Guggenheim Hermitage goes for Baroque

Sunday, Feb. 5, 2006 | 12:30 p.m.

When it comes to the work of Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens, there always seems to be two discussions.

One centers on the man as the greatest figure in Baroque art, whose emotionally charged political and intellectual works heavily influenced 17th century art.

The other stops at the immediate: the excess of rolling, thunderous flesh that leaves some critics focused on the carnal and erotic.

It's true that all of the skin on all of the casino marquees in Las Vegas could never equate the amount of sensual milky flesh leaping off the paintings by the artist whose work coined the term, "rubenesque."

But "Rubens and his Age: Masterpieces from the Hermitage Museum," opening Monday at the Guggenheim Hermitage, promises a well-rounded study of the artist as painter, dictator and traveler.

Or, as Elizabeth Herridge, director of the Guggenheim Hermitage, explains, "Rubens was not picked because of this unfortunate moniker we enjoy of Sin City." He was a very political guy. He had a career as a diplomat as well as an artist. His family was quite persecuted. Throughout his life, there is always this great sense of politics."

Born in Germany in 1577 to a Calvinist father who had escaped religious persecution, Rubens eventually landed in Antwerp, where he was apprenticed with Otto van Veen before moving to Italy to study works of the Italian Renaissance, most notably those of Titian and, eventually, the Baroque artist Caravaggio.

His powerful paintings incorporated vivid color, lighting and drama. Highlights of the Guggenheim exhibit include "Union of Earth and Water" and "Venus and Adonis." There is also "Hagar leaves the House of Abraham" and "The Adoration of the Shepherds."

Divided into four themes (mythology, religion, genre and landscapes) the exhibit also features works by Jacob Jordaens and Rubens' most noted pupil, Anthony van Dyck, whose work fills the fourth gallery of the Guggenheim Hermitage. Also on display are items and decorative objects that Rubens collected.

Peter Sutton, a Rubens expert with the Bruce Museum in Greenwhich, Conn., which showed an exhibit of Rubens oil sketches last year, was brought in to help with the audio guide.

His assistance was well received, Herridge said, adding that, "Being a 20th-century museum, we don't have 17th-century Flemish Baroque experts floating around here."

"Rubens and His Age" follows the National Gallery in London exhibit, "Rubens: A Master in the Making." The exhibit, which focused on Rubens' earlier works and exhibited "Massacre of the Innocents" and "Sampson and Delilah." The exhibit inspired more articles about the sexuality, sensuality and violence depicted in Rubens' works than we'd likely see from the eight paintings in the Guggenheim show.

We've tried to do something more moderate," Herridge said. "They were trying to show that he as an artist had really been formed by his Italian experience. We're trying to show people the kind of breadth of work he did in his lifetime."

Regarding "The Massacre of the Innocents," a painting depicting the infanticide of boys at the order of King Herod, which sold for more than $75 million and was on display at the National Gallery Herridge said, "We're kind of not getting into that."

We also won't see "Ecce Homo" and "Samson and Delilah,'' but Herridge said, "I think we turned out quite well."

"Union of Earth and Water," which depicts a warm connection between the goddess of Earth and the god of water to suggest Antwerp's access to the river, is one of Rubens' lush and magnificent works that can fall into both discussions about the artist.

"It looks very erotic, very mythological," Herridge said. "But the suggestion here by allegory is that the city and river enjoy a blissful kind of union. The water flowing between them suggests abundance."

Toronto and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao have already shown their own versions of "Rubens and his Age" also featuring works on loan from the Hermitage Museum. The Art Gallery of Ontario exhibit ended in August 2001 and the exhibit at the Bilbao Guggenheim ran from October to February 2003.

"There seems to be kind of a resurgence," Herridge said. ''I think it's kind of a King Tut phenomenon. Twenty-five years have gone by since the last major look at this person. There's a whole new generation of people interested."

Kristen Peterson can be reached at 259-2317 or at kristen@lasvegassun.com.