More information on Michael Landy

Finally Landy said sometimes the works were made for the donor's own private devotion and sometimes they were painted for confraternities who are a catholic clan who help others. The group did acts of kindness like helping the plague victims. This strangely links with my final major project because i am doing it on the black plague. As I said their is always a connection!

In the show you have works that will be gradually defaced and even self destruct? yes they are going to be framed and glazed. you can do all sorts to things with drawings and collages that could never make as sculpture. These were where my ideas originally came from.
I am ment to take body parts from the paintings in the gallery and put them together. Saints were dug up and different churches took bits away, exhibited them and made them into reliquaries. They then become an attraction for pilgrims and tourist, perhaps that what I am doing for the National gallery with my own fragments of the saints.

Saint Jerome - Painting

Saint Jerome Writing, also called Saint Jerome, is an oil painting by italian painter Caravaggio dated to 1605-1606. The painting is located in the Galleria Borghese in Rome. 

The painting I am presenting is actually not the original painting but my Dad's oil still life and when you compare his to the original, they are very similar, not 100% but my dad has done an amazing job in painting from a photograph. 

He was inspired to do the chose Jerome painting because we visited on holiday where it was displayed to the public and took home a post card in remembrance.

I personally think the choice to paint this difficult subject would be a challenge because my dad isn't good with drawing or painting portraits but it managed to do the face and body perfect and so realistic. 

I am very proud and the fact he succeeded to painting the same level of high quality that the masters did. 

When i was researching the Saints Landy chose and came across this painting i was so happy and shocked that my dad had painted it and now i am researching about the saint for my essay project. 

Out of all my dads oil still life paintings, Saint Jerome is by far my favourite because of the detail, realism and accuracy of the face, arms, cloth, rich, vibrant colour and books. 

The chosen Saint's

Saint Jerome was chosen for one of his kinetic sculptures.
Jerome is known as a Doctor of the Church, he was born in Dalmatia and travelled to Rome to learn Latin and Greek. He was ordained at the age of 29 and later retreated to the Syrian Desert to live as a hermit, where he fasted, prayed and beat himself, in order to purge his mind of impure thoughts.
A legend that became attached to him, tells the story of the lion with a thorn in

its paw. The other monks in the monastery fled but Jerome removed the thorn and the lion became his devoted pet. Jerome is represented in art in a variety of ways, often accompanied by his lion. He is either shown in the desert, stripped to the waste, contemplating a crucifix while beating himself with a rock, or else depicted as a scholar dressed in the red robes of a cardinal.  

Saint Catherine of Alexandria was also chosen to be one of his sculptures. 
Catherine was born in Alexandria, Egypt, the daughter of a pagan king and queen, Catherine dedicated her life to Christianity after she experienced a vision in which the Virgin Mary gave her to Christ in a mystical marriage. Maxentius then sent for 50 of the best philosophers and poets in the Empire to engage her in debate, but they were so impressed by Catherine that they were converted to Christianity, leading Maxentius to order that they be burnt alive. Catherine was then imprisoned but succeeded in converting some 200 Roman guards and the Emperor’s wife, who was duly executed after having her breasts torn off.
Maxentius then ordered Catherine’s torture and execution on a spiked wheel, but an angel descended from heaven and shattered the wheel. She was finally beheaded with a sword but instead of blood, milk flowed from her body and a miraculous oil with healing properties issued from her bones. Her body was then carried off by angels to Mount Sinai.

Catherine is nearly always represented with her wheel, either whole
or fragmentary, and often shown with a sword as a symbol of her decapitation. The subject of her mystic marriage was also very popular: the saint is often shown with the Virgin Mary and the Infant Christ, who places a ring onto her finger. 

Saint Francis of Assissi was chosen as one of the sculptures. 
Francis was born into a wealthy family, but after experiencing visions, against his father’s wishes he renounced his inheritance and gave away all of his worldly goods, including the clothes off his back. He took vows of poverty, chastity and obedience and lived among his disciples in Assissi, Italy.  
Francis travelled the country, preaching, experiencing visions and performing miracles. his sustained prayers led to a miracle in which the five wounds of Christ made when he was crucified – that is, the

holes made in his hands and feet and the lance wound on his side – were impressed upon Francis’s body so that he himself became Christ-like. These marks are known as his stigmata.
Francis can be recognised in art by his monk’s tonsure and plain brown habit with three knots, symbolising his three vows. He is differentiated from other Franciscan saints by the marks of the stigmata. 

Saint Peter Martyr was then chosen to be made as a kinetic sculpture. 
Born in Verona, Peter became a Dominican preacher. He was renowned for his orthodox zeal and determination to root out and mercilessly punish heretics. His preaching aroused a great deal of hostility and his was assassinated during an ambush. His head was split with an axe and stabbed in the side with a dagger. He is shown in art as wearing the traditional black and white habit of the Dominicans and, more remarkably, by the dagger or axe embedded in his head. 

Saint Apollonia was also created as a sculpture.
According to the Golden Legend, Apollonia was an aged virgin who was tortured by having her teeth beaten out. Later stories, however, preferred to describe her as a beautiful young woman whose teeth were extracted with pincers. Her depiction in art tends to favour this more romanticized version.

She is patron saint of dentists and those suffering from toothache. 

Saint Michael was used as part of the sculpture. 
Although an archangel, Michael was adopted by Christianity as a saint. In the Book of Revelation, he appears as the leader of the army of God in the final combat against the Devil and the rebel angels. The Golden Legend records the belief that the archangel Michael will call the dead to rise on the Day of Judgement. He is shown in art as an armoured warrior angel trampling on the devil and often holds a pair of scales, symbolising the judgement of souls. 

Saint Thomas was created as a sculpture.
According to the Book of John in the New Testament, ‘Doubting’ Thomas, as he has become known, did not believe the account of his fellow disciples that they had seen Jesus Christ, miraculously risen from the dead. Thomas said he would not believe until he had put his finger into Christ’s wounds. Accordingly, Christ appeared before him and invited Thomas to put his hand into the wound in his side. 

Jean Tinguely and Michael Landy's Kinetic sculptures

Jean Tinguely is a Swiss Kinetic sculptor, he emerged in the 1950s from the Dadaist tradition and best known for his sculptural machines. He created the 'Meta Mechanical' sculptor and then 'Credit card destroying machine'. He was most praised from the credit card machine because it created abstract expressionist drawings for visitors to take away.
Tinguely's machines are funny, subversive and cobbled together from junk, they were deliberately dysfunctional, with a subtle social critique underlying their apparent whimsicality.

Landy was struck by the expressions and responses of the visitors when they came to see the 'Credit card machine' "Everyone had smiles on their faces", he recalls. For a young student, from a background where art was not a consideration, the idea of gallery visiting was something for other people, the show was a revelation. Landy took away with him from this exhibition a so called 'meta-matic' abstract drawing produced by the drawing machine. It could be argued that this one experience set his life on a trajectory that it would otherwise not have taken.

Tinguely did design and make various kinetic sculptures that then inspired Landy to create the 'Credit Card destroying machine' 2010 because the public could interact with the sculpture which moved so people were entertained.

Landy's idea of combining he's newly discovered interest in the stories of the saints with his well established admiration for the works of Tinguely began to form after he had been working at the National Gallery for almost a year. The selection of what saints to work was not immediate, although the first three, Jerome, Catherine and Francis, were decided upon very quickly.

Video blog on Michael Landy's Saints Alive Exhibition

Images of Saints alive exhibition

INFORMATION on Michael Landy

Michael Landy Saints Alive book  The National Gallery resource

He was born in Hackney and went to Goldsmiths University which is where I plan to go to in September and he is one of my favourite sculptors.

Landy paints, detailed drawings, designs sculptures that can be installations or interactive/ kinetic sculptures. My specialism is Design and my big interests are sculptures and the theme on body form.

I prefer and appreciate more are the old masters paintings that the National Gallery present and I was really happy to see Landy twist and creations he designed and then got made on the subject of religion.

He is a contemporary artist so it is strange that the gallery asked him of all people to create art to be exhibited there.
His practises are from traditional themes such as his detailed drawings, well observed from looking at the paintings throughout the gallery.
Michael studied the paints and characters that cropped up e.g. Mary and Jesus but started to respond by
using cut ups of the saints and objects that were in the paintings to creating surrealist collage - a modern apporiate to then become large 3 D interactive, kinetic sculptures.

The exhibition he did was called Saints Alive where I visited it, he had designed  sculptures that showed presenting religious figures (saints) and made their story and the saint come alive by making them able to move.

Reflection on the Courtauld Gallery

I visited the Courtauld Gallery at Somerset House in London where I met with a lady art history researcher who worked their. For the day she planned to give us advice on researching through books and information towards our new project.
She showed us round the gallery and then let us wonder about and pick our favourite painting that we wanted to research and then present to our class.

I chose the painting Adam and Eve to research about because I liked the depiction of what the artist thought they would look like. The painting shows an important moment for Christian beliefs and religion.
I took a photo of the painting and the information panel that was right next to it.
While I walked through each room I noticed that the curator had put paintings together depending on if they were from the same time period.
The lady showed us where to look in the book for important information, we looked in books and the internet to find out more about the chosen painting.

One key point I noticed from researching about the painting, I saw that Venus looked the same as Eve and the paintings were done by the same artist.
The are many ways to depict the tree of life and the snake, the apple is a symbol of death, poison and involved with stories, films, books and religion.

I gathered research from different sources in the book and then presented my findings to the class.
I would save I benefitted from her intuitive feedback and pointers in how to research properly.