of pen and ink.

Seen at an extreme angle of vision to the left or right, the fantastical image merges in an ambiguous morphing of man and beast. The claw-like hands and muscular body of the rider coupled with the unbridled energy of the horse engulfed in cloud or flame is furiously elemental in its movement, an image violently pulled in opposing directions.

The imaginative appeal of this work lies in the strange combination of an almost scientific optically-driven approach to the construction of the image and the magical, otherworldly experience of seeing it emerge like a phantom from that dark space in the corner of your eye.

Although we will never know the identity of its creator, this drawing, like many others in the exhibition, affirms the value of creative process and the possibility of re-birth through human enquiry, thought and creative action. The exhibition as a whole causes us to re-examine our criteria for judging beauty and the cultural meaning of Renaissance.

The supporting programme of events offers an astonishing array of possibilities for wider engagement with the exhibition’s central themes of Beauty, Renaissance and Authorship.

A series of talks including The Interpretation of Form in the Renaissance by Dr Antonio Locarfaro, University of Siena, Renaissance Discoveries in Anatomy by artist Alan McGowan, Renaissance Poetry and Culture by Patrick Hart, University of Strathclyde and Orpheus Revived: The Re-birth of Platonism at the Heart of the Renaissance Movement by Anthony Rooley, Director, Consort of Musicke & Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, Basel will compliment the exhibition.

In addition, performances of Renaissance poetry, music and Commedia del’arte, together with classes in Life Drawing, Printmaking, Figure Drawing in Silverpoint, Modern Fresco Painting, Renaissance Portraiture. Renaissance Anatomy, Renaissance Painting Technique; Imprimatura and Glazing, a series of young people’s classes, family day art classes; Work in a Renaissance Studio and Drawing: Renaissance Perspective and a Scottish/ Italian Food, Drink and Trades Festival will enable people of all ages to participate in the event.

Nameless is an event which expands beyond the boundaries of a traditional gallery space, bringing the viewer into contact with the “nameless greatness” and humility of the human mark. It is an extraordinary gift to the entire region defined by the vision and energy which has defined Moray Art Centre from its conception.

© Georgina Coburn, 2010

Links

• Moray Art Centre