ANDREA PALLADIO at the ROYAL ACADEMY

ANDREA PALLADIO at the ROYAL ACADEMY

 The new exhibition at the Royal Academy is a modern look at the work of Andrea Palladio (1508-1580).  I had heard that Palladio’s architectural concepts were musical in inspiration, but I didn't see much of that beyond his understanding of proportion, the rule of thirds, incredible symmetry, his understanding of the rules of classical perspective and the perspective used in Renaissance Italy, his contemporary world. Many of his drawings are haphazard sketches clearly made on the job, while some drawings are incredibly sophisticated, many drawn by his son, who clearly had a big hand in the advertising campaigns for new designs. Palladian buildings can be found in the UK, where they influenced the dramatist and architect Vanbrugh amongst many others.  There are also examples in Russia, in America.  In fact they have been imitated everywhere and are an important single basis for modern architecture. 

The emphasis of the exhibition was on Palladian designs but we were also allowed access to Palladio's mind. Palladio was deeply original, had a very eclectic mind capable of absorbing influences from music, geometry, warfare and mathematics. For instance, some Palladian buildings clearly resemble military formations. Palladio spent some time studying these especially as he was then responsible for defending Venice from a possible attack by the Ottoman Turks.  Power politics in the region at the time were based around hostility towards the Ottomans but also upon trading agreements. He was involved in designing churches, folly-like classical rotondas for the country dwellings of aristocrats, bridges, loggias and theatres. Many of these designs turned out to be far ahead of their time. In fact some of his designs are still in use and have not been superseded. Also many of the buildings he planned were never built, so we only have putative blueprints, many of them on view here, to go by. 

His career had three main phases: an early period in Rome where he was encouraged by an important patron, Daniele Barbaro (1514-1570); followed by a period in Venice; then lastly Palladio went to Vicenza, a city 60 km west of Venice in the region known as the Veneto.  Most of Palladio’s villas are located here. 

The problem with the exhibition is obviously: how can this amalgam of scale models, photographs, paintings, designs, really illustrate the genius of Palladio when the audience really needs to see the buildings themselves? On that basis the exhibition hardly works, but affords insights into Palladio's public works and imagination that might be the basis of further work and study. The scale models can be a bit annoying since they so patently point towards their status as models, somehow resembling those fruitless matchstick reconstructions but obviously a bit more sophisticated than that. There is also an overwhelming amount of reading that seems ultimately a bit fruitless and unsatisfying, the approach perhaps too academic, as if a book on Palladio might be a better way to begin to find out about his ideas and then a journey to Vicenza and Venice to see the original buildings Palladio designed there, in order to get the hands on Palladian things.

 Paul Murphy, Royal Academy, London

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Maharajah: The Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington

Maharajah: The Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington  This is an unbelievably impressive exhibition maintaining the usual high standard of events at the V & A. India was overwhelmed by stronger neighbours, then by Western Imperialists, seeking a colony that fitted with their nostrums, that might be strategically advantageous. Even today the current war is based really on Indo-Pakistan relations representing the Islamification of east and west India (now Pakistan and Bangladesh) first brought about by the Moghuls. The Moghuls, a nation that originated in Persia but actual descendants of the Timurids, hence their homeland Moghulistan (Mongolistan). The Moghuls were essentially militaristic, even more militaristic than the native Rajputs, who seemed to have lived by a kind of Zealot ethic, preferring suicide to dishonour. They were clearly a very powerful presence until their influence waned and the British came to establish the Raj, but the words we have of 'Indian'
Read more

THE PAINTED VEIL and LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA

The Painted Veil (2006), dir John Curran, starring Edward Norton, Naomi Watts, Diana Rigg and Love in the Time of Cholera (2007), dir Mike Newell, starring Javier Bardem The Painted Veil , adapted from a Somerset Maugham novel, is a moving tale of a love affair played out before the backdrop of a cholera epidemic in China sometime in the early 20th century. The film depicts the horrors of cholera, the beauty of the Chinese landscape, the trials and tribulations of Walter and Kitty Fane’s relationship. Love in the Time of Cholera , (another adaptation from the novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, adapted by Ronald Harwood) shares with The Painted Veil the theme of Europeans in a non-European locale, coping, or failing to cope, with cholera. In The Painted Veil , Walter Fane (played by Edward Norton, an American actor with a high art reputation), a British medical official sent to a remote Chinese Province to help control a cholera epidemic is estranged from his wife Kitty, who has be
Read more

Notes on the films of Sam Peckinpah

Last evening I watched Pat Garret and Billy the Kid by Sam Peckinpah.   I haven't seen such a film for a very long time, dull melancholic edge tainted with sadness and elegiac to the core.   I noticed that there were many production problems, as many as 6 editors, and Peckinpah disowned the film eventually.   I think the problem with the film, however, is Bob Dylan, not the editing.   He clearly can't act, his presence is irritating and, apart from the well-known song, hardly quoted in the film, the soundtrack is underwhelming.   There were so many laudable cameos otherwise, Slim Pickens, Jason Robards, Harry Dean Stanton, and Kris Kristoffersen who pulls it off somehow as Billy but who knows what his acting is really like.   I really wished someone would shoot Dylan just to get him out of the film, instead Pickens is shot and various other worthwhile character actors. The still centre of the film is James Coburn in this, his second film for Peckinpah.   After he shoots Billy
Read more