AN INTERVIEW WITH IKON DIRECTOR JONATHAN WATKINS

AN INTERVIEW WITH

IKON DIRECTOR JONATHAN WATKINS

Since winning the inaugural Ampersand Foundation Award in 2019, Ikon was given the opportunity to put on its dream exhibition. ‘Shadows on the Sky’ realises this dream as the first exhibition in the UK dedicated to the work of Renaissance artist Carlo Crivelli, running 23 February - 29 May 2022. Ikon Director Jonathan Watkins discusses the show.

Can you describe why this exhibition is so special to you? I’ve been fascinated by Crivelli ever since I encountered his paintings at the National Gallery in 1981, instantly struck by their combination of elegance and cleverness. The way he used illusionism, and trompe l’oeil in particular, was radical to the extent that he should give art historians pause for thought to revisit assumptions that formed the basis of their theorising. I was later awarded an Italian Government Scholarship which allowed me to undertake research at the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan. With the Brera’s Crivelli collection – second only to that of the National Gallery’s – and access to libraries nearby, I was able to sharpen up my case for him. Now, more than 40 years later, thanks to The Ampersand Foundation, I have a chance to demonstrate the extraordinariness of this artist and his beguiling aesthetic.

Why do you think Crivelli isn’t included in the dominant Renaissance canon? Simply because he has not been on the straight timeline, favoured by conventional artist historians, connecting artists like Giotto to modernism. The Renaissance writer Giorgio Vasari didn’t mention him in his ‘Lives of the Artists’, to some extent because he didn’t anticipate Michelangelo. Crivelli didn’t paint like contemporaries, such as Mantegna or Bellini, because he didn’t want to. Clearly, he knew what was happening in the artistic “centres” of Florence and Venice, but he had his own distinct agenda and he was revelling in the cultural richness that Italy’s Marche region had to offer. A bit like an artist working today in Birmingham, responding to the local context – especially its local industry and crafts traditions – he was not in a spotlight of critical attention, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t a genius!

What makes Crivelli’s use of perspective particularly interesting? Crivelli used single point perspective, as developed during the early 15th century by Alberti and Brunelleschi, to represent terrestrial reality – in other words, how things occur to us in everyday life. The difference between this and spiritual reality accounts for the incongruities which often exist between various elements in his paintings. This is most obvious in those representing a collision between terrestrial and spiritual realities, namely crucifixions and annunciations. ‘The Annunciation, with Saint Emidius’, Crivelli’s pièce de résistance at the heart of our exhibition, involves illusionism but its effects are deliberately negated – through a ray of divine light that cuts across a composition otherwise revolving around a vanishing point (the genesis of single point perspective). Any cohesive pictorial space thus becomes fractured in order to demonstrate that paintings are not windows onto other worlds, but part of our object world.

Why was it so important for Crivelli to distinguish between these different realities? Crivelli’s paintings can be seen to operate self-referentially as a form of visual critique – not unlike those of the 20th century Belgian artist René Magritte – but, at the same time, it must be remembered that he was steeped in a 15th century value system. The contrived and arbitrary nature of perspective was something that Crivelli exposed, paradoxically – along with the whole business of picture making – in order to communicate what was for him, his patrons and his audience, a much more important truth: namely the omnipresence of the divine.

What is the value in revisiting Crivelli’s work today? The combination of contemporary, modern and historical work in Ikon’s programme is vital, reminding our audiences that all historical figures were once contemporary, and that all contemporary artists will, one day, be historical! This exhibition – incidentally, the most historical in Ikon’s history – exemplifies such philosophical thinking, but there’s more to it than that. Crivelli’s work presents a challenge to good old-fashioned notions of art that still persist. Postmodernism was supposed to have “ended” art history, but most museums still conform to models that were established more than a hundred years ago. And in this respect, particularly, Crivelli is an attractive figure, compelling because of his impressive originality and independence – a kind of maverick identity that is projected onto him – and his achievements are considered more relevant than ever by many contemporary artists. There has never been an exhibition dedicated to the work of Carlo Crivelli before in the UK and, in short, it’s about time. n

‘Carlo Crivelli: Shadows on the Sky’ at Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, 23 February - 29 May 2022, ikon-gallery.org’