SCRATCHINGS

To see Michelangelo’s drawings, on display now at The Met, is to see mastery. Even the tiniest, earliest studies for paintings and architecture projects – his scratchings – have an awesome sense of certainty. Michelangelo draws a lot, at different scales, and to different levels of finish, but he never draws incorrectly or unnecessarily. All his work, even his painting, is sculptural, about the expression of three-dimensional form. He seems to be continually pulling forms out of the air and pinning them down on the page.

Some drawings have a quick, off-the-cuff quality, as if noting an idea that might or might not be pursued. On a facade study for the Church of San Lorenzo, the left half is expressed with light ink strokes in shadow and ornament, while the right half remains in outline, as was the convention when presenting symmetrical designs. Simple shadows pop columns and frames forward dramatically. Figural sculptures along the roofline, depicted in rough streaks of ink, spring to life. They are recognizably human, and look as if they might jostle with one another or jump off the ledge. Even a drawing this diagrammatically conceived, non finito, has a rich physical and emotional presence.

Among many gifts, Michelangelo has a gift to see the reality of a thing in its smaller parts. Many drawings on display are fragments, sometimes surreal, depicting a single arm, thumb, claw, doorway, or base molding. Though most are studies for larger realized works, each is rendered with such sculptural richness so that it is, in itself, fully realized. The paper these fragments are drawn on, small squares of faded parchment, act as a film between this and the next world, upon which the figures leave a swift, bold impression.

Michelangelo Buonarroti (Italian, 1475–1564), with additions and restorations. Demonstration Drawing for the “First Design” of the Facade of San Lorenzo. Pen and brown ink, brush and two hues of brown wash, over underdrawing in leadpoint, compass work, ruling in leadpoint and stylus, black chalk, on six sheets of paper. Casa Buonarroti, Florence.

February 10, 2018 by Nalina Moses

DRESS WHITES

An installation at The Met recreates a closet from the Greenwich Village studio apartment of Sara Berman. Berman was born in 1920 in Belarus, emigrated to Palestine in 1940, and then to New York in 1953. From 1982 until her death in 2004, she stored her her all-white wardrobe, as well as other loose possessions, in a single walk-in closet, on two hangbars and six rows of narrow wood shelves. Her wardrobe consisted of: ten or so pairs of trousers, twenty or so shirts, ten or so sweaters, stacks of folded socks and underclothes, two wool scarves, two wool caps, one pair of gloves, a cotton bathrobe, three plastic wristwatches and, on the floor, seven pairs of flats with their toes pointed outwards. The housewares stored inside include: linens, towels, an iron, a globe, a white wood serving tray, a steel casserole, a set of painted ceramic mugs, a small stack of letters, and about a dozen books.

All these things are fine and lovingly cared for, but they are not luxurious, and they are not sentimental. They are remarkable instead because Berman selected and displayed them with such care. Stacks of tshirts and underpants are folded precisely, as if for sale, each pile sitting an inch away from the next. Shirts are ironed and buttoned, facing front, with an inch left between each hanger. The things contained in this closet, shockingly few in number for a contemporary American, are all of what Sara Berman needs.

Berman’s closet isn’t monastic; it offers its own kind of opulence. With the pieces inside it’s possible to craft a great number of ensembles, spanning seasons and occasions. Her closet might be as rich in fashion possibilities as Nan Kempner’s famously overstuffed ones. A small photograph of her on the gallery wall shows her in white coat, shirt and trousers, with a mens striped necktie, looking naturally, elegantly and eccentrically chic. This closet, filled with her personal effects, could have been understood as a memorial. Instead it speaks, strongly, to her love for herself and her love for her life.

Photograph © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

November 26, 2017 by Nalina Moses

BELLES LETTRES

I knew there would be trouble when, in 2013, The Metropolitan Museum of Art hired a Chief Digital Officer and abandoned its metal admission pins. Then, in February 2016, to coincide with the opening of the The Met Breuer, the museum unveiled a new brand identity, adopting “The Met,” spelled out in squat cherry red letters, as its official logo. Designed by Wolff Olins, the company that guided the Tate through its phenomenal expansion, the intent was to bring the museum into the twenty-first century.

The new logo, bright and informal, leaves me longing for the DaVinci-style M that served as the museum’s logo, perfectly, for 45 years. That single letter, based on a Renaissance woodcut in the collection by Fra Luca Pacioli, looked as if it had been hand-drafted, with regulating lines and circles sketched finely around it. It was instantly recognizable, and carried rich connotations: history, geometry, mathematics, proportion, rigor, rhythm, beauty.

The new swollen run-on letters are, by comparison, garish. They’re shaped messily and meet messily, like lumps of Play-Doh. What suffers the most are the E’s, whose center strokes tilt upward like trumpets. The lower E even gives over its top left corner to the soft shoulder of the preceding M. And the two T’s are entirely different: the first kicks its little leg to the left, the second to the right. These no longer letters, they’re cartoons. The Met, one of our country’s most storied cultural institution, has reshaped its logo for illiterates.

May 21, 2016 by Nalina Moses