Seeing Michelangelo in SF
Sisten chapel exhibition
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Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel: The Exhibition returns to San Francisco for a three-month summer viewing at the city’s historic St. Mary’s Cathedral (1111 Gough Street, San Francisco), opening to the public on Saturday, June 21.
Walking into a cathedral is a lost art these days. Seeing art in San Francisco isn’t a rarity but it is when it's in a church.
The moment I stepped into St. Mary’s Cathedral, I was convinced that the angels and demons may have been walking in with me. Seeing this work in a consolidated replication was complex. On the one hand, I wanted to analyze my relationship to this work and be impartial but I couldn't. My upbringing could only allow me to envision so much without the awe of the real experience.
This was an exhibition that arrived to honor an old world and wasn't quite there but for a number of reasons that I can't quite put my finger on.
The exhibition showed depictions of Jonah before being swallowed by a whale with an explanation that he spent the same amount of time as Christ did in the tomb; There was also the story of battle of David & Goliath as well as Delphic sibyls (women).
In talking with someone who was also visiting the exhibition, I pondered the portrait of Isaiah and the nymphs or children that interrupted his reading. It was difficult to tell if they were children whispering to him, demons, dwarfs or mythical nymphs.
Either way, my question was whether they were lying in his ear or simply distracting him from his studies? Nymphs and children are known to do both.
I won't go to much into all the work and the mythology or religious dogma.
Sharing this exhibition has been an impossible inspiration because I grew up Baptist and not indoctrinated in Catholicism.
Of the the ceiling depictions, I could look up and view the creation of Eve. The placard read, “It is due to Eve’s actions that salvation through Christ is necessary in the first place. She is therefore also the ultimate legitimatization of the Catholic Church and papacy, which strives to continue the work of Christ” my interpretation of this was to mean thst without women the church is not legitimate.
We are the other half and are the ones who give birth to human life. That's at least one be some legitimate reason we exist.
My Black American baptist upbringing changes my view of this work. First, because I'm seeing it in San Francisco not in original form in Italy.
The world of art in replication takes on a different form based, not only on the location that I'm seeing it but of the experience in that location. My opinion of it is also informed because there's a world of art in relation to religion that I wasn't raised with.
The missing piece of being in awe at the sight of the original, played into my inability to relate. In the back of the room a video played called “The Last Judgement” from Italy Guides. It explained that the depictions are meant make the viewer hear the screams of pain during the last judgment. Baptists, particularly Black Americans, may not understand this version of judgement.
The preachers sermons I was raised hearing was that of only blessings and heaven not of judgement or hell. It's a lot of finger pointing where others seem to only see the blessings of heaven rather than the burning of hell.
Our lives are built around the afterlife promises and not those of present life where being a decent person is not required. It may not be a fair assessment but it is as close as I can come to what we experience.