Elizabeth Peyton

More Snippets VI –
Elizabeth Peyton


(Picture: suite101.com)

A parapet between us and the sitter. But a gaze, directed at us, not to mention a hand, and both, gaze and hand, implying the sitter making contact, with us, and connecting imagined and painted space, including the parapet, with the space we’re in, possibly listening to what paintress Elizabeth Peyton (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Peyton) has to say (on Youtube) on her paraphrase of this Renaissance portrait that also can be read as a reflection about painted space and virtual presence of a sitter. And we are also tempted to juxtapose her statement with the diary of Louise M. Richter, who, at the end of the 19th century and for some time owned this Renaissance portrait that her husband Jean Paul, backed by Giovanni Morelli, attributed to Giorgione (and subsequently sold to the Gemäldegalerie of Berlin).

Elizabeth Peyton, on occasion of her Clarice Smith Distinguished Lecture, while taking questions from the audience
(picture: youtube.com ; see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3L3I1Tf5XU)

»[after speaking about what the term ›romanticism‹ means to her; at 49:11:] …but that… sense of… like… feeling alive… from… being romantic, you know, I still… it’s… (the) huge part of my work.
…you know, like this picture, it’s… after a painting by Giorgione, which was made in fifteenhundred, fifteenhundredsomething. So it’s more than 500 years old. And… this is a painting I kept looking at for fifteen years. And I was so, so in love with it, and then… (the) man’s face, he’s just seems so present and alive and it’s that thing that’s transcended in human beings, that when a painting is really great, can really… communicate that, can just travel through time and, you know, is right in front of you…, you know, just like you’re right in front of me, and that’s something…, you know, I wanted to spent time thinking about.«

*

(Picture: pinterest.com)

Louise M. Richter with young Sandro Richter
(for picture credit see my Das Schlaraffenleben der Kunst

»It is an important day for us, today [April 23, 1891]. Our magnificent Giorgione does leave our salon. It is as if a piece of memory passes away with him, a piece of life. But in departing from us, he is taking from us a part of these earthly worries. Rarely, maybe never I am going to see the magnificent portrait again, which, for so long years, gave me light at the piano, when I sang or, if in the evening, tired of the day’s labours and work, I did recreate myself with it. Farewell, you fair young man, you will have from now on a more dignified place in the gallery at Berlin [translation from the German: DS].«

And see also (not least as for the salon): http://www.seybold.ch/Dietrich/Spotlight2JeanPaulRichterAndGiorgione

(Picture: flickr.com)

MICROSTORY OF ART
ONLINE JOURNAL FOR ART, CONNOISSEURSHIP AND CULTURAL JOURNALISM
HOME

Top of the page

Microstory of Art Main Index

Dietrich Seybold Homepage

© DS