artfirstprimo reflects on Leonardo and OMA

On 9th December I returned once again to the Leonardo exhibition for a short visit to marvel at the works not only of the master himself, but to also marvel at the work of Leonard's close associates and followers too. In this visit I will mostly be concentrating on drawings. In particular the exquisite tiny drawing of a youth in profile by Francesco Gali called Napoletano (died 1501).  Napolitano's drawing demonstrates a fine delicate handling of pen and ink to produce subtle effects of shading comparable only to the Master himself.  Napolitano's shading is especially effective in the facial areas akin to Leonardo's sfumato effects in paint.  Also I could not resist including at least one painting in this report, the profile portrait of Bianca Maria Sforza.  This painting by Ambrogio de Predis (about 1455-1510) demonstrates such wonderful handling of light effects in her gold brocaded dress.  Among Leonardo's beautiful drawings are those of the dogs paws and the Bear's head, they demonstrate Leonardo's real sensitivity to the animals he depicts in every metalpoint line delicately drawn upon the prepared paper.

Following an absolutely splendid afternoon tea at the fairly newly opened Delaunay, a Viennese style eatery on Kingsway;I now am on my way across town to the Barbican to see the OMA/Progress (Office of Metropolitan Architecture) exhibition. Upon arriving it seems I have entered through an entrance that gives me an introduction to the exhibition without being the full exhibition.  In this part of the exhibition there are several cardboard cut outs of people who mimic the attitudes and positions one would exhibit as one walk around any show such as this.  They have the effect of seemingly to be real as you catch them out of the corner of your eye. I now head in to the exhibition itself.  On entering the exhibition one is confronted with grey empty walls that seem to be of an unfinished exhibition, indeed the grey paint on the seemingly hastily built walls barely disguises the text from a past exhibition.  In one room there is so much information that one is invited to construct ones own book by taking away pages of ones own choice.  On the walls of this room, called 'Current Preoccupations' new words abound, such as: optioneering, megalopoli(tic)s and creatification.  The deliberate information overload in this exhibition, especially within the so called 'secret room', perhaps brings one close to what it may have been like if one were able to walk into the mind of Leonardo.  In the centre of the exhibition we are presented with a moving representation of this sensory overload.  Projected on a large screen are a myriad of ideas, overlapping each other continuously, of an architecturally real and imaginary future.  Samples of materials and textures also abound in this exhibition, alongside the many ideas.

There is a paranoia in this exhibition, around these ideas, regarding taking photos, which one is frequently reminded is strictly forbidden, indeed it has taken the staff some time to realise that my smart phone is being used for tweeting not photo taking.  My overall view of this exhibition is that this Barbican space particularly lends itself well to architectural exhibitions such as this, however, this is not art in the conventional sense of art, it is an outpouring of idea, but what is art if not an outpouring of ideas.  And if the Leonardo exhibition and this exhibition tell us anything it is that art is first and foremost the idea and even Leonard's art was not seen as conventional in its time.


This OMA/Progress exhibition here at the Barbican demonstrates that it is the art of design and its approach to the human scale as a microcosm of the world has much in common with Leonardo's approach to his art and the world around him in his time.