Austin360 blogs > Out & About > Archives > 2006 > November > 19
Sunday, November 19, 2006
Deep into Cambiaso
Art: Well, if you haven’t seen the Luca Cambiaso exhibition at the Blanton Museum of Art, go before it closes in December. Otherwise, you’ll need to book a flight to Genoa to see the second iteration of the first comprehensive showing of works by the late Renaissance master.
Let me say I was gratified to see scores of people milling about the Blanton on a Friday at midday. It proves that the museum has established its presence comfortably on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard (the new banners and the rising, complementary Building 2 help).
We spent almost two hours buried in Cambiaso with Blanton curator Jonathan Bober, whose knowledge of the field is encyclopedic, whose powers of elegant exposition are of another age, and whose modesty and kindness in answering questions from nonexperts is astonishing and almost unheard-of in the art world.
There’s no way I can condense that conversation — shared with Kip, film writer Chris Garcia, his cohort John DeFore and DeFore’s wife, Laurie — in a single blog.
Cambiaso revealed his talents with expressive drawing, deep structure and glowing paint as early as his 20s and he continued to experiment throughout his long career, bringing an almost Venetian sensibility to the western Italian port city of Genoa.
His art served the conservative Counter-Reformation movement, but that did not stop Cambiaso from playing with a mixture of naturalism and abstraction that set him apart from his High Renaissance predecessors and his Baroque descendents. (I especially love the light sources in his nocturnes.) His works on paper, all in exquisite condition, help tell the story of his innovation — preparatory drawing as finished works of art.
Please, please spend a few hours with this artist. There is absolutely no local precedent for the depth and rarity of this exhibition, which the Blanton can pull off because 1) it need not stage a blockbuster from a familiar artist with box office appeal and 2) it marshals more resources than almost any other university museum.
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