Perspectives
Exhibition Where’s the Rubens?
Royal Academy
Expectations are high when visiting the Royal Academy’s first big exhibition of the year. And so Rubens and His Legacy promised effortless grandeur, a sweeping and ambitious scope, and an opportunity to see works of art familiar only by illustration. It was, therefore, something of a disappointment to find that although the show explores Peter Paul Rubens’ influence on painters of all genres, his paintings are not the main event. A thematic approach is taken to display the loaned works in six main rooms, but the celebrated Rubens scale and sumptuousness is drowned out by a focus on his legacy. The first room opens with iconic paintings by John Constable and J M W Turner illustrating Rubens’ influence on English landscape painters. Constable was in awe of the Baroque master, although landscapes are not often associated with Rubens, so this is a nod to local audience interests and heritage. Rubens and His Legacy deftly explains how Rubens’ influence spread across different nations, with his depictions of politics, royalty, and violence, but the themes are overbearing to the point that the paintings are used to illustrate
Museo Nacional del Prado. Madrid, Photo c. Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado
Rubens and His Legacy: Van Dyck to Cézanne Royal Academy, London, UK, until April 10, 2015 https://www.royalacademy.org. uk/exhibition/rubens-and-hislegacy
“The glimpse of translucent skin is sublime...” Power is understandably chosen as a theme central to Rubens’ work, but without one of the enormous paintings for which he is most famous this themed room fails to impress. I even had to ask the museum attendant “Where’s the Rubens?”; he didn’t know and suggested I read the labels. A projector fills a whole wall with a video of moving details of the famed Rubens’ Ceiling at Whitehall’s Banqueting House, and details of The Apotheosis of Henri IV and the Proclamation of the Regency of Marie de Médicis at the Louvre, but this is a poor alternative to hanging a large and powerful canvas. Rubens himself acknowledged his preference for working to a grand scale when he wrote to King James I in 1621 “I confess that I am, by natural instinct, better fitted to execute very large
works than small curiosities.” Video illustration is not able to convey the scale and power of his work—perhaps it might have been better to have had power as an implicit thread throughout the show instead of as the subject of a single room conspicuously lacking a Rubens focal point. The rooms themed Poetry and Lust are far more enjoyable. Classic works by Rubens, such as The Garden of Love (c. 1633), and Pan and Syrinx (1617), are spellbinding, and the exhibition fleetingly explores the artist’s fascination with voluptuous bodies. The glimpse of translucent skin is sublime, but the paintings by Anthony Van Dyck and Jean-Antoine Watteau that are intended to be complementary are just not in the same league. This leaves the visitor to wonder exactly what Rubens’ influence was on these artists. The final room, La Peregrina, curated by Jenny Saville, explores depictions of bodies from the 20th and 21st centuries, including work by Lucien Freud, Francis Bacon, Willem de Kooning, Pablo Picasso, Sarah Lucas, and Jenny Saville herself. Saville takes one theme—that of body—and I can’t help thinking that the rest of the show would have been so much better if this had been the only strand explored, since Saville achieves her very clear theme with ease. Her fascination with anatomy is shared by her selected artists: in this context it is obvious that Lucien Freud’s painting of the ample Sue Tilley, The Start of Sue (1994), and Francis Bacon’s fibrous Self-Portrait (1973) were influenced by Rubens. The force of this room’s collective visceral gaze is so challenging and in such contrast to the previous classical works, that it is a fitting tribute to Rubens with which to end the exhibition.
Tamara Lucas Peter Paul Rubens, The Garden of Love (c. 1633)
596
the ideas, rather than the reverse. And while the two most common threads of Rubens’ influence are his images of fleshy women’s bodies and the sheer scale of his paintings, this exhibition falls short in both areas.
[email protected]
www.thelancet.com Vol 385 February 14, 2015
