Rendez-vous with Art

215 Pages·2013·17.32 MB·English

by  Philippe de Montebello

Philippe de Montebello holding the Madonna and Child, c. 1290–1300, by Duccio di Buoninsegna
(2004.442), bought by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2004.

About the Authors
Philippe de Montebello is the longest-serving director in the Metropolitan
Museum of Art’s history. His retirement in 2008 was described as the end of an
era ‘in the cultural life of the city, the state, the nation, and the world’. He is a
member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts and an Officier de la Légion
d’Honneur, and has a worldwide influence on cultural policies, often in an
advisory capacity. He is now Fiske Kimball Professor at New York University’s
Institute of Fine Arts and an Honorary Trustee of the Prado Museum.
Martin Gayford has been art critic for the Spectator and the Sunday Telegraph
and Bloomberg News; currently, he is the London critic for Artinfo. He is the
author of the acclaimed Man With a Blue Scarf: On Sitting for a Portrait by
Lucian Freud and A Bigger Message: Conversations with David Hockney, both
published by Thames & Hudson. Among his other publications are The Yellow
House, on the nine weeks Van Gogh and Gauguin spent together in Arles, and
Michelangelo: His Epic Life.
Other titles of interest published by
Thames & Hudson include: Man With a Blue Scarf: On Sitting for a Portrait
by Lucian Freud
by Martin Gayford A Bigger Message: Conversations with David Hockney
by Martin Gayford In My View:
Personal Reflections on Art by Today’s Leading Artists Mirror of the World: A
New History of Art
How to Read a Painting:
Decoding, Understanding and Enjoying the Old Masters The Gallery
Companion: Understanding Western Art
See our websites
www.thamesandhudson.com
www.thamesandhudsonusa.com
Contents
Introduction: Yellow Jasper Lips at the Met
1. An Afternoon in Florence
2. A Flood and a Chimera
3. Immersed in the Bargello
4. A Sense of Place
5. The Case of the Duccio Madonna
6. In the Met Café
7. Princely Collections
8. An Artistic Education Sentimentale
9. Lost in the Louvre
10. Crowds and the Power of Art
11. Heaven and Hell in the Prado
12. Hieronymus Bosch and the Hell of Looking at Art with other People
13. Titian and Velázquez
14. Las Meninas
15. Goya: An Excursion
16. Rubens, Tiepolo, Goya Again
17. Rotterdam: Museums and their Discontents
18. Star-Spotting at the Mauritshuis
19. Where Do You Put It?
20. Exploring the Rainforests of Paris
21. Hunting Lions at the British Museum
22. Lunch in the Great Court
23. Fragments
Index
Copyright
INTRODUCTION
Yellow Jasper Lips at the Met
Philippe de Montebello pauses in front of a piece of shattered yellow stone. ‘This’, he exclaims, ‘is
one of the greatest works of art in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, indeed in the world, of any
civilization!’ The object we are looking at is part of a face, the lower section. Of the upper portions
– the brow, the nose, the eyes – nothing remains.
Those sheared off long ago, in one of the innumerable accidents that occurred during the
approximately 3,500 years since the sculptor finished carving it. What is left is just the chin,
fractions of cheek and neck, and the mouth. Essentially, the sculpture is a pair of lips as full and
sensual as those of Mae West, which were once recycled by Salvador Dalí in the form of a
surrealist sofa. In its way it is every bit as enigmatic as the Mona Lisa; there is no smile, only an
expression of the mouth, as if the lips were about to part.
This splintered remnant portrays the face of an Egyptian woman who lived in a palace on the
Middle Nile in the 14th century BC. She might have been Nefertiti, or she might not. We do not
know, and it is extraordinarily unlikely that anyone will ever find out. The only way would be to
discover the rest of the carving, broken and discarded probably thousands of years ago.
Fragment of a Queen’s Face, New Kingdom Period, Amarna Period, Dynasty 18, reign of Akhenaten, c.
1353–1336 BC, Middle Egypt, probably el-Amarna (Akhetaten), yellow jasper, 13 × 12.5 × 12.5 (5⅛ × 4⅞
× 4⅞). Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Edward S. Harkness Gift, 1926 (26.7.1396). Photograph
by Bruce White. Image Metropolitan Museum of Art.
‘If you told me you’d found the top of the head’, Philippe continues, ‘I’m not sure I would be thrilled
because I am so focused, so absorbed and captivated by the perfection of what is there; that my
pleasure – and it is intense pleasure – is marvelling at what my eye sees, not some abstraction
that, in a more art historical mode, I might conjure up. It’s like a book that you love, and you
simply don’t want to see the movie. You’ve already imagined the hero or the heroine in a certain
way. In truth, with the yellow jasper lips, I have never really tried to imagine the missing parts.’
The point about the mouth of the anonymous Egyptian queen (or, perhaps, princess), is that it is a
fragment. That is its fascination. In a way, however, everything around us in the Met is a fragment:
as well as the yellow jasper carving, there are bits of buildings, parts of sculptural ensembles,
rooms from houses, and paintings that have been removed from the walls of villas and palaces.
What we see in the Met – or any other museum or collection – are elements detached from a
greater whole. The Egyptian woman’s lips are part of her face, but they have also been broken off
from some context, quite what we do not know, that made sense during the reign of the Pharaoh
Akhenaten. And that epoch, with its distinctive styles and beliefs, was only a passing moment in
the period of the New Kingdom, which forms a subsection of the long, long history of Egyptian art
and civilization, and in turn takes its place in the wider chronicle of the ancient Near East and
Mediterranean. So it goes on, like a set of Russian dolls, each fitting into something larger.
MG One day, while I was sitting for a portrait to Lucian Freud, I asked him
what, for him, was the most difficult aspect of painting such a picture. His
answer was a surprise: that he changed all the time. ‘I just feel so different every
day that it is a wonder that any of my pictures ever work out at all.’ A few days
later, it emerged that I – the subject – constantly altered too. Therefore, his
attempt to make an enduring image was also an effort to track two moving
targets: artist and model.
What was true of Lucian in 2004 surely applies to some extent to all of art
and life. If we stand in front of a work of art twice, at least one party – the
viewer or the object – will be somewhat transformed on the second occasion.
Works of art mutate through time, albeit slowly, as they are cleaned or
‘conserved’, or as their constituent materials age. Even if they remain visually
identical, they may make a different impression according to the company they
keep. Next to a Salvador Dalí, the Egyptian queen would not seem the same at
all.
We, the viewers, however, are yet more fluctuating. Had I not been walking through the Met in
Philippe’s company on that bright autumn day, I would probably not have paused in front of the
yellow jasper lips; certainly I would not have seen them as I did, because I looked at them in his
company. The next time I saw them would be inflected, together with many other factors, by the
memory of the first time. For his part, Philippe had seen this fragment hundreds of times before –
which doubtless coloured his reaction, as did the fact that on this occasion he was looking at them
with me, listening to my reaction to his response. Everything is like that.
Inevitably, we all inhabit a world of dissolving perspectives and ever-shifting views. The
present is always moving, so from that vantage point the past constantly changes in appearance.
That is on the grand, historical scale; but the same is true of our personal encounters with art,
from day to day. You can stand in front of Velázquez’s Las Meninas a thousand times, and every
time it will be different because you will be altered: tired or full of energy, or dissimilar from your
previous self in a multitude of ways.
Philippe and I had embarked on a joint project: to meet in various places as opportunities
presented themselves in the course of our travels. Our idea was to make a book that was neither
art history nor art criticism but an experiment in shared appreciation. It is, in other words, an
attempt to get at not history or theory but the actual experience of looking at art: what it feels like