June 03, 2004
A Boy of the Boston School
In 2003, Chris Lydon wrote a remarkable essay about Art, Boston, and growing up an artist in this city. A Boy of the Boston School refers to the school of artists dominant in the city a hundred years ago. Rejecting Modernism, they were "patient perfectionists about color and form. Their aim was not virtuosity but veracity in color relations and highly considered grace, proportion, and balance in composition." dominance of the MFA aesthetic over the city in the first half of the last century
I also had my formative years as an artist imprinted with the MFA's stamp. I can remember being particularly impressed by the Copley room when I first visited the museum at age six. I think that although I was not aware of it, I adopted the MFA/Boston aesthetic from an early age. Perhaps having the MFA as my earliest artistic influence explains why I have never taken to modern gallery art. Although I can understand the innovations and genius of men like Matisse and Picasso, I do respond to their work emotionally as I do Sargent, Vermeer, or Copley.
I especially like his comments on Copley's Paul Revere. It takes a Bostonian, I think, to understand that painting's particular significance to our city. Although, to me, the painting does not seem "too heroic for what Boston had become" but perhaps that was because I was viewing it in the 80's and 90's, when Boston (and the Museum) was experiencing something of a renaissance. I have always seen "Paul Revere" to be symbolic of Boston's grand history.
Perhaps it is the rejection of the Modernists which forms the foundation of the aesthetic in Machiavelli, which is post-modernist in the sense that, unlike a Modernist work, it does not reject the past, but embraces it in a very contemporary way. The narrative form of the comics is very modern, whereas the subject matter and style are inspired by the Renaissance.
Posted by Don at June 3, 2004 10:52 PM