The cross town bus dropped me off on 96th street and 5th. that is about ten blocks away from my secret destination. I had decided to beat the weekend crowds, to finally do it, to overcome my fear of waiting online, to catch this unique opportunity, to finally see the Leonardo DaVinci Master Draftsman show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I had plans to see it on a Saturday some time ago, but the line just seemed impossible to survive. It was a mass of several hundred people, a quadruple queue (repeat quickly 500 times) wound all the way to the grand hall and beyond, beyond, beyond. It looked as if I had to wait for hours, hours and hours, and there was really enough time to come back later, to take a look at the drawings by this left handed genius in peace. So thursday was the day. The show will close this weekend and friday seemed like a bit too close to this last two days not to be crowded. It is easy to imagine how New Yorkers would postpone the visit until they read in some paper that the show was about to close, just to show up in thousands, right? Thursday morning sounded just about right. Nobody would come out to see some old drawings on a Thursday morning. Worst case scenario would have been school classes, but around 10 o'clock, they should be out of there, I thought. I marched very swiftly. The ten or so blocks right by the park, the walk leads by the Guggenheim, then some more good old money castles, a playground to the right, then there it was, the grand museum. A man in a green jacket happened to walk at exactly the same speed as I in exactly the same direction. We were walking at a speed that could be measured at miles per hour. He had good stamina, but so do I. At first I thought that he might be just heading for a meeting. Then maybe pick somebody up from the guggenheim? What about the daughter in the park? Maybe the museum after all? He could be a curator, for all I know. We did not slow down at all. He managed to win a split second over me by daringly walking in front of a taxi, I managed to then maneuver him gently into the hands of a school class. He looked like a 4x4 trapped on a country road in Ireland. There were no green meadows no flock of sheep, but there was a herd of high-school students, he was right in the midst, going against the stream, I won. I pulled out my dollar and opened my bag right on the stairs towards the museum. No I did not have anything to declare. I spotted the ticket booth with the shortest line and folded my cash, ready to pay. (The entrance fee to the Met is $12, but it is a suggested price, so when visiting very often, some New Yorkers tend to pay just change.)
The man in the green jacket appeared behind me. I was the third person in line at the booth, but just across the hall, a group of five visitors only pretended to be a line. The ticket booth cleared, there was no line, the man in the green jacket beat me to the punch. And he did not even pay at all! He just showed some sort of ID and got a metal M for it with not even a question. He won. He entered the museum first. It was okay. I do not mind at all. I really did not. Really not a problem. I paid my buck, saw a little note with the corner of my eye "Wait time for DaVinci exhibition 45Min." it did not matter. I was ready for whatever was about to happen. I walked up the grand stairs, went to the left, then onto the grand , right towards islamic art, then eastwards, north. There was the end of the line, maybe mid way on the grand away from the side close to the exhibition entrance. It would be a 45 minute wait. There he was again, the man in the green jacket. Hmm. "I am not stalking you, this is a true, pure coincidence." I learned that with strangers in New York the window of attention is about three seconds. I did not expect to talk to this guy at all, but since I had just walked with him, at full speed, since he obviously was trying to beat me, since he obviously won, I did not want to look like a complete idiot. Well, maybe I did. He actually laughed. He had a good sense of humor. It was okay. We spent the next 45 minutes talking. He was a banker, working on some really risky (good risky) stuff, his wife is an art historian. We spoke about new German photography, Naoya Hatakeyama, the Struth show at the Met, the Bernd and Hilla Becher show which I missed. He told me about the objects in the vitrines we walked by. He had been in this line before. He had been there with his wife. It was his second time. He was there just to take another look at four specific drawings. He told me that the show was really great. He gave me some advice how to actually see the work. We shook hands and he gave me his card as we entered the exhibition.
Leonardo DaVinci, Master Draftsman, Visit #1
It was a no brainer to quickly jump by the group of people who just entered the exhibition to read the introduction on the wall. The other group pulled out their wallets to buy the audio guides. Oh, audio guides, oh horrible visitor remote controls.
The first room were not actually DaVinci drawings. The crowd might have know that, it might have been most interesting to see how the story began before it began, but why would the largest amount of people be in the room that is a preface to the actual exhibition. The second room was also packed. It took some time to get used to the almost darkness. The air was heavy, the average age maybe 55. The drawings were, of course quite tiny. There were descriptions next to every one. Most of the drawings also had these little numbers next to them, a sign for Audio-guide zombies to seek them out and to just read the little note there anyway, even if it was being read to you by this deep voice from digital tape.
Most drawings were attached to walls. It was impossible to even get to those. There were lines of up to ten people left of every drawing. There was an overlap, a gentle pushing in the crowd. Good thing that Leonardo used both sides of some pages. The double sided drawings were exhibited in little wooden shrines, right in the middle of the room. It was not possible to meet these objects head on, because of the crowd, but a slow sneak up from the side, allowed some glimpses at the tiny art.
The art was tiny and the visitors were ready. The met sold magnifying lenses, for a barely noticeable $12.99, oh what a bargain. The experts had their own magnifying glasses... and there were many experts.
So did I ever get to see the art, and was it any good? Yes, and it was fantastic. The very first drawing I was able to sneak up to was a little ink thing of madonna and her child. (probably Jesus...) The drawing was quite charming and executed with a quite secure hand. Leonardo was in his 20's when he made it. I had the feeling he used a real model for this one. The front side of the drawing was what one would expect, the back side had two more variations of the same figures, except that Jesus' mouth was a bit strange. He seemed to be ready to throw up? Was this just a little joke on Leonardo's side? No, the third little drawing was even more so. It looked like the show would turn out to be great fun. There were maybe a few hundred people in these rooms, but the man who packed the house here, seemed to be one of those with a cute sense of humor. No wonder the house was so packed.
Almost each one of the drawings I saw on this day were just little gems. He was not an Ingres or a Delacroix, of course, but maybe because he did not really seem to want to focus on his art. It looked as if the pieces in the exhibition appeared on paper as he explained to somebody what had to be done. You know, there will be a madonna, there is the child, it will give her a fruit. A bit like that. Some of the pieces were as if he were to map the shortest route to a friends house, others again were more like very exact illustrations for a medical book. A very wide spectrum, I wonder how many non Leonardo pieces managed to sneak into the show. I also wonder what percentage of his complete drawings we saw here.
It looks like Leonardo was a wild, hard worker. Some of the drawings were layers of three to five different techniques. He would first start with a pencil drawing sometimes, then there would be a different pen just making things more clear. Then there was the brown ink, sometimes just grooves in the paper. Some of the drawings were treated to a wash, some had some white on them. Most of the paper was a s beige color, some sheets were blueish, blue, some were not paper at all. The formats would vary from a 4x4 inch piece, which had been most likely just cut out in the last 500 years, some were as large as a letter of today. Even the largest sheets rarely contained large drawings. There would be pieces here, some other here, a stain in the corner, sometimes an odd machine. Many of the drawings contained comments. Written in mirrored latin or italian, not really comprehendible, of course. Except for some exceptions, calculations... In fact, the entire exhibition was a collection of 160 exceptional exceptions.
Be it sketches of a dog's paw, drawings of grotesque faces, beautiful preparations for paintings, photo realistic drapery exercises, excursions into botany, each one of the drawings seemed to be more of a living thing, a friend of Leonardo's that happened to travel through time and many places, just to land here, behind glass, to say hello and send regards from the master. (Because he is busy doing some other, quite important stuff.)
One drawing that I really would have liked to see with a magnifying glass was one of a skull, from the collection of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. I tried to find a representation of the item online but even the official site offers such poor reproduction. You see, the drawings of the skull are of course created in three techniques, layered, pen and dark brown ink over traces of lead-point. The presentation here might be very poor, the original is a heart stopping masterpiece with an amount of detail and attention beyond what I expected to see on paper. The actual skulls are relatively tiny, maybe 5x5 inches?, the variation in tone in every single line, the density, the range of tonality, the softness of the overall result. All quite spectacular. Oh, I knew I would come back just for this drawing alone.
I was not afraid to step beyond the "point of no reentry, I was brave and did not buy anything in the shop. I would be back for more of this. I would bring a magnifying glass. I would be ready. What an incredible show it was. All of it. Each little scrap of paper was.
Oh, joy.
