Rembrandt
is too much work: too old-fashioned, too dark, too psychological, too analog. I
remember putting off going to a gigantic Rembrandt print exhibit in Rome till
my last day in town; I was arted-out, and not up to it. But of course it turned
out to be unforgettable, getting the Italian point of view.
And
then there’s the experience of suddenly getting attacked by paintings like the Flora in the Met, or the
National Gallery’s Woman bathing in a stream, that leave you destroyed,
and make every other kind of picture seem pointless.
Fortunately
we overcame our laziness to make it to the last day of the Getty’s Drawings
by Rembrandt & His Pupils.
We
got there before it opened, and had a hour of decent viewing before the crowd
got out of hand, and then had the rest of the day to recover in the sunshine of
the garden and café.
Recover
is the word. It was a tough show. It was set up as a drawing lesson: a sequence
of comparisons with a drawing by Rembrandt and a drawing by a Pupil of the same
subject or style. The text panels presented an analysis based on the assumption
that when Rembrandt made a drawing, no matter how sketchy, the marks were never
decorative or doodles, but always purposeful indications of light, texture,
weight and above all psychological interaction. Whether true or false, this
unfortunately became a stick with which to beat the poor Pupils.
There
were plenty of Rembrandts that stopped you dead. The British Museum’s Study
of Hendrickje Sleeping (1654-5) that became ubiquitous in L.A. in the exhibition
banners. It’s so beautiful and outside of any period style it could have come
from 16th century China or 1950s New York.
The
Seated female nude
from the Chicago Art Institute was in a similar style, but less genial,
expressing a more complicated kind of regard.
Rembrandt’s
curiosity and openness were demonstrated in Three studies of a bearded man (1636-40), as well as his
ability to express brutality (Cain slaying Abel, 1642).
But
despite the text panels, I’m not sure all the comparisons were entirely in
Rembrandt’s favor.
I
have a book that reproduces Willem Drost’s Angel departing from the family
of Tobit
as Rembrandt. And why not? It’s one of the most convincing images of visionary
experience in art. It shows what people must look like after they’ve had a
revelation.
But
the pupil drawing I wanted to take home was the completely decorative Cottages
beneath high trees in bright sunlight (circa 1660) by Constantijn Daniel van Renesse.