On a visit to the National Gallery, Garageland reviewer Bethany Pope notices a peculiar change befall the viewers of Michael Landy's self-flagellating saints.
Saints Alive by Michael Landy is an astonishing mixture of the new and the
old. The theme is startlingly appropriate for an artist who made his first mark
with a work centered around a saint-like rejection of material
goods, his startling performance piece Breakdown (2001).
Michael Landy gathered all of his belongings together, from furniture and books
to birth certificate, piled them into a pyre, and set them alight – a visible rejection
of the consumerist world. One could view this accessible National Gallery piece
as a natural continuance of that theme.
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| Saint Apollonia, 2013 |
Entering, the viewer meets Saint Apollonia (2013), cast
from a painting by Crivelli, made more modern by the inclusion of industrial
gears which rattle and turn as her holy teeth are pulled with a set of vicious
looking pliers. It is important to note that the viewers are not allowed to
view, they must participate. The sculptures are animated when the viewer – for fun, at first – steps on a lever, participating in martyrdom while wearing the
mask of the accuser. It is an appropriately satanic role, one familiar to all
and attractive to children.
The room is lined with tall, tree-like drawings
describing Landy's thought process, which are, in their subtlety and skill,
reminiscent of his other work.
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| Penitence Machine (Saint Jerome), 2012 |
This entrance room is the centre of a trinity. To the
right there is a small theater where viewers can watch the evolution of the
piece, as well as the road the artist took arriving on his subject.
Crivelli is
a lush painter, unfashionable in his own time – he looked back to an older,
early renaissance era, using old methods to explore old themes. Since he was,
however, exploring with more modern eyes, his insights were fresh for his day.
It is easy to see that this artist would be a natural choice for Landy, which is
not to say that Landy only drew from one source in designing his saints. The
influence of Memling is palpable, as are touches by Sassetta and Cranach, all
artists of a similar era melded together.
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| Multi-Saint, 2013 |
The third room contains by
far the most sculpture. Catherine's wheel (St. Catherine of Alexandria, 2013) hangs against a wall, each
sharp-toothed spoke scripted in gold with fragments of her life. In the centre
stands the torso of Saint Jerome (2012), beating the lust from his flaking, bloody breast
with a rock the size of a child’s skull. The sound is enormous.
St Peter
Martyr's cleaver repeatedly and violently enters his skull as part of a
three-dimensional Crivelli collage, festooned with attributes of other saints (Multi-Saint, 2013).
In it I spotted St Michael's scales, St Lucy's eyes rolling like marbles on a platter,
the grill St Lawrence was barbecued on. It was at this point that the joyous looks
altered on the faces of the viewers. Smiles slid into sick grimaces as
something unspeakable sunk in.
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| Doubting Thomas, 2013 |
By the time the viewers pushed the pedal that
sent St Thomas's fingers knuckle deep into the wounded side of Christ (Doubting Thomas, 2013),
battering that broken body back and forth, helpless on a
rusty red spring, the room fell strangely quiet. The viewers filed out as silently as the strangers gathered round the cross, or flaming pyre, after the
screaming had finally stopped.
Bethany W Pope
Saints Alive at the National Gallery will run through the 24th of November.
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