Pieta Del Duomo

["Clive Murray-White" <clivemw@zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz>]

Dear Norman & Elle,

Elle first, if you tell me which Michelangelo sculptures (with a range of
textures) you have good detailed pictures of I'll try to supply you with
appropriate comments.

Norman, as I think I said earlier on I knew this topic was going to stretch
my abilities of explanation. But I'll give it go.

In any artwork there are 4 components, a historical context, the artist's
own personality and desires, the materials and techniques and probably most
relevant here, the grammar of art, sometimes called the formal issues, this
covers such things as composition, line, form, volume, texture plus many
more.

I find the most interesting thing about Western art is that it in most cases
conforms to the way we read, ie we start looking at the left hand side and
look across to the right, in art we don't tend to start a the top left hand
corner but somewhere a little above half way, that spot where you would
ideally have a horizon line going through if it where a landscape. Unless
you've been trained to know that this is what's going on in your head you
wont know that its happening.

In this Pieta the head of the figure on the left is roughly where you start,
but the long gentle curve of Christ's arm rapidly takes you towards his head
but more importantly to the point where Nicodemus' cloak starts, up his arm
over the cowl to spend some time on his head, the repeated oval shapes lead
you quietly down onto Christs face. It doesn't seem to matter which way you
go from then as you soon discover that just about every path you take leads
you back up to the top and Nicodemus' head and back round to Christ.

Christ's highly distorted right arm drags yours eye slowly down only to bump
into the fast  curve starting from Christ's knee going up his shoulder.
Exactly the spot where you were taken the first time you started looking at
the sculpture.

All the grammatical components always work together, so you can't separate
texture from line or volume.

There's an old adage that says that a good sculpture has a good edge; the
problem is that that good edge must work from at least 360 degrees ie all
the way round.

Now, another thing that really appeals to me in this sculpture is what I'll
call the democracy of its parts, each person remains individual. M uses a
great range of visual grammar to achieve this. If you think of most
figurative sculpture from M up to say Rodin the various people are usually
subjugated to the good of the whole composition.

I reckon you should go to both The Hirshorn and National Gallery and spend a
day comparing as many sculptures as you can, in terms of the way that the
visual language has been used in each.

Hope this gets closer.

Best regards Clive
Sculptor Clive Murray-White
Cowwarr Art Space
Cowwarr Gippsland Vic. Aus.
Ph: 03 51489321 Fax 0351489498
E-mail: clivemw@---------------
Web: www.cowwarr.com