IS IT ART OR IS IT A STRUCTURE?

The Mendocino Art Center recently ran afoul of the Mendocino Historical Review Board over the issue of a ceramic mosaic sculpture installed on the Art Center grounds as a portal, inviting visitors to come onto the grounds.  The sculpture includes the words “Mendocino Art Center” in the arched part of the portal.

The sculpture was created by Art Center students under the supervision of world renowned sculptor Donna Billick, whose special field is large, public artwork. Ms. Billick and her students set out to create a sculpture, not a sign or a structure.  Once the sculpture was installed, it was red tagged because it lacked the proper permits required for a structure or a sign.

A handful of very vocal opponents of the portal accused the Art Center of being elitist – of not “playing by the rules” that everyone else in the village is required to play by.  This is unfair. There was never any attempt on the part of the Art Center to circumvent or ignore existing laws. We found nothing in the Mendocino town plan, or in the county or MHRB guidelines, which addressed the issue of artwork, which seems a serious oversight in a community whose very existence today is based on art.  Lacking any such terminology, the MHRB was forced to make the portal sculpture fit a category which WAS identified in their guidelines:  i.e., it had to be either a sign or a structure, since the category “artwork” did not exist.  Our view is that the lack of specific guidelines for artwork could be construed to mean that the government has no jurisdiction over art.  Certainly this is a conclusion that has been reached in other communities, in which the display of artwork on private property is not regulated by local ordinances.

By the time this editorial is in print, the issue of the Art Center portal will probably have been determined.  But the bigger issues remain:  how much jurisdiction should local government have over the creation, display and installation of artwork on private property?  In particular, how much, if any, jurisdiction should a local agency such as the historical review board have over the creation and display of artwork on the grounds of an institution which was formed for that sole purpose?  These are questions which the Art Center has the right to ask.  A non-profit Art Center is not a shoe store or a real estate office – it IS something very different, and questions regarding how local ordinances apply are relevant.

—Peggy Templer

 

FLORENCE, Italy. The decoding of Leonardo da Vinci’s art is in the news again. Real life researchers at the University of Florence have been pouring over one of da Vinci’s paintings, not in search of hidden esoteric messages, but rather to learn more about his technique.   

Using a nuclear accelerator device that launches particles at high speed, da Vinci’s Madonna of the Yarnwinder—one of his oil masterpieces—was bombarded with a narrow beam of ions that identified virtually every stroke the Renaissance master made.

"For the first time we have managed to reconstruct his work step by step, as if watching him while he painted," explains Cecilia Frosinini, an art historian at the Opificio delle Pietre Dure restoration lab in Florence. "We were able to examine as never before the layers of color, their thickness and how they were placed on the canvas."

The high tech analysis revealed that Leonardo did not mix colors on a painter's palette like his contemporaries, but rather mixed his colors directly on the canvas, applying thin layers of differently colored paint one on top of the other, creating a rich texture and an almost three dimensional effect.

According to Alessandro Vezzosi, director of the Museo Ideale in the Tuscan town of Vinci, where da Vinci was born, the research did little more than confirm, “from a scientific point of view, what scholars had already long known."

In his notes, da Vinci identified his painting technique as sfumato—from fumo, Italian for smoke. "Light and shade should blend without lines or borders, in the manner of smoke," he wrote.

"Color dilution was very important for Leonardo,” Vezzosi notes. “He put a lot of effort in preparing the colors, so he did not have to mix them on the palette. Often, he did not use the brush either. He applied the thin layer of colors using his thumb. He used this technique often in his later work, especially on the Mona Lisa."