New Magazine: Prado
Cover of Prado. On the Cover Design: A Preparatory drawing by the sculptor Cristina Iglesias for the Doors of the Prado Museum’s new extension.
According to the last page of the magazine: “The format of Prado has the exact same proportions as the painting Las Meninas by Velázquez.”
Diego Velázquez. Las Meninas. (a. 1656) Oil on Canvas. Prado Museum, Madrid.
The Prado Museum–one of the most important museums in Europe–has begun publishing a new magazine simply titled Prado. A press release on the Museum’s website explains:
Starting this week, the new issue of Prado magazine will be available in the Museum’s shop. This magazine, the first issue of which was published last year, is a bilingual publication in Spanish and English with contributions signed by prestigious guests such as, in this issue, the photographers Gianni Berengo Gardin and Attilio Maranzano, the essayist, poet and playwright Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Príncipe de Asturias Award for Communications and Humanities in 2002, or the architect and Professor Juan José Lahuerta, amongst others The magazine includes the documentary in DVD Patinir and the Invention of Landscape.
The magazine is beautifully illustrated and written. Rather than a stuffy, academic publication, it looks more like a high-end architectural or design magazine.
I wonder why I have to go to Madrid to buy a bilingual magazine from an internationally-renowned museum. I was lucky enough to be at the Museum shop when this issue came out. But, I’m not going to Spain to buy each new issue.
The Museum website does raise the unspecified possibility of getting the magazine another way by stating in its press release: “Purchase by email: tiendaprado@museodelpradodifusion.es.”
Photographing People at the Opera
Bill Henson, Untitled 5/59, 1990-91
Bill Henson, Untitled 29/77, 1990-1991
Looking at these and the other images from the Paris Opera Project, I am surprised by their strong sense of narrative. Yes, they are beautifully composed, but it is knowing the story that makes it possible to appreciate the technical artistry in Henson’s work.
Recently, I had a conversation with a friend who is trained as a figure painter. Over the past few years he has worked almost exclusively in landscapes. Now he sells more paintings with trees and sky than with people in them. I asked him the obvious question: Why aren’t there people in your paintings anymore? Isn’t that what you do best?
He replied that it is increasingly difficult nowadays to find narratives to paint that can be understood and appreciated by a large number of people. According to him, our society has become so diverse that no one story can be easily or, even, successfully shared. (If I didn’t know he was a painter, I would have thought he was an advertising executive lamenting the diminishing audiences for network television commercials.)
There are two issues here: first, whether or not paintings can or should appeal to a large audience (i.e. Vox populi est vox dei); second, whether or not there are still universal narratives.
I will not deal with the first issue in this post. (Later I plan on posting on an argument between Strauss and Mahler who discussed the same issue, but in regards to classical music.) As for the second issue, according to the New York Times critic, Alex Ross, more Americans attended an Opera last year than Football and Basketball games combined. Bill Henson’s work proves that there are narratives that can maintain their strength while being shared with a large audience.
Even if you have never seen an opera, if you have ever been to a ballet, musical, or movie theater, you can relate. The result is not only the ability to connect with the painter on an emotion level (i.e. one of the fundamental purposes of art), but it allows the viewer to then explore the technical ability of the Henson without having to continually question what he is depicting.
I first learned about Henson’s work on the the Photoshelter website. There they include additional photos and a brief interview with Henson.