A MONA Moment One of Leonardo
DaVinci's earliest surviving drawings is a landscape of the Tuscany countryside--the
countryside of his birth. This pen and ink drawing has been described by art
historians as the first purely landscape drawing in Western art--typical of
Leonardo's status as one of the great innovators in the history of art.
It is also unusual
because it is dated - a practice rarely seen in that era. As such, Leonardo's
biographer Serve Bramely speculates the scene must have had some special significance
for him. On the opposite side of the drawing is a hastily sketched smiling face,
a stone arch on a hill among the trees, and cheerful, fanciful lettering of
an oblique message of contentment linked to a visit to someone named Antonia.
Bramely suggests "the drawing.shows the scene in vivid detail, as if to etch
it forever in memory, as if it represented in the artist's secret heart the
setting for some moment of great emotion."
This associative
aspect of landscape painting has been an important part of its enduring appeal
both to artists and the public. Ord, Nebraska native Hal Holoun has articulated
a vision of landscape spanning a career of 30 years. Holoun, like many Nebraska
artists of the 20th Century, is foremost a great colorist. His landscapes are
impressionistic and tonal--a specific color dominates the plane of the canvas
in a range of subtle variations.
In his oil painting,
Nebraska Meditation, lush, liquid blues lay on the canvas Re the shimmering
surface of a pond. Colors vibrate, shapes deconstruct in the damp, moist atmosphere
just after a heavy rain--fugitive shafts of light glance off of the river in
the foreground.
The blues are darkened
by thick storm clouds moving off and just barely breached by a marooned orange
red oval of sun, buried but significant, releasing an explosion of color above
it in the clouds. Like a peephole into a furnace, highlights in the river reflect
this outbreak of orange above.
The land beyond
the river is achingly quiet. Small dots of reddish light flicker in the distance.
Signs of humanity, they provide warmth, a sense of wellbeing, and perhaps, an
association, a memory. Haven't we experienced the same dark layers of blue wet
atmosphere after a storm, the same feeling of release, completion and contentment
in the wake of a storm--this sheer gown of rain in the distance, dragging its
long trailers lightly across the plains.
Landscape
By Ron Roth
Director
Museum of Nebraska Art
