Bernini Self-portrait

Corpus - detail

Chuck Close - Self-portrait

Composer Philip Glass

Eruda by Jitish Kallat

London's Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) has sent 35 medieval and Renaissance treasures to the AGO, which range from about 300 AD to 1600. What is of particular interest is a personal codex by Leonardo da Vinci, but by no means to only object that is desirous of our attention. The variety of the mostly small-scale objects is astounding as is their beauty. On entering this exhibit, the eye falls immediately on two similar enameled Limoges reliquary caskets dating to around 1180-90. One was dedicated to St. Thomas à Becket, and at one time probably contained some bone fragments of the slain archbishop of Canterbury. Next to it stands the Malmesbury Châsse, which once rested in the now ruined cathedral in that Wiltshire town that no longer has the same importance that it had in the 12^th century. The Malmesbury casket is the only object in the show that did not come from the V&A. It is on loan to the AGO from the [Kenneth] Thomson Collection. The late newspaper magnate had always hoped that these two pieces would one day be shown side-by-side. One can see why. They are absolutely stunning pieces of decorative art, executed with imagination and fine detail.

The three oldest items in this display are the Symmachi Panel, carved from ivory around 400 AD, and two Anglo-Saxon brooches made of gold and silver from about 600 AD. The ivory panel is part of a diptych that once belonged to the Roman Symmachi family (the other is in a French museum), who apparently still followed pagan rites at a time when Christianity became the dominant religion in the Roman Empire. It is exquisitely carved. The brooches display the skills of Anglo-Saxon goldsmiths of Kent, who decorated these two brooches with filigree and garnet inlays.

There are several stained glass panels, figurines, bowls, flasks, and small portraits among other items. Most have a religious connection, though not all, but all have their own significance in the early history of art.

Very few of Bernini's sculptures ever left Italy, but the AGO owns two, while the National Gallery of Canada owns one. These three sculptures have been placed together in one space, which offers the spectator a look at a master, who carved marble as easily as if it were made of wax.

The display is clearly dominated by a most touching, awe-inspiring bronze piece simply called Corpus. Created around 1655 for Bernini's personal devotional use, Corpus shows the dying Christ, although the cross to which the figure may have been attached is no longer present. It is not exaggerated to say that this breathtaking, achingly beautiful work is worth a trip to the AGO even if nothing else appeals to one's taste.

The other two works, a bust of Pope Gregory XV from 1621 and a bust of Maffeo Barberini, Pope Urban VIII (ca.1632) show off the master's skill in handling marble.

A show that takes us to the present is Chuck Close: A Couple of Ways of Doing Something. Close is a contemporary American portrait artist/photographer, who has turned to the past to create some stunning portraits, many of them of people we know or have heard of. In one section of the exhibit Close uses daguerreotype, the oldest form of photography first invented in 1839. What is so special about the method used here is that the monochrome images show the subjects with warts and all. There is no hiding behind a soft lens.

But the artist isn't satisfied with doing things just one way. Another section of his work there are Jacquard tapestries, which he had woven in Belgium on large Jacquard looms. The portraits thus woven are first created by scanning an original daguerreotype into a computer for both the warp and weft of the fabric.

A third section offers digital pigment prints of Close's daguerreotypes that are accompanied by poems by Bob Holman. For me this was the least satisfying aspect of the exhibit as Holman, known for his a slam poetry and his admiration for rap, uses shaped and prose poetry that somehow do not add much to the images. His words somehow do not connect.

The most unusual of the four exhibits discussed here is called Hungry God. It brings together works by five contemporary Indian artists, whose work has been seen extensively in their own country as well as abroad. All of the artists were born after Independence came to the subcontinent.

The image we have of India today is of an apparently successful democracy that is the home of Bollywood, call-centers, malls, cell phones, and cable TV. These artists do not deny the modern image of their homeland, but beneath it they show us that the old India still exists where poverty, inequality of the sexes, and unequal access to education are very much in evidence under the veneer of the modernity of the technological age. We forget so easily that only a small fraction of the about one billion Indians have benefited from technology.

The lone female artist in this group, Bharti Kher, creates some stunningly painterly images with commercially produced bindis, the vermillion spot on the forehead of Hindu women. It is her way of addressing the new Indian consumer culture, class divisions, and feminism.

Nothing, perhaps, speaks more directly to us about the disparity among the Indian subcontinent's citizens than the huge black lead/graphite and fiberglass statue of an illiterate boy carrying books for sale. Jitish Kallat tells us much through this statue, which we were invited to touch at the media conference. The graphite comes off onto the fingers that touched it. What a statement.

None of the four exhibits may be very large, but they offer us a taste of what the AGO will be about once it reopens its doors in late 2008. Each one is a little gem of its time and place in art. No doubt, once the Tsimshian exhibit of 39 objects will be up, it will be an additional incentive for visiting the AGO before October 7, 2007. To see these objects returned to Canada after the long absence, and to know that they are now firmly in Canadian hands again, is worth a trip to Toronto all of its own.