Dear Leonardo,
This is a letter from the future. 500 years have passed since you lived your days in the salubrious era we now refer to as ‘The Renaissance’. You wouldn’t recognise this 21st century world, and it strikes me that you’d find the segment of it known as ‘The Art Scene’ a very odd circus indeed. In this day and age the makings of celebrity artists are commodified, while at grooming institutions called Art Colleges young aspiring creatives routinely endure brainwashing (i.e. psychological trauma) as they are prepared for entry to, and status within, the art market.
Just recently I was delighted to revisit some of your drawings of Deluges and Maelstroms. I realise that these works are but a tiny portion of your creative output, yet it seems to me that they exemplify much in our contemporary art world that has been trivialised, or lost altogether.
I’m no art historian and have scant knowledge of the details of your own art education, so when these questions popped up in response to the drawings, I decided to put them to you personally.
1 Did anyone in a position of assumed authority (teacher, curator, dealer, media critic) ever tear apart your work/practice in a critique, then inform you as to how it should look, and/or how you need to proceed?
2 Were you ever advised to subvert beauty? Were you cautioned that expressing the beautiful is beneath the concerns of any significant artist?
3 Were you ever told that you needed to loosen up and express yourself more spontaneously? That you might benefit from courses or workshops where you’d learn how to find your inner artist?
4 Was immaculate attention to detail and painstaking craftsmanship sniffed at in your day? Were artisans who worked this way considered anal or seen to be avoiding unresolved issues?
5 Did anyone ever advise you against your instinct (and awesome capacity) to express a sense of the sacred in your work? Were you ever told this devotional quality had no traction in the world of serious art? (i.e. What sells.)
6 Many of your paintings carry a narrative, whether sacred or secular. Did anyone ever tell you these narratives weren’t edgy enough? Not original or conceptual enough? That they lacked the irony and anxiety required to be really relevant?
7 OR … were you blessed to have guidance from some inner angel who ensured that your imperatives were never at risk from the ideas of others? Who ensured you’d never be led astray from your own way of expressing the wonder of being alive – of inquiring, exploring with innocence and joy?
Of looking ever more deeply into the suchness of your world?
Without apology?
Rhetorical questions, I know. Please excuse me. So many young (and seasoned) artists of my time encounter and believe dogmatic and arcane opinions issuing forth from the self-appointed pundits of the visual arts. Sometimes they abandon their creative practice entirely.
Most of these questions will make no sense to you, since in your day concepts such as “inner artist” had yet to be dreamed up; the whole mind-field of psychology wouldn’t be mapped out (invented) for another few hundred years. But I know you’ll understand the bit about an inner angel.
Please accept my heartfelt gratitude for your relentless curiosity and unswerving commitment. Thank you for reminding us all, as the centuries roll on, of the high art of making authentic art.
Yours sincerely,
MLS
Maker and misfit from the 21st century.
About the drawings:
I am indebted to Stephen Ellcock, curator of the ultimate virtual ‘Cabinet of Curiosities’ on Facebook, for this collection of Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings from The Royal Collection. (Ellcock’s page is an ever-expanding, online museum of images, visual delights, oddities and wonders drawn from every conceivable culture, era and corner of the globe. For artists, it’s quite simply the best – and perhaps only – reason to hang in/out with FB.)
From his page: “The series of drawings by Leonardo of a mighty deluge are among the most enigmatic and visionary works of the Renaissance. Modest in size and densely worked, each shows a landscape overwhelmed by a vast tempest. The drawings were probably made for his own satisfaction rather than as studies for any project.”
News from The Royal Collection:
In February 2019, to mark the 500th anniversary of the death of Leonardo da Vinci, 144 of the Renaissance master’s greatest drawings in the Royal Collection will go on display in 12 simultaneous exhibitions across the UK.
Leonardo da Vinci: A Life in Drawing, a nationwide event, will give the widest-ever UK audience the opportunity to see the work of this extraordinary artist. 12 drawings selected to reflect the full range of Leonardo’s interests – painting, sculpture, architecture, music, anatomy, engineering, cartography, geology and botany – will be shown at each venue in Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Southampton and Sunderland, with a further venue to be announced.
For more information:
www.rct.uk
Have you read I, Leonardo, written and illustrated by Ralph Steadman?
It’s a masterpiece. Check it out by clicking the cover image below:
And don’t miss this beautifully illustrated review by Maria Popova at Brain Pickings:
Beloved British Artist Ralph Steadman Illustrates the Life of Leonardo da Vinci
The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.
– Leonardo da Vinci
the awakened eye 