: 8 li t .Ir a. This photo from 1981 shows one of the earliest restored Sistine Chapel fres- COS. ...9.111. +1.-t, 1,-*0!1111 ..1411¢cl F; vi f-7 'Sistine Chapel': glorious art, oblique writing BY FREDRIC KOEPPEL Scripps Howard News Service W hen you think about what $75 will get you (a bottle of Chateau Lynch-Bages 1985, the Dave Brubeck boxed set of CDs), you might want to think twice before diverting your cash flow to "The Sistine Chapel: A Glorious Restoration" by Gianluigi Colalucci etal (Harry A. Abrams). Not that the title is inaccurate. The 14-year restoration of Michelangelo's frescoes for the ceiling of the Vatican's Sistine Chapel and the Last Judgment, above the chapel altar, have produced glorious results indeed. Centuries of grime, soot and glue have been dissolved to reveal the artist's colors in radiant hues and have disclosed more than was known about his procedures and techniques. This flood of sensation and information has forced a re-evaluation of the monumental achievement, particularly in the conjunctions and connections among its various parts. Not that the restoration was accomplished without controversy. Several critics, particularly James Beck, an art historian at Columbia University in New York, felt that when the yellow went down the drain, Michelangelo went, too. But if you visited the Sistine Chapel before the restoration or know the frescoes only from old art books and then see it now - whether in person or in this present volume - you cannot help but believe that what you saw previously, you saw as through a glass darkly. A second aspect of the controversy surrounding the Sistine restoration involved who paid the bills. The money came from Nippon Television Network in Tokyo, who, in return for providing the funds, received exclusive rights to reproduce images of the Sistine Ceiling and the Last Judgement for three years after the completion of each part as well as the privilege of filming the entire process. If you think there's no pocket change in that deal, remember that as many as 19,000 people file through the Sistine Chapel every day, heads tilted back, and most of them want a postcard or brochure to take home. It's not surprising that the authors of "The Sistine Chapel: A Glorious Restoration" say little about these controversies; the book, after all, is a celebration of a job well done. The problem with the volume is that its contradictory nature makes it inappropriate for just about any reader. Is it a lush window-dressing art book, designed so that its splendid pictures and minimal captions will satisfy the ordinary culture hound? Or is it a serious tome intended to appeal to scholars of the minutiae of Renaissance artistic and cultural history? Trying to be both, the book doesn't work, Images from the ceiling... comprise the heart of the book, a heart that almost beats with vitality and imagination. though fortunately its first aspect - splendid pictures, minimal captions - exists in enough profusion to illustrate the brilliance of Michelangelo's creation and the restorators' re-creation. The first essay in "The Sistine Chapel: A Glorious Restoration" plunges the innocent reader in media res, into issues about Michelangelo's drawings for the Sistine Ceiling. The author, Michael Hirst, raises a number of questions about the artist's practice, answering most of them by saying "Perhaps" or "We cannot know for certain." His use of technical terms without providing definitions and statements, like "the pen style very obviously recalls that of Ghirlandaio," indicate that his contribution is intended for scholarly eyes only. Its fairly perfunctory nature lends it the air of a paper prepared for a conference presentation, an attitude shared by other essays in the book. Not to be too populist about this, nonscholarly purchasers of the book need a softer, as it were, opening, a chapter dealing with the artistic and cultural details of Michelangelo and his work on the chapel and its history since the artist completed the frescoes in October 1512. Nonspecialist readers could also use a coherent chapter explaining the art and craft of painting frescoes; as it stands, hints about technical concerns have to be ferreted from various essays as their authors write about what they required. Some details of the chapel's history are dealt with briefly in the essay "The Last Judgment: Notes on Its ConGervation History, Technique, and Restoration" by Fabrizio Mancinelli, Gianluigi Colalucci and Nazzareno Gabrielli. In fact, it's ironic that the most informative and accessible essays in "The Sistine Chapel: A Glorious Restoration" do not concern the Sistine Ceiling but the Last Judgment. This essay, another titled "The Syntax of Form and Posture from the Ceiling to the Last Judgment" and the last essay, "New Documents on the Construction of the Sistine Chapel," provide a wealth of interpretation and information. The essays in "The Sistine Chapel: A Glorious Restoration" are separated by sections devoted to reproductions of images from the ceiling. These broad views and details comprise the heart of the book, a heart that almost beats with vitality and imagination. The colors revealed by the restoration reinforce one's perception of Michelangelo's prodigious energy and almost divine gaiety. Details of costume and fashion, of facial and body type, of what in theater would be called props (books, scrolls, household objects, weaponry) and above all of the interaction among the figures on the panels, whether the ancestors of Christ in the lunette sections or the prophets and sibyls that foretold his coming or the episodes from Genesis that symbolize his life, all combine in a grand scheme that throbs not merely with a sense of divinity but with the vast revolving stasis and dance of life. No reviewer wants to recommend spending $75 on a book just for the pictures, but if you are a regular art lover, you'll have to do it for this book. Alta Vista Magazine, Sunday, July 24, 1994 7 L -41 t 4 in / Z T '1:, il -·'i, lr, t! r L 1 /l +T C r 1 , OCR Text: : 8 li t .Ir a. This photo from 1981 shows one of the earliest restored Sistine Chapel fres- COS. ...9.111. 1.-t, 1,-*0!1111 ..1411¢cl F; vi f-7 'Sistine Chapel': glorious art, oblique writing BY FREDRIC KOEPPEL Scripps Howard News Service W hen you think about what $75 will get you (a bottle of Chateau Lynch-Bages 1985, the Dave Brubeck boxed set of CDs), you might want to think twice before diverting your cash flow to "The Sistine Chapel: A Glorious Restoration" by Gianluigi Colalucci etal (Harry A. Abrams). Not that the title is inaccurate. The 14-year restoration of Michelangelo's frescoes for the ceiling of the Vatican's Sistine Chapel and the Last Judgment, above the chapel altar, have produced glorious results indeed. Centuries of grime, soot and glue have been dissolved to reveal the artist's colors in radiant hues and have disclosed more than was known about his procedures and techniques. This flood of sensation and information has forced a re-evaluation of the monumental achievement, particularly in the conjunctions and connections among its various parts. Not that the restoration was accomplished without controversy. Several critics, particularly James Beck, an art historian at Columbia University in New York, felt that when the yellow went down the drain, Michelangelo went, too. But if you visited the Sistine Chapel before the restoration or know the frescoes only from old art books and then see it now - whether in person or in this present volume - you cannot help but believe that what you saw previously, you saw as through a glass darkly. A second aspect of the controversy surrounding the Sistine restoration involved who paid the bills. The money came from Nippon Television Network in Tokyo, who, in return for providing the funds, received exclusive rights to reproduce images of the Sistine Ceiling and the Last Judgement for three years after the completion of each part as well as the privilege of filming the entire process. If you think there's no pocket change in that deal, remember that as many as 19,000 people file through the Sistine Chapel every day, heads tilted back, and most of them want a postcard or brochure to take home. It's not surprising that the authors of "The Sistine Chapel: A Glorious Restoration" say little about these controversies; the book, after all, is a celebration of a job well done. The problem with the volume is that its contradictory nature makes it inappropriate for just about any reader. Is it a lush window-dressing art book, designed so that its splendid pictures and minimal captions will satisfy the ordinary culture hound? Or is it a serious tome intended to appeal to scholars of the minutiae of Renaissance artistic and cultural history? Trying to be both, the book doesn't work, Images from the ceiling... comprise the heart of the book, a heart that almost beats with vitality and imagination. though fortunately its first aspect - splendid pictures, minimal captions - exists in enough profusion to illustrate the brilliance of Michelangelo's creation and the restorators' re-creation. The first essay in "The Sistine Chapel: A Glorious Restoration" plunges the innocent reader in media res, into issues about Michelangelo's drawings for the Sistine Ceiling. The author, Michael Hirst, raises a number of questions about the artist's practice, answering most of them by saying "Perhaps" or "We cannot know for certain." His use of technical terms without providing definitions and statements, like "the pen style very obviously recalls that of Ghirlandaio," indicate that his contribution is intended for scholarly eyes only. Its fairly perfunctory nature lends it the air of a paper prepared for a conference presentation, an attitude shared by other essays in the book. Not to be too populist about this, nonscholarly purchasers of the book need a softer, as it were, opening, a chapter dealing with the artistic and cultural details of Michelangelo and his work on the chapel and its history since the artist completed the frescoes in October 1512. Nonspecialist readers could also use a coherent chapter explaining the art and craft of painting frescoes; as it stands, hints about technical concerns have to be ferreted from various essays as their authors write about what they required. Some details of the chapel's history are dealt with briefly in the essay "The Last Judgment: Notes on Its ConGervation History, Technique, and Restoration" by Fabrizio Mancinelli, Gianluigi Colalucci and Nazzareno Gabrielli. In fact, it's ironic that the most informative and accessible essays in "The Sistine Chapel: A Glorious Restoration" do not concern the Sistine Ceiling but the Last Judgment. This essay, another titled "The Syntax of Form and Posture from the Ceiling to the Last Judgment" and the last essay, "New Documents on the Construction of the Sistine Chapel," provide a wealth of interpretation and information. The essays in "The Sistine Chapel: A Glorious Restoration" are separated by sections devoted to reproductions of images from the ceiling. These broad views and details comprise the heart of the book, a heart that almost beats with vitality and imagination. The colors revealed by the restoration reinforce one's perception of Michelangelo's prodigious energy and almost divine gaiety. Details of costume and fashion, of facial and body type, of what in theater would be called props (books, scrolls, household objects, weaponry) and above all of the interaction among the figures on the panels, whether the ancestors of Christ in the lunette sections or the prophets and sibyls that foretold his coming or the episodes from Genesis that symbolize his life, all combine in a grand scheme that throbs not merely with a sense of divinity but with the vast revolving stasis and dance of life. No reviewer wants to recommend spending $75 on a book just for the pictures, but if you are a regular art lover, you'll have to do it for this book. Alta Vista Magazine, Sunday, July 24, 1994 7 L -41 t 4 in / Z T '1:, il -·'i, lr, t! r L 1 /l T C r 1 , Heritage Society of Pacific Grove,Historical Collections,Names of People about town,E through F File names,Elmarie Dyke,ELMARIE DYKE PUBLICITY_007.pdf,ELMARIE DYKE PUBLICITY_007.pdf 1 Page 1, Tags: ELMARIE DYKE PUBLICITY_007.PDF, ELMARIE DYKE PUBLICITY_007.pdf 1 Page 1