What is my dissertation about?

The Elector of Saxony’s wire drawing bench (1565) is an extremely complicated piece of art and technology which remains relatively unknown outside France and Germany. It deserves to be more widely known not only amongst the general public, but also art and cultural historians too, due to its unique straddling of the Renaissance art and scientific world.

Kunstgeographie: A brief guide for the perplexed

What is Kunstgeographie?

Literally translated, kunstgegraphie means the geography of art. Whereas the history of art looks at art in its historical and time-related context, the geography of art looks specifically at place. DaCosta Kaufmann sets it out clearly, 'if art has a history, it also at least implicitly had, and has, a geography; for if the history of art conceives of art as being made in a particular time, it also put it in a place'. (Towards a Geography of Art, p1)

Therefore when looking at art, you should think about geographic issues, in addition to everything else. Ask yourself what are the antecedents to a change in style? What are the particular environmental factors, societal, economic, personal, psychological, climate, materials that have encouraged this change? And why should the place of art not be as important as the history of that same art; after all, both have informed it equally, in my view.

Death, Romance and the Landscape

Time Passing

This piece is a rather odd collection of thoughts. As a jigsaw of unintended connections, it works as a semi coherent whole; from chance encounters with Tower Hamlets cemetery, various books on forests and a romantic landscape exhibition at the weekend. Wild wooded nature is the theme of all these and I've been thinking about how woodlands have been perceived by people at different times. There is a large physical difference between a dilapidated Victorian cemetery, South German primeval native forest, and sketches of pastoral fantasies. However they in turn have provided us, and continue to provide us, with pleasure, escape and a way of passing the time.

Strange Beauty and Augustus, Elector of Saxony

Altdorfer 'Landscape' 1518-20

It seems you can travel miles in search of a certain historical figure, and not realise that useful insights could be hiding in plain view. After a trip to Dresden to see Elector Augustus of Saxony's family home, I decided to visit to London's National Gallery 'Strange Beauty' exhibition. This is not a review because I am too late and its failings have been done to death. However for my purposes the exhibition was a success because it helped me frame some interesting art historical questions, as well as send me off in an unexpected direction.

Naturally I got distracted; in the introductory room I was able to spend quality time with the Arnolfini Portrait, where you could get up close and personal without the usual crowds (yes, I'm happy to pay to be alone with it); as well as some stunning engravings and woodcuts by Cranach and Holbein. The latter's Dance of Death (1526) showed how a tiny skeleton can imbue a scene with an emotional sense of loss - the unwilling toddler being led away was heart stopping. Another dual highlight was Dürer's Melancholia I and an engraving of a self portrait. That arresting gaze missed nothing; whilst the reflection of the windows captured the illumination of his own soul. 

The various Cranachs were, as usual, inscrutable and teasing. Finally I was getting there. Cranach the Elder spent a lot of time at the Elector of Saxony's court and was highly esteemed as an artist and diplomat. Cranach chose to depict the naked people of the mythical silver age fighting one another, against a backdrop of wild mountains and greenery. Instead of focusing on the positives of this age, where Jupiter introduces the seasons and agriculture, he shows the senselessness of men beating each other. The graceful, perfectly coiffed women with their toddlers look on. The fleshy tones and juxtaposition of violence and babies is disturbingly captivating. 

When the kunstkammer of the Electors of Saxony in Dresden was founded by Augustus, Elector of Saxony in 1560, paintings were subordinate to technology and other crafts. However, despite his practical focus, August cherished Cranach the Younger's Adam and Eve which he kept with his treasures. These slim paintings may lack either the sculptural monumentality of Michelangelo or the anguish of Massacio's Adam and Eve, but they have a power and allure of their own. The elegance and simplicity of the gestures catch them on the cusp of the fall; the calm before the storm, the moment of silence before the death and horror. You catch your breath at the inevitability of their temptation and they act as a reminder that we now need to rely on our industry to survive.

From Cranach to the second to last room where I finally captured my Elector; 'Nature and beauty' was the theme. I copied the text which explains the rationale of the pictures in this room. 

Critics have sometimes described German Renaissance art as ugly because of excessive emotion or natural detail but the images themselves present more subtle relationships between beauty, nature and artistry. Durer wrote of his constant search for accurate proportion but he also observed that the human body exists in varied shapes and sizes. Rather than searching for universal ideas of perfection German artists created beautiful images by exploring the diversity of the human form whether variations in body type the effect of ageing or the expressive power of gesture. 

They often lavished equal attention on topography and foliage since mountainous forest landscapes signalled Germanic identity and history. Albrecht invented the new genre of independent landscape omitting all human subjects. But in many figurative images too, landscape setting plays a vital part. Nature in these works is never an objective truth to be recorded. Instead the natural world becomes a subject for creative investigation.

It was Dürer's 'Illustrations of perspective from 'Four Books on Measurement' (1538) I saw Augustus. Augustus was constantly measuring everything, from surveying the land to mapping the heavens. He was looking to the art of science to work out the relationship between things. One article states, 'a 1580 handwritten catalogue lists 2,345 works in his collection from all fields - the classics, theology, history, medicine, surgery, law, mathematics, architecture, astronomy, tournaments and festivals, warfare, mining, numismatics, mineralogy, biology and agriculture'. So not so much creative investigation but early modern natural philosophical experimentation on what the earth can produce for the benefit of the Elector and his state.

Landscape was all. I don't know whether Augustus saw the romantic beauty of his wild forests and mountains, or if he saw the mineral ore, timber, and wealth that they provided. However it is the mountainous forest landscapes signall[ing] Germanic identity and history which has provided me with raw material for consideration. The wiredrawing bench is covered with images of a mysterious forested landscape and set against some of the images in this exhibition, it can only be described as 'germanic'. Altdorfer and his dramatic landscapes are going to provide some very interesting ideas.

The exhibition ends with questions and says, 'today art galleries avoid identifying aesthetic qualities with national character'. I agree, 'national character' is a very woolly and unhelpful phrase. However when a patron like Augustus commissions a work of art or technology, it is necessarily going to be identified with him and his personal interests. Where his interests are so forcefully tied to the identification and exploitation of his state's natural resources, do they produce a 'national character'? If a place is famed for its silver mines and industrial processes, and one of the tools of that process - the wiredrawing bench - is highly decorative, it is logical to assume that the images are inspired by the local landscape. Thus the work of art takes on a national character and demands an explanation in that context.

And this is what I'm setting out to investigate. 

Dresden Thoughts

I'm currently looking up at the sky. Reclining in the welcome silence of the hotel's quiet room with a cup of fruit tea. It's a fabulous place to collect one's thoughts and anticipate the weekend to come. The art historical odyssey of tomorrow and Sunday was merely words on a page today; though at least we know where we're going.

This visit has a purpose. Last year in Paris I came across a very special object in the Musee de la Renaissance. The Elector of Saxony's wire drawing bench is a perfect MA dissertation topic and I started work on it straight away for my summer report. You can take a lot from books and journal articles, but to truly get under the skin of a patron and his works, you have to see his place. His home. His culture. So here I am, banging on the door of the Royal Palace.

Leonhard Danner; Designer, Engineer, Inventor

Leonhard Danner of Nuremberg (V&A)

There is something curiously and inevitably contrary about the figure of Leonhard Danner, the sixteenth century Nuremberger engineer/inventor. A tireless figure who we can only imagine through the machines he left behind, the scope of which indicates the breadth of his expertise, imagination, whilst channelling the vision of princely patrons. Biographical details of his life are scant and unreliable; as befits a successful, wealthy, gentleman engineer we know roughly what he looked like but his date of birth is either 1497 or 1507. What we do know is that by 1585, married to his second wife Dorothea, he died a wealthy citizen, enjoying for a brief time an Imperial Privilege derived from timber. 

Passez-moi l'absinthe...

Le banc d’orfèvre

It's time for a change topic wise. I have a summer project to do and guess what? I've chosen another awkward one. The Research Project, we students are told,  'is your first piece of extended, independent research. It draws on the methods, issues and skills that have been raised in the Research Skills seminars and in the Core Course.'

It continues, 'the Research Project is principally concerned with the PROCESS of research rather than solely with the RESULTS of that process. It might have a practical or applied focus, for example, it could be based on a museum or a gallery, an exhibition or arts policy. Or it might focus on a particular work of art that explicitly raises questions of interpretation'.