Life imi­tates art, and by art, I mean, of course, The Simp­sons. More than thir­ty years ago, the show took on the issue of cen­sor­ship with a sto­ry in which Marge Simp­son launch­es an impas­sioned cam­paign against car­toon vio­lence, only to find her­self on the oth­er side of the fence when asked to sup­port a protest against the exhi­bi­tion of Michelan­gelo’s David. This episode returned to cul­tur­al rel­e­vance just last month, when a par­en­t’s com­plaint about an image of that most renowned nude sculp­tures — indeed, that most renowned sculp­ture of any kind — being shown in a sixth-grade art-his­to­ry class led to the fir­ing of a Flori­da school prin­ci­pal.

It seems that the prob­lem was­n’t just David: that same les­son includ­ed Bot­ti­cel­li’s paint­ing The Birth of Venus, anoth­er glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of the unclothed human body — and so much more besides, accord­ing to the Great Art Explained video about it pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture.

That same chan­nel’s cre­ator, gal­lerist James Payne, has also put out a video on David, which you can watch at the top of the post. Though com­mis­sioned as a depic­tion of the Goliath-slay­ing Bib­li­cal hero, Payne tells us, “in Michelan­gelo’s hands it becomes some­thing else entire­ly,” a simul­ta­ne­ous study and expres­sion of the poten­tial of mankind.

David’s ori­gin pre­fig­ured noth­ing of its lega­cy. Orig­i­nal­ly com­mis­sioned to dec­o­rate the Flo­rence Cathe­dral (which already fea­tured Brunelleschi’s inge­nious dome), the sculp­ture had to be carved out of a much-less-than-pris­tine block of mar­ble already owned by the insti­tu­tion, already miss­ing chunks removed by sculp­tors who’d pre­vi­ous­ly attempt­ed the job. But to Michelan­ge­lo, as to all true artists, such lim­i­ta­tions were the stuff of inspi­ra­tion: the pro­por­tions of David’s body, and even his icon­ic pose, were ulti­mate­ly dic­tat­ed less by Michelan­gelo’s imag­i­na­tion than by the nature of the stone itself.

httvs://youtu.be/basNf0KaOrc

Michelan­ge­lo was also pay­ing trib­ute to clas­si­cal Greek and Roman sculp­ture, hence the stat­ue’s nudi­ty. But as Payne says, it is a myth that “Renais­sance Euro­peans were com­fort­able with nude bod­ies in art, par­tic­u­lar­ly when dis­played in pub­lic.” Flo­rence’s city fathers “had a gar­land of 28 gild­ed cop­per leaves made, to pro­tect David’s mod­esty, and in lat­er years he wore a fig leaf.” 2023 may not be the first of David’s 500 years of exis­tence to sub­ject him to alter­ation in order to pro­tect the sup­posed sen­si­tiv­i­ties of his view­ers, but nev­er before, sure­ly, has such an inci­dent brought him on Sat­ur­day Night Live.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Michelangelo’s David: The Fas­ci­nat­ing Sto­ry Behind the Renais­sance Mar­ble Cre­ation

New Video Shows What May Be Michelangelo’s Lost & Now Found Bronze Sculp­tures

Michelan­ge­lo Entered a Com­pe­ti­tion to Put a Miss­ing Arm Back on Lao­coön and His Sons — and Lost

The Scan­dalous Paint­ing That Helped Cre­ate Mod­ern Art: An Intro­duc­tion to Édouard Manet’s Olympia

What Made Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus a Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Paint­ing

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Every­one knows that Georges Seu­rat’s Un dimanche après-midi à l’Île de la Grande Jat­te, or A Sun­day After­noon on the Island of La Grande Jat­te, resides at the Art Insti­tute of Chica­go. Or at least every­one who’s seen Fer­ris Bueller’s Day Off knows it. The Art Insti­tute appears as just one of the implau­si­bly var­ied attrac­tions of Chica­go enjoyed by that film’s tit­u­lar hooky-play­ing high-school senior and his friends — even the anx­i­ety-rid­den Cameron, drops from a moment out of his trou­bled life while trans­fixed by Seu­rat’s most famous paint­ing. The clos­er he looks, the less dis­cernible its gen­teel Parisian fig­ures become, dis­solv­ing into fields of col­ored dots.

“George Seu­rat spent most of his adult life think­ing about col­or,” says gal­lerist-Youtu­ber James Payne, “study­ing the­o­ries and work­ing out sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly how one col­or, placed in a series of dots next to those of anoth­er, cre­ates a whole dif­fer­ent col­or when it hits the reti­na of the human eye.”

By the time of La Grande Jat­te — which he metic­u­lous­ly planned, labo­ri­ous­ly exe­cut­ed, and com­plet­ed between 1884 and 1886 — “he made sure we saw col­or exact­ly how he want­ed us to.” Payne tells the sto­ry of Seu­rat, his sci­en­tif­ic, aes­thet­ic, and philo­soph­i­cal inter­ests, and the fruits of his intel­lec­tu­al and artis­tic labors, in the new video from his chan­nel Great Art Explained at the top of the post.

Seu­rat first paint­ed La Grande Jat­te using not dots but dash­es, “ver­ti­cal for trees and hor­i­zon­tal for the water.” After fur­ther devel­op­ing his col­or the­o­ry, he returned to the can­vas and “added hun­dreds of thou­sands of small dots of com­pli­men­ta­ry col­ors on top of what he’d already done, which appear as sol­id and lumi­nous forms when seen from a dis­tance.” The final stage involved the addi­tion of a col­ored bor­der around the entire scene, and not long there­after elab­o­rate inter­pre­ta­tions of the out­ward­ly placid paint­ing began to mul­ti­ply. But “the lack of nar­ra­tive means we real­ly should look to the artist’s obses­sion with form, tech­nique, and the­o­ry, which is prac­ti­cal­ly all he wrote about, and not the mean­ing or sub­ject man­ner.” We may enjoy talk­ing about art’s con­tent, but it is art’s form, after all, that tru­ly cap­ti­vates us.

Relat­ed con­tent:

2,000+ Impres­sion­ist, Post-impres­sion­ist & Ear­ly Mod­ern Paint­ings Now Free Online, Thanks to the Barnes Foun­da­tion

Vin­cent Van Gogh’s The Star­ry Night: Why It’s a Great Paint­ing in 15 Min­utes

Monet’s Water Lilies: How World War

The Scream Explained: What’s Real­ly Hap­pen­ing in Edvard Munch’s World-Famous Paint­ing

The Maligned Impres­sion­ist Painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir Illus­trates Emile Zola’s Grit­ty Nov­el L’Assommoir (1878)

An Intro­duc­tion to 100 Impor­tant Paint­ings with Videos Cre­at­ed by Smarthis­to­ry

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.