no picture please

standing in queue for Leonardo da Vinci...

noreply@blogger.com (Anna) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:16:06 PST

Here I am on a cold dark morning, standing outside a gallery waiting to get admission to one of the greatest artists ever lived. But why? Why are we standing here, I ask the professor, why are people willing to go 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.

My neighbour next in line in the queue waiting to get admission to Leonardo da Vinci, painter at the Court of Milan, turns out to be a professor from Gothenburg. It is Bengt Holmén, the 82-year-old numismatist, a retired professor, who studies history through coins and is who is still an active member of the Historical Society of Gothenburg. 

A numismatist, he is a numismatist that I learn from a Londoner also waiting in line. He looks like a professor don’t you think, he remarks about my five hour conversation partner, the professor Holmén. Did you just arrive, I ask the Londoner. No, no, he says, I was here at 5 too, but I thought we would get a number and come back later. This is so badly organised, he grumbles. At ten the doors will open. Do not count on it, he says, this is Britain. May be the guards are drinking coffee somewhere in the building saying; just leave them wait. He looks as if he is extremely cold and he says he is. His face is all red and his nose more so. I did not dress for a five hours wait he explains. I thought I could get my number and come back at ten. He is waiting for his friend who promised to bring coffee and the benumbed man cannot think of anything else than coffee. It is a quarter to ten. You have still time to get a coffee, I say, but the man does not dare to take the risk. You will be inside when I come back and then they will tell me there are no tickets left and you will not be there to vouch for me standing in line all that time. Yes, I tease him; if they ask me I will say I have never seen this man before. 

What are you two laughing about, the professor asks. Lisa from Italy arrives. She wants to enter the Gallery as my companion. She joined the queue at a quarter past eight. I know I was way too late, she apologizes. She was standing at the back of the line and the wardens tell her she has no chance of obtaining a ticket, but now she is coming in with us. Lisa has bought coffee and banana cake. I give my cup of coffee to the man who did not dress for the cold. He is so thankful, he calls us his rescuing angels. We form a little team, the professor, the cold Londoner his friend who finally arrived without the promised coffee - Lisa and I. Partners in crime...

the professor...

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

anna

standing in queue for Leonardo da Vinci...

noreply@blogger.com (Anna) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:14:35 PST

« standing in queue | no picture please | 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

noreply@blogger.com (Anna) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 18:12:10 PST

« standing in queue | no picture please | Madonna Litta »

 
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 main 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)

noreply@blogger.com (Anna) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 03:13:05 PST

« Leonardo da Vinci | no picture please | Leonardo da Vinci »

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

noreply@blogger.com (Anna) — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 22:39:54 PST

« Madonna Litta | no picture please | Brighton »

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 an exhibition without a ticket?...

anna

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

Brighton

noreply@blogger.com (Anna) — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 21:17:58 PST

« Leonardo da Vinci | no picture please | Salvator Mundi »

Besides Leonardo da Vinci, Painter at the Court of Milan, in the National Gallery London, I am planning to go to Brighton. Why Brighton? It was King George III's son George, born in 1762 (p.58) who invented Brighton, 'near enough to the capital not to be out of touch, far enough to do whatever you liked in. [...] Brighton was invented as medical advice lit upon the healthful properties of salt water and sea air, just at the moment when walking out for a little exercise coincided with promenading for social display, and when the pleasures of holidaying in clean air away from the city created not only pleasure gardens but pleasure-and-leisure towns and spas, stiffened with a dose of medicament. 

Brighton would speedily provide all this, and the prince launched it by buying a farmhouse there which faced the river Steine in order to be near to his mistress, Mirs. Fitzherbert, whom he had illegally married in 1784. So from the start Brighton - and all seaside resorts - was linked to lubricity, and royal heirs to sexual scandals'(p.60).

anna

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

Literature:
Inglis, F. (2010). A Short History of Celebrity. Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press.

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

noreply@blogger.com (Anna) — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 18:22:54 PST

« Brighton | no picture please | Salvator Mundi »

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

noreply@blogger.com (Anna) — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 17:22:44 PST

« salvator mundi | no picture please | Salvator Mundi »

...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

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

noreply@blogger.com (Anna) — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 18:23:40 PST

« salvator mundi | no picture please | Salvator Mundi »

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

noreply@blogger.com (Anna) — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 16:40:30 PST

« salvator mundi | no picture please | rosebud »

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

rosebud

noreply@blogger.com (Anna) — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 00:43:51 PST

salvator mundi | no picture please | rosebud »

Rosebud...rosebud...rosebud...

Wanneer hij op sterven ligt, draait een man een sneeuwglobe in zijn handen rond. Hij denkt aan zijn jeugd. Hij speelt in de sneeuw op een slee, op het beslissende moment dat hij bij zijn ouders wordt weggehaald. Hij sterft, de sneeuwglobe valt uit zijn hand en de man zegt: rosebud...rosebud...rosebud...

In de film Citizin Kane (p.11) is een woord rosebud, het kleine detail dat ieder mens uniek maakt. Rosebud is het merk van de slee waar het kleine jongetje op speelde toen hij weggehaald werd bij zijn ouders.

Pierre Assouline - mijn grote voorbeeld - is op zoek naar het kleine detail 'die anderen laat zien wie we zijn. Elk onderzoek heeft als drijfveer nieuwsgierigheid: andere mensen bestuderen maakt menselijker. [...] Dan komt de dag dat de waarheid genoeg krijgt van bewijzen. En de biograaf zichzelf erop betrapt dat hij het even niet zo nauw neemt. [...] Hij wil de documenten weer ziel en leven geven. 

Wie zal het ooit willen toegeven hoe opwindend het is om zich op het uiterst kleine te concentreren? [...] De biograaf is een leverancier die in de groothandel, de tussenhandel en de kleinhandel zit. [...] Juist op het terrein van het detail speelt zich het belangrijkste af (p.12). Een detail maakt de weg vrij voor een verassende blik. Het brengt soms een ander boodschap over dan het geheel aan de hand doet (p.124).

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

rosebud

noreply@blogger.com (Anna) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 22:18:41 PST

« rosebud | no picture please | rosebud »

Rosebud, is dat kleine detail dat ieder mens uniek maakt. De term 'rosebud' - letterlijk rozenknop - ontleent schrijver Pierre Assoulini aan de film Citizen Kane, waarin het kleine detail een bepalende rol speelt. Assouline vergelijkt zichzelf met verslaggever Thompson, een personage uit de film. Elk onderzoek heeft volgens Assouline nieuwsgierigheid als drijfveer: andere mensen bestuderen maakt menselijker. Een boek, een film, of een schilderij, soms alleen een blik van de overkant van de tafel, of een glimlach tussen twee metrostations, de vleugelslag van een vlinder op een zomeravond, ze kunnen bepalend zijn voor een heel leven, aldus Assouline.

In Rosebud wordt een klein element van het geheel afgezonderd, waardoor een andere manier van kijken wordt gepresenteerd: biografieën van het kleine detail.

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

rosebud

noreply@blogger.com (Anna) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 22:15:46 PST

« rosebud | no picture please | rosebud »

anna

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

Rosebud

noreply@blogger.com (Anna) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 22:16:27 PST

« rosebud | no picture please | plastic bekers 11-11-11-11 »

Ze scheepten zich in voor een mentale tocht, die in het kleine, het specifieke en het particuliere naar oorzaken zoekt...

Inductief – iteratief onderzoek is een kwalitatieve data-analyse methode. Het is een onderzoekstrategie waarbij wordt geredeneerd vanuit het bijzondere naar het algemene. Hypotheses worden gezocht aan de hand van empirisch onderzoek, waarbij dataverzameling en analyse elkaar aanvullen (Bryman, 2008).
Bij inductief-iteratief onderzoek wordt theorie gevormd vanuit bevindingen. De bevindingen worden teruggekoppeld naar de voorraad van theorie en de onderzoeksresultaten. Dit kan gezien worden als een soort reflectie Bryman, 2008).
Bij inductief- iteratief onderzoek is vooraf niet bekend naar welke thema’s of categorieën wordt gezocht (Van IJzendoorn, 1988).
Inductief- iteratief onderzoek maakt gebruik van een iteratief proces, een beweging tussen data en theorie, dit is weer te geven met een spiraal, die steeds teruggaande bewegingen maakt (Bryman, 2008). Tijdens het verzamelen van gegevens worden voorlopige analyses gemaakt op grond waarvan nieuwe gegevens worden verzameld (Van IJzendoorn, 1988).

Het kleine detail en de houding van mensen ten opzichte van vuil, afval en lelijkheid in letterlijke zowel als symbolische zin, heeft me altijd gefascineerd. In mijn straatfotografie zoek ik bij voorkeur de rafelranden van de stad op, daar waar het ‘schone’ gedeelte van de stad overgaat in de hood. Een grijs gebied, een gebied waar de stad nog niet af is, in de zin van niet volmaakt. Daar waar de stad nog leeft, want zoals Paul Valéry het formuleert, elke schilder, beeldhouwer, schrijver en musicus weet: in alles wat voltooid is tekent zich de dood af.

anna

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

Literatuur

Bryman, A. (2008). Social research methods (3rd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Orton, J.D., (1997). From inductive to iterative Grounded theory: Zipping the gap between processs theory and process data. Groupe HEC, France ScancL Z Mgmt, Vol. 13, No. 4, pp. 419~.38.

IJzendoorn, M. H., van. (1988). De navolgbaarheid van kwalitatief onderzoek: Methodologische uitgangspunten. Opgehaald op 8 maart van: https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/bitstream/1887/1417/1/168_082.pdf