Leonardo: Experience a Masterpiece

Ten Second Review: Beautiful ideas laid out quite thin across more rooms than it really needed. This could have been an amazing three room exhibition if the price didn’t demand the extra space.

Let me be clear; I have a great respect for The Old Masters, I have a great reverence for incredible artists of past eras and I respect the work that galleries around the world have done in not only preserving and maintaining art, but in researching and discovering more and more about individual pieces and movements as a whole.

Art galleries have spent the past few decades facing criticism on a host of fronts. Among other things they are unrepresentative, they are stuffy and they are difficult to understand to the uninitiated... but we are initiated aren’t we, Mr Wayne. The thing is, from a young age most children take part in some form of art and in most educational systems there is some sort of art class till at least the age of 14. Whether the art world would like to believe it or not, when art galleries are facing the above criticisms it’s not unfounded from people who’ve never picked up a medium or been to a museum before, it’s because they are not responding quickly enough.

The National Gallery has taken a stab at trying something different. Yes it’s a crowd drawing renaissance artist which is not in itself particularly interesting, but don’t count out the idea just purely on that basis. 

Why not take a deep and intimate look at a single painting? Not a time or era, not an artist or group, not a movement or style. A single painting. I’m sold! An examination of the technique, of the context of its creation and a dive into the mindset of the artist while working on it; amazing, sounds great. 

Sadly this isn’t quite the case.

Let’s begin positively. It is great to see a gallery doing something at least moderately different. The idea of a deep dive is wonderful and if well executed could serve the basis to give rise to a new classic work. The technology aspects at play here are wonderful too. There is so much incredible work done by researchers, restorers, curators and scientists in examining art and there really is a moment here where you feel that being shown to the public. There are ideas and set ups here for a real home run of an exhibition (and exhibition format for that matter). I implore more galleries and museums to take heading here and see what could be. Gallery spaces can be educational, engaging and interesting and it just takes believing the audience is there, and it is there!

The highlights of my discontent are as follows:

One painting sold as a da Vinci exhibit is misleading (call it Virgin of the Rocks not Leonardo). It is very expensive, especially as most of it is empty space. It really doesn’t explain that much about the painting. What this exhibit really is is a couple bright ideas tied together by an empty hallway.

The core issue here is that someone had a good idea and the space they chose to use to show it was far too large. The key parts of this exhibit are the room looking at the hidden parts of the painting and the process for finding them, the room looking at light and the actual painting itself. More rooms would be great if they actually had anything in them. If they gave us any incite into DaVinci’s character or life when painting. If they told us about how he achieved the results he did. Even a small room just looking at the significance of the figures in the scene or the symbolism used.

I count there to be six rooms in this exhibit and it really could cut half of them. Creative curation would have had it in a long hallway moved through in timed slots or a large room with each section illuminated as the story progresses. The large space makes the content seem thin and can only be to justify a ridiculous ticket price. 

To top it off, and I know this seems small and petty, the “studio” room is littered with prints of the original sketch that lurks beneath the painting and inexplicably that’s not available in the gift shop. Not even as a postcard. 

In summary, I’m excited for what this exhibit represents for future exhibits and I can’t wait to see more technology and research be presented along side the art itself, but this ain’t it chief.

Also just a reminder that of the thousands of works the National Gallery has in its collection, 20 are by women. Hopefully they’ll be using some of the money made from this exhibit to fix that number a bit too.