standing in queue for Leonardo da Vinci...

 

It is dark, it is cold, it is early in the morning. I leave my hotel around 4.45 and arrive at the National Gallery at 5.15. There are I guess about 15 to 20 people earlier than me. From the beginning there is a split in the group. Around ten people look like they have spent the night in front of the Gallery. They have chairs, blankets and have put a lot of newspapers on the ground to keep warm, but they look very cold in spite of the blankets they have covered themselves under. They act hostile to the newcomers including me, as if arriving at 5 o’clock is a too lazy effort to deserve a ticket. Relatively fresh the second group – in the beginning – just stand, leaning against the wall and try to find a place to get a cup of coffee and to stay warm.

Two men are standing next to me. I say hi to them but they are not so much into talking. Basically they seem to be very tired and very cold. They are nice though. Because we are packed so tight in the row, I keep bumping into them, trying to find the most comfortable way to lean against the wall for the five-hour wait. Sorry, I keep saying, but they can laugh about it. Those are my quiet neighbours on the right.

On the left a man in a black overcoat, a red scarf and a grey baseball has arrived, an elderly man, white long hair is showing underneath his baseball hat - but that I can only see a few hours later when the sun sets. It is Bengt Holmén, a 82-year-old numismatist - the study of history through coins - who is still an active member of the Historical Society of Gothenburg. He lectures about Leonardo da Vinci and he asks me if I’m interested in his lecture. Without waiting for my answer professor Holmén starts his talk.

Here I am on a cold dark morning, standing outside a gallery waiting to get admission to one of the greatest artist ever lived. But why? Why are we standing here, I ask the professor, why are people willing going through this ordeal just to see a few pictures? It is fame, the professor says. They want to see Leonardo because he is famous; if you are famous people are interested in you…

Rosebud is the online research diary of Anna No Picture: master Arts and Sciences, Artistic Research 2012

anna

Leonardo da Vinci, Painter at the Court of Milan, National Gallery London

 

It is dark, it is cold, Trafalgar Square is deserted, no sign of the cheerful business of the daytime. Only commuters, the cleaning persons, the breakfast serving hotel staff waiting for their morning bus I see on my walk to the National Gallery in London, anticipating to visit the exhibition Leonardo da Vinci, painter at the court of Milan. Arrive at 5 o’clock at the National Gallery. The square is empty, it is dark. The tube is not running yet, de gates are closed. Some newspapers stands are open. The biggest concern amongst the early waiters at the Gallery is were to find a place selling coffee. The promised coffee stand provided by the Gallery is not there...

At six, staff from the National Gallery arrive, they start organising the queueing, hang up plastic bags to collect garbage and hand out leaflets of the exhibition. At seven the number of people waiting in line is already very impressive. At eight o'clock people get send away. They won't be able to get a ticket anymore. At ten the Gallery opens. Some latecomers inform how they can get it. You have to stand in line, the warden says, but queueing starts very early. At five, I say...

Rosebud is the online research diary of Anna No Picture: master Arts and Sciences, Artistic Research 2012

anna

Madonna Litta (1491-95)

One of the paintings shown at the exhibition Leonardo da Vinci: painter at the court of Milan currently running at the National Gallery London is Madonna Litta

 

It is a picture of Madonna nursing the infant Jesus.

There is a peculiar analysis made by Sigmund Freud about Leonardo da Vinci and his alleged homosexuallity. He claims that Leonardo's father was absent and the boy, Leonardo, was entirely under feminine influence (p.99). According to Freud the 'child's love for his mother cannot continue to develop consciously any further; it succumbs to repression. The boy represses his love for his mother: he puts himself in her place, identifies himself with her, and takes his own person as a model in whose likeness he chooses the new objects of his love [...] For the boys whom he now loves as he grows up are aftel all only substitutes figures and revivals as himself in childhood - boys who he loves in the way his mother loved him when he was a child...(p.100)

anna

Rosebud is the online research diary of Anna No Picture: master Arts and Sciences, Artistic Research 2012

Literature
Freud, S. (1910). The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Volume XI. Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis Leonardo da Vinci and Other Works (J. Strachey, Trans.). London: The Hogarth Press.

Leonardo da Vinci, Painter at the Court of Milan, National Gallery London

Just went outside to dispose some empty bottles at the glass container. Almost got run over by newspaper boy on his scooter driving on the pedestrian path delivering the morning paper, but the thing is, it is very early in the morning and it is freezing cold. How on earth am I going to stand four or five hours of queueing for a ticket for Leonardo da Vinci, painter at the Court of Milan, National Gallery London? It is freezing, what if it is raining as well? And it is dark at 6 o'clock in the morning, i'll be bored with nothing to read in the dark...what was I thinking wanting to go to London to a blockbuster exhibition without a ticket?...

anna

Rosebud is the online research diary of Anna No Picture: master Arts and Sciences, Artistic Research 2012

Leonardo da Vinci, Painter at the Court of Milan, National Gallery London

So the question is...is it worthwhile queuing for several hours to get into a blockbuster exhibition?

The National Gallery website informs:

All advance tickets are now sold out...

A limited number of tickets will be available to purchase at the Gallery on each day of the exhibition. However these are subject to availability and likely to sell out quickly

We recommend arriving well before 10am as queuing starts very early

Ticket sales and exhibition entrance open at 10am

Please allow for several hours queuing time once the Gallery opens, and expect to wait for a further period of time between ticket purchase and entry to the exhibition...

anna

Rosebud is the online research diary of Anna No Picture: master Arts and Sciences, Artistic Research 2012

Leonardo da Vinci, Painter at the Court of Milan, National Gallery London

...die fascinatie voor lelijkheid...het vinden van een lelijke uitdrukking voor Judas zou Leonardo even veel moeite gekost hebben als het zoeken naar de ultieme schoonheid...

anna

Rosebud is the online research diary of Anna No Picture: master Arts and Sciences, Artistic Research 2012

Literatuur
Assouline, P. (2006) Rosebud, biografieën over het kleine detail. Breda: De Geus

Salvator Mundi Saviour of the World

De National Gallery in Londen wil Leonardo da Vinci nu eens niet als uitvinder en wetenschapper maar als schilder schrijft Birgit Donker in haar review in NRC Handelsblad donderdag 10 november 2011.

In de Britse media wordt al maanden uitgekeken naar de historische expositie en de publieke belangstelling is groot.

According to the November 12, 2011 article of Charles Darwent in The Independent, there have been exhibitions portraying Leonardo as the inventor of submarines, the tortured homosexual, Leonardo as the anatomist and cartographer, the Renaissance genius and the occult anti-hero of The Da Vinci Code. The National Gallery presents Leonardo as the artist hidden behind his other talents. The exhibition shows works of the years Leonardo worked at the court of Ludivico Sforza, the Duke of Milan from 1483 till 1499 and from 1508 till 1513.

I would like to investigate if and in what extent Leonardo da Vinci was or wanted to be a painter. For someone who only completed 20 paintings in a lifetime you might question his ambition to be an artist after all. In one of his last writings in 1518, Leonardo stops writing because perche la minesstra si fredda, his soup gets cold. In Charles Nicholls biography about Leonardo da Vinci there is an attempt to bridge the image of Leonardo as superhuman and the real person. I am very curious how the National Gallery deals with Leonardo’s fame and how they present him, as homo universalis, as an artist or a person worried about his soup getting cold. The National Gallery holds back 500 admission tickets for sale every morning of the exhibition. Queuing begins at 6am. The museum’s doors open at 10am, and the website warns of a four-hour wait. Those who persevere and get a ticket may have to wait much longer. This is a timed-ticket exhibition to help regulate visitor numbers, so it may be five hours later before one gets in. That is what generates the question: Is a blockbuster art show worth queueing for? Or will the crowds spoil the art experience?

anna

Rosebud is the online research diary of Anna No Picture: master Arts and Sciences, Artistic Research 2012

Literatuur
Donker, B. (2011) Mooier dan de natuur zelf. NRC Handelsblad. Cultureel Supplement p.8 - 9.

Salvator Mundi Saviour of the World

Ga naar London, naar de expositie Leonardo da Vinci, Painter at the Court of Milan in de National Gallery. Er is een nieuw schilderij te zien. Een nieuw schilderij van Leonardo da Vinci. Voor een schilder die maar 20 schilderijen gemaakt heeft life long is dat nogal bijzonder. Ter vergelijking Picasso schilderde 20 schilderijen in één maand. Nu is er dit nieuwe schilderij toegeschreven aan da Vinci. Salvator Mundi: Saviour of the World.

Er zijn drie redenen om dit schilderij te willen zien, de gezichtsuitdrukking, de 'typische' - hoe kan je van typisch spreken in zo'n gelimiteerd oeuvre - introverte blik, de hand en de glazen globe...op zoek naar het kleine detail bij da Vinci...blik, hand en globe...

oh, en de krullen natuurlijk...

anna

Rosebud is the online research diary of Anna No Picture: master Arts and Sciences, Artistic Research 2012

Literatuur
Assouline, P. (2006) Rosebud, biografieën over het kleine detail. Breda: De Geus