I am a revolutionary, a cultural revolutionary. If you are happy with a status quo in art that has destroyed Rembrandt along with most of the cultural norms that have been in place since art began, you need not read on. If on the other hand you are dissatisfied with the present state of barbarism, I have a lot of homework for you. This museum is well stocked. Much I have said before on my blog and on Youtube but here they are arranged in an order that makes more sense: the chronology of the art rather than the chronology of my discoveries; with links to the relevant YouTube films
I made these discoveries over the last 40 years and though the evidence comes from a wide variety of primary sources (the works themselves) and many have been published in top rank art periodicals they have not been heeded. The facts that emerge from my investigations are often greatly at variance with established art history, where my work has met with unrelenting resistance. This is hardly surprising as the discoveries effectively pull the red carpet from under the feet of many of the mighty in art history and archaeology.
Normally such a radical revolution has to be implemented with machine guns but as they would seem out of place in a cultural debate, I have had to resort to naming names in order to try to provoke a response from a faculty that has up till now resisted with sullen silence, distortions or outright lies. To avoid blackening a whole profession I should mention that I have won most useful support from such prestigious names as Prof, Sir Ernst Gombrich, Slade Professor Sir Lawrence Gowing and archaeologist Herbert Hoffmann.
The Internet has provoked successful revolutions in the middle-east. Let us see if it can provoke a velvet revolution in culture. The public has the right to decide whether I am the crank I am often taken for, or the prophet of a new and better age in art, as I myself presume. Without your public participation with comments I can achieve nothing. This site is interactive. I am retiring from one of my day-time jobs (as director of the Verrocchio Arts Centre) in order to devote more time to this and my work as a sculptor/teacher.
The reform of art history is one of the most pressing needs of our civilization. The desperate errors of judgment that are being perpetrated by our art experts on a daily basis in both modern and ancient art must indicate that something is amiss. I have made more discoveries in the field of art history than anyone alive or dead, yet very few are interested in learning to see what I see. Previous courses advertised on the subject of Rembrandt, the greatest humanist artist that has ever lived, had no takers at all. This course is more general.
Surely an artist has equal or better claims on the subject of seeing than an art historian. Observation is after all my daily practice as a sculptor. Whereas, to tell the truth, art historians seem much more interested in each others books than in the objects they claim to be studying. I have the huge advantage over the professionals that I come to those objects without the inbuilt prejudices with which art history blinkers its students. I have considerable practical knowledge in the case of sculpture and drawing. In the case of painting at least I understand what an artist can produce from his unaided memory. The theories of art history are a a sick joke in that respect.
During my lecture at Harvard I was told that “in the 17th century artists did not even need still-lives in front of them.” When I asked how they got that idea, the answer came back – certain flower paintings have flowers in them that do not bloom at the same season! I pointed out that flowers wilt, that flower painters pick their specimens one at a time – to the consternation of all concerned.
This kind of nonsense was meant to justify the idea that Rembrandt did no need models to draw from. An idea that I could see was completely untrue in a ten minute flick through of his drawings. Equal research in the documents of those who actually knew Rembrandt confirmed my certainty that he set up groups of actors to draw from.
As a culture we have tolerated the steady destruction of the Rembrandt in the full glare of publicity, with few a murmurs of complaint. Wake up, you are living in a time of unprecedented descent into visual barbarism. If you are happy with myths stick with art history as it is; otherwise learn to see –
THE REFORM OF ART HISTORY (from the 1st – 14th July 2011 at the beautiful Verrocchio Arts Centre). Apply to nkonstam@verrocchio.co.uk
How wonderful that Germany has renounced nuclear power. A brave decision that may cost something economically but should regain them the moral authority lost by the Nazis. If the world follows their excellent example we humans might just survive.
I was invited to speak about Rembrandt by PINC, a Dutch equivalent of Ted. It was a great experience. One got a mere 20 minutes to say one’s piece. I spent ages trying to cut mine down to that length. I just about managed it but at the last minute I tried to include something about two previous speakers that were relevant to my story. It ate up precious minutes so the rest was too hurried. Fortunately, I had a second chance which turned out very much better (see “Triumph”)
I have had a most fruitful time at exhibitions here in Amsterdam, Leiden and the Hague. I also had a good talk with Dr. C.Vogelaar who is in charge of Lakenhall at Leiden and the curator of The Lucas van Leiden’s shows there and at The Rembrandt House. The shows were a great treat, I saw a clear line of descent even from Lucas’ teacher, to Rembrandt. Rembrandt quite clearly doted on LvL. Not only did he pay a very high price for his prints initially. He re-bought them after his bankruptcy and hung on to them till he was forced to be porn them in1668.
Lucas was not a great painter but the syntax of his drawings and prints was a very strong springboard from which Rembrandt took off. In my analysis of the syntax in my DVD I use Holbein and Roman portraits as the springboard but Lucas was a hero in his own town. I will write a little piece about it here when I receive the necessary photos from Dr.Vogelaar.
The Rembrandt House Museum has done a wonderful job of restoring the house to something very like it must have been (nearly new) in Rembrandt’s time. It now gives a real sense of what it once was. The only thing missing is the multitude of old clothes, cloths and props, which I am assured will be present, if not in multitudes, when the present exhibition of Rembrandt and Lucas van Leiden finishes. They, of course are very strong corroboration of my view of Rembrandt.
ps. The baskets full of life casts of hands and a head painted by Rembrandt himself was also missing!
I have one horror to report of my Dutch visit: the same modern varnish that I was worried about in the Bronzino show is being used everywhere and on the Rembrandt’s in the Mauritzhuis it is a disaster. If you can imagine a shiny surface on a dark and highly textured painting with a chandelier of three dozen halogen bubbles behind; poor Rembrandt seems to be covered in tinsel. The same goes for the darker Van Goghs in his museum, though there the lighting is not quite so horrific.
The party at the Benboom’s was a triumph. Lots of guests from the media in a lovely house and garden with delicious food. Prof.Van der Wetering of the RRP came, armed with slides and a new thick book of his. Henk had gone to the trouble of making a little booklet for his invitation to the event. I am sure those who came were not disappointed.
I spoke with the same slides I had used for PINC but without that sense of the hopelessness of trying to put it over in 20 minutes. In fact it really only took me half an hour taking it at a sane pace. I had asked for that time and then was prepared for a conversation or questions. Van der Wetering immediately got up and took over with slides that clearly showed he had not taken in the difference between a mirror image and a print image. I had imagined that I had become at least a flea in his ear after our encounter at the Wallace, (I knew he had taken in nothing of my earlier instruction at Casole where we had a day of exchanges on precisely the same material, some ten years ago) No such luck – he was hardly aware of what I had to say and his reply to my presentation was way off beam. He produced a string of cartoon reversals such as artists have used since paper got large enough to make cartoons.
(I will explain again the difference between the two reversals; just in case the professor bothers to check out this blog. A cartoon or print reversal is that made by printing off a plate as in etching or turning over the paper for a cartoon. Piero della Francesca’s two angels in the Madonna del Parto at Monterchi are probably the most famous example of cartoon reversals. Mirror reversals are much less easily recognized as they do not contain the simple symmetry of the cartoon reversal. The examples in www.saveRembrandt.org.uk are the best ones known. I was the first to discover those about 300 years after they were done.)
Madonna del Parto at Monterchi
We were talking about two different things. When I pointed this out he seemed genuinely baffled, he did not understand. He was really rattled and accused me of having just one bee in my bonnet for 40 years about mirrors, whereas he was a Rembrandt scholar!. “I beg your pardon” I said and enumerated a number of my discoveries and pointed to a supply of my brochures for The Museum of Artists’ Secrets on the table in front of him. He apologized and congratulated me, not altogether sincerely, I thought.
At another point he started to say that I would take his cartoon reversals for mirror images. I had to intervene to say please do not guess at what I would think, I have never said any such thing. At another point he told me I hated art historians. I hope I answered that I had good reason to. Though we have met twice before he was so confident that he could bulldoze me that he had not bothered to do any homework. Fortunately many of the audience had. He claimed to know my Burlington article (Feb 1977) but he clearly had not understood that it undermined the foundations of the scholars’ view of Rembrandt.
It was a clash of David and Goliath, afterwards I trembled with the excitement that the biblical hero must have felt. It was a great evening. I took an informal consensus after and found only one of the 25 or so people present seem to think Goliath had won. Most were really excited by my insights. There were publishers and journalists present so I can only hope that something of that excitement will get into the public domain. Above all I hope my book on Rembrandt will at last get published. It was written and accepted by Phaidon in 1978 but when the heinous reader’s report came through from an anonymous Rembrandt scholar, Phaidon dropped it and ran, not waiting for my response. Nor would any other publisher risk it at that time.
Surely now that the RRP has collapsed and the scholars of the drawings have made such fools of themselves at the Getty; now must be the time to publish. The public is anxiously awaiting a new view of the splendid, unique, Rembrandt: the most innovative artist of all time and the most human.
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If anyone took a video of the encounter described above it would be fun to put a little film together for my next DVD.
I forgot to mention I am running a course at Verrocchio, from the 1-14 July to initiate the long overdue reform of Art History. There are still places available (see this site for details).
Its been one of those days of learning. Starting with sun on a sprinkling of snow. I devoted myself to the maquette of Hendrijke Stoffels which fills me with enthusiasm, the drawing is so superb (I write about it in part 6 of the Getty crit).
It was too cold to sit out in the conservatory as I usually do when the weather is fine but I noticed the sun streaming through the glass double doors in the hall, so I sat there for lunch. It was really warm though the lemon trees were not giving off that perfume that Goethe loved. Too early in the year I guess, there were lemons of every size up to nearly mature and also a few tiny flower buds.
Because the final lighting can only be controlled artificially on the maquette, I got to the point by 3pm that I needed to wait till dark to continue. So I went out for a walk two hours before my normal time. It was a revelation: instead of a fairly solitary time as usual. I had a number of refreshing human encounters. The most interesting for olive growers was two men harvesting olives with delightfully quiet machines. The first I had seen, though I gather they are a few years old. A crown of 5 or 6 plastic spikes, about 40cm long, rotate on a tubular handle of more than 2m. It runs off a car battery. This simple and gentle device knocks the olive to the ground where they are collected in a net. No dangerous ladders are involved, or fretting of the hands.
Olive Harvesting machine
Olive growing is now a labour of love. The price of the oil does not begin to cover the cost of pruning, harrowing or mowing, harvesting and pressing but it does provide a delicious, nutritious accompaniment to salads etc. Furthermore it can be stored away in a bottle for when the going gets hard in winter. “Ripe for the Picking” by Annie Hawes is a book which knocks home the importance of this aspect of the olive to the earlier peasantry, it is also a very funny book.
I have started a “Reasons for Rejoicing” series on Facebook. A much needed offering as we face the prospect of a double dip in the economy. My first offering is – The Pope, God Bless him, has taken one tiny step away from dogma, towards common sense. Tomorrows will be – Contraception is allowable to stop the spread of HIV, wow! There’s progress.
The exhibition at Spoleto went so well that we are planning a much more extended exhibition with educational presentations on both Rembrandt and Maitani at nearby Todi.
Todi is a beautiful, unspoilt, hill-top city with magnificent buildings dating back to pre-Roman times with splendid examples of later churches and palazzi. The Tempio of San Fortunato is the truest Gothic church I know in Italy. It has some unusual Karma Sutra type carvings on the façade, so minute that you will need a guide to point them out. My guide was Luca from the Museo Lapidario. He showed me Todi as a treasure trove of stone during my short stay. I hope to re-visit it at leisure while my exhibition is on.
The Museo Lapidario is the ideal place for the presentations as it is well equipped to show DVDs to small audiences. The dedicated staff have promised to translate my DVDs into Italian. Todi is a short distance from Orvieto where the façade of the Duomo is covered with 112 sq.m of relief. My DVD should persuade people that Lorenzo Maitani was the great master-mind behind the sculpture as well as the architect. My most recent discovery is how Maitani was able to transmit his ideas so clearly to his band of assistants. (It is very probable that one of them later carved the façade of The Tempio mentioned above.)
If all goes well this show should take place around Christmas time.
The Museo Lapidario in Todi, Perugia
The Tempio of San Fortunato
The Hield Gallery show was a great success socially and artistically,
there was a very good turn out and send in. Those of you who know Unity, would have been amazed by the efficiency of
her operation. She is the loving heart at the centre of a
team who run a “not for profit organization”: The Gallery,
the village of Bishop Monkton and Unity’s house and garden are quite a
dream of beauty and organization.
I fear that what little profit might have accrued from the
enormous effort they all put in, preparing for the
show, would have been eaten and drained away by the delicious snacks and
drinks they so generously provided for the private view.
There were 24 people sitting down to dinner at the pub the night before
and probably twice that number of Verrocchio students at the private
view. Including two from Iceland! It was a lovely occasion in spite of the rain. We had a very good time. A marquee had been erected in the courtyard which provided plenty of room for socializing.
It was sad that Unity’s gorgeous garden could not be visited by those
who came in the rain, I was fortunate enough to see it the day before: a miniature Capability Brown!
I would like to say a very big thank you to Unity and her team on behalf of all those who enjoyed
their hospitality. It was a great occasion.
Letter from a student
We have had a delightful group of singers, led by Ghislaine Morgan, staying and rehearsing at Verrocchio. It turns out that the accoustics of the large painting studio are very good to sing in. There are 20 people in the choir and this is near the maximum we can deal with here.
The course will end with two concerts: the first here on 18th August 9.30 in the Collegiata and the second in the duomo of Volterra 19th August 18.30. music mainly of Palastrina & Bianciardi.
WE WELCOME SIMILAR GROUPS IN THE SUMMER MONTHS