GRGR(30): You will want cause and effect.

[Dave Monroe]

... well, if there's one thing I can say about Mannerism, it's that it
seems to be an even more slippery term than postmodernism.  Indeed, just
about anything I've ever read on the subject starts off by noting just how
contested, controversial, even, the term is.  Not only was is not used by
anyone involved, even those who do deploy it seem esp. concerned to
emphasize just how much of a critical, scholarly, academic construct it
is.  See, for example, off the top of my head, and to cover a couple of
decades of scholarship on th subject, John Shearman's Mannerism (1970s) and
Giancarlo Maiorini's The Portrait of Eccentricity: Arcimboldo and the
Mannerist Grotesque.  But there do seem reasons why certain "mannerisms"
have become of interest to, perhaps redeemed by, certain "postmodernisms,"
note the resurgence of interest in Arcimboldo, for exaple (Maiorini; Pontus
Hulten, ed., The Arcimboldo Effect; Roalnd Barthes' exhibition catalog
monograph; though, of course, teh surrealists had already "redeemed" his
work ...).  And, while I'm hesitant as well to consider Michaelangelo a
"psotmodernist" avant la lettre, I do believe David (how many DMs are on
this list?) is correct in that MB did paint in quite a few conetmporary
figures under the guise of Biblical figures, in ways not entirely lacking
in a certain sense of irony.  But, Mark, I do believe that typing in an
http:// afore yr address will render the link active--if my http:// here
shows up blue, well, there you go ...

Mark Wright AIA wrote:

> Howdy
> --- David Morris <fqmorris at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Back to Mannerism, the Post-Renaissance predecessor to PoMo.
> > Michaelangelo
> > was a leading genius in this go-beyond-the-rules school.  Jokes (for
> > knowledgable insiders only) abounded.  Later schools, Baroque &
> > Rococco
> > relied on illusion/fantasy for their new worlds.  Mannerism was more
> > subversive, sly.  Things looked "correct" on the surface, but the
> > joke's on
> > you!
>
> I don't buy the idea that Michelangelo was perceived by his
> contemporaries as *joking*, and I'm sure he was in deadly earnest
> himself.  He served Popes and Cardinals, as well as humanist merchant
> princes, and powerfully celebrated "the establishment" of his day.
> Doubtless he infuriated more conservative architects with his lapses
> from "correct taste", much as Hawksmoor and Gibb infuriated Lord
> Burlington and Colin Campbell in England.  Think of poor Antonio Da
> Sangallo the Younger: Michelangelo comes along and just *tears down*
> much of both of Da Sangallo's juiciest Roman commissions - the Farnese
> Palace and St. Peters - and completely reworks them.  I may boast that
> I've visited most of his surviving work, and see his innovations as
> "expressive distortions" which cannot be justly characterized as
> bizarre.  I would submit the apses of St. Peters in evidence.
>
> (How do you guys put these nifty little blue web links in your posts?
> I'd love to be able to just give you all a button to push so you can
> see what I mean.)
>
> Giulio Romano on the other hand wasn't above deploying a whoopi-cushion
> now and again, but by then he was working for the Gonzagas in Mantua --
> what else was there to do in that cow-town on a Saturday night? (That's
> a joke, no offense, all you Gonzagas and Mantuans out there...)
>
> Mark
>
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