Leonardo da Vinci Exhibition

A couple of months ago I attended an exhibition of some of his work at the Henry Moore institute. More specifically this was directed at work rescued from some of his sketchbooks. It's quite an incredible thing to actually see work at two inches from your nose that has been drawn (as in some cases) in complete day dream ignorance by one of the worlds greatest thinkers and artists. Due to the age, paper and the condition in which they were kept the sketches had even picked up print from pages they were kept against, illuminated in the gallery with clever lighting you could see text and doodles layered on top of each other.
The gallery room used was small, the collection not huge either but the gratification from being able to get so close to the work was just fantastic. Leonardo has always been one of my favourite artists. Not for his oil work which receives greater attention but for his genius sketch work. There's something that conveys more an artists skill in sketch work than in all his most celebrated work combined. Something in the fluidity and the thinking I feel is lost when work is planned. I prefer a more instant transcribing process between brain, pen and paper. When viewing exhibition work that contains sketches you can feel so much closer to the artist and what he was thinking. The moods and the feelings he was experiencing at the time. Doodles are like snap shot views of the inside of a person.
I particularly appreciated in terms of the gallery how they planned the space in which the work was laid out. The room was mostly a dull matt white and the work contained within glass casing's which were in most cases illuminated from behind as well as general area lighting. Some of the work was suspended in the air via metallic woven cords and double backed glass frames. The effect was quite clinical and modern which was a really nice touch to an exhibition of what is commonly associated as rather ancient art (although as time goes, not really that ancient).
The artwork itself was a collection of sketches and scribbled writing (although by any modern day standards intricate and fluid). They were plans for work, idea's for future projects and general visual thinking. It was a little like a mind map but without the bubbles and lines we associate more commonly with planning. They even had an initial sketch of Leonardo's most famous work Vitruvian Man, which by most accounts is a sketch itself.

Along with the Leonardo exhibition there was a modern minimalist exhibition in the same building. This is a good contrast to the genius of Leonardo. I do not like 'minimalist' work on the whole. There's nothing wrong in my view with an image or sculpture that makes use of minimalist techniques. Clean and simplistic, layout and colour choices at the optimal point of the design but in most cases I feel it's just a plain bore, this was no exception. The work was made up of large white coloured boxes differentiable from large plainly coloured crates and boxes so far as that a large crate or box actually has a real use. This offered no practical or artistic use, it was not pleasant to look at nor was it well thought out in any obvious manner.

The room was badly designed, a dull room that was no different from any other, it was filled with (in the centre) a collection of boxes of varying size. They weren't very well painted, the plainness of minimalism seemed lost in this as the room's lighting and layout offered no aesthetic pleasure. Maybe the artist/designer was trying to tell me something? I couldn't see any reasoning behind it. Maybe there was a hidden message I was not getting, but what's the point in messages if their hidden and there's no real incentive to search an answer out?

All in all the other items on display were interesting to view, some great sculpture at the entrance using optic fibres and LED's. Some very interesting photographic works and even a large collection of famous sculpture prototypes on display. A good trip, just a disappointing display from the minimalist front.