Book 48 - Bansky "Wall and Piece"

Bansky "Wall and Piece" (Century Oublshing)






Banksy...the thinking person's favourite graffiti artist. He really is clever....and he can paint. I love his advice to stencil graffiti artists that the easiest way to become invisible is to wear a day-glo vest and carry a tiny transistor radio. Must say that I enjoyed this book.....it's pretty much all pictures except for a few explanatory notes here and there.

I don't know how Banksy interfaced with his publishers. He must have been identified by now but manages to still appear to be anonymous. The book appears to be a reasonable anthology of his work to date...though a high point for me was when one of his framed works was auctioned off for a huge price and immediately a hidden paper shredder was started up and the thing was half shredded. (Apparently it was meant to be totally shredded but something went wrong)....but the value of the piece was apparently increased by the incident. Love his rats pouring paint down the kerb....and his grenadier guards writing graffiti, and the naked guy hanging by one hand from a window whilst the "wronged" husband looks out the window for him. Happy to give this five stars.

Book 49 - Toby Lester "Da Vinci's Ghost: The untold story of Vitruvian Man"

Toby Lester "Da Vinci's Ghost: The untold story of Vitruvian Man" )(Profile Books)





The drawing is well known, if not universally recognized (and I mean universal in the literal sense). Leonardo DaVinci’s print of the human male figure, arms and legs outstretched, touching both a square and a circle drawn within the square, can be found on t-shirts and mousepads, corporate logos, as well as parodies including The Simpsons. It’s on the €1 Euro coin, but perhaps most impressively, it’s been launced into space on several long distance and very long term missions.

It’s called “Vitruvian Man”, and among Leonardo’s eclectically vast tableau of work it remains one of his most enigmatic pieces. Author Toby Lester delves deeply into this single DaVinci masterpiece to expose its roots, its meanings and its lasting impressions.

Lester provides insight into the genesis of this work which currently resides at the Accademia Gallery in Venice, though it’s not currently on display. The name comes from the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius: “Writing at the dawn of the Roman imperial age, Virtuvius proposed that a man can be made to fit inside a circle and a square, and some fifteen hundred years later Leonardo gave that idea memorable visual form. But there’s much more to the story than that. Vitruvius had described his figure in an architectural context, insisting that the proportions of sacred temples should conform to the proportions of the idea human body – the design of which, he believed, conformed to the hidden geometry of the universe.”

Lester identifies some seriously heavy metaphysical connotations of the drawing as well, and the concept that it engenders. “The circle represented the cosmic and the divine; the square represented the earthly and the secular. Anybody proposing that a man could be made to fit inside both shapes was therefore making an age-old metaphysical statement. It was the world, in miniature.”

He continues, “It’s an idealized self-portrait in which Leonardo, stripped down to his essence, takes his own measure, and in doing so embodies a timeless human hope: that we must might have the power of mind to figure out how we fit into the grand scheme of things.”

Leonardo’s Virtuvian Man is estimated to be drawn in about 1490, but it’s just a guess since he didn’t date the work. The timing fits in with the style of draftsmanship, kinds of paper and pen he used, and even his handwriting of the time. Most importantly, it would place the work during “the very period in his career when he was immersed in his intensive study of human proportions and had a special interest in comparing his own measurements to those listed in Virtruvius’ work," wrote Lester.

Leonardo spent many years examining the human body in great detail, and he left numerous drawings based on his first-hand anatomical dissections. He started to make specific connections between the human body and architecture, which one can see creep into his notebook doodlings in the 1480s.

Vitruvius provided specific measurements of the idealized male form and these measurements act as a starting point for Leonardo’s work. Leonardo expands and improves upon the original description. Lester writes that DaVinci “corrected previous interpretations of an ancient text…to capture the essential message of (Vitruvius): that the human form embodied the natural harmonies present in the circle and the square.”

And the face upon the Vitruvian man is likely Leonardo’s self-portrait as well.

Lester’s book is a good read. It’s most successful, in my opinion, in its details surrounding Leonardo the man, his motivations, and the outline of his career. It fails, however, in its dubious connections presumed by author Lester, based upon an unfortunately incomplete record and circumstantial evidence. Leonardo spent some time with individuals that had their own connections with Vitruvius' work, and he had access to many historical works with various ties to the ancient work as well. Lester sometimes acknowledges that it’s “impossible to say”, for example, how much of certain concepts Leonardo was able to absorb by reading, but too often relies on ideas that Leonardo 'must have' read this, or 'likely' spoke to someone about that.

I enjoyed this book. Lester does a nice job writing readable history. The concepts are, at times, tough to wrap ones arms around, and Lester does well in providing just enough background and context to make things attainable.