Realism and Invention in the Prints of Albrecht Durer.

Small exhibitions on Durer, while always a cause for celebration, are relatively commonplace at American museums. Typically, the Nuremberg artist's Apocalypse series or several of his finest engravings, most notably Adam and Eve and/or Melancholia I, in impressions of varying quality, are proudly displayed. If aesthetically pleasing, such exhibitions rarely have any broader intellectual aspirations. Therefore, it is a pleasure to report that David R. Smith and Liz Guenther, guest curators of the Durham show, offer us a fascinating exposition about the rhetorical and conceptual language of Durer's art. Specifically they are interested in the artist's narrative structures and his "dialogue between self and world."

The catalogue begins with Smith's brief artist's sketch that usefully sets the stage for the two essays that follow. It is best to overlook the repeated reference to Direr as a "truly protean figure" or as the individual who "almost single-handedly brought that [Northern] Renaissance about." Given the richness of scholarship on German art and its inherent diversity, this elevation of Direr as the "great artist" towering in isolation over his peers is a bit dated, however great the master's actual contributions. The interpretive core of the volume is contained in two stimulating essays by Smith on "Durer's Wit" and Guenther on "Durer's Narrative Style." Ideas raised in these essays subsequently are continued in the 72 catalogue entries that are authored by Smith, Mary Ellen McKeen, and Kim Cloutier.

Smith begins with a basic question: is there only seriousness in Durer's art? Noting that scholars have long chuckled over the artist's satirical letters written from Venice to his friend, the humanist Willibald Pirckheimer back in Nuremberg, he asks whether we are correct in separating Direr the man from Durer the artist. "Laughter, it seems, is a mode of expression too superficial, or at least too unphilosophical, for serious art." Smith disagrees and argues rightly that Direr consciously incorporated wit into many of his compositions. Wit is defined broadly to include humor and irony. Borrowing Bakhtin's study of Rabelais and the upside-down character of his world as a model, Smith assumes that Durer was aware of the inherent contradictions in life and in art. For instance, the "experience of contradiction" underlies the act of making art since, however realistic, art can only approximate reality. Unmediated experience must dash with artistic invention and intervention. I would add parenthetically that his townsman, Hans Sachs, cleverly exploited this underlying contradiction between appearance and reality in his writings. Durer's playful application of this contradiction may be observed in the droll external and internal framing devices found in many of the Life of the Virgin woodcuts. Not only do these vary print by prix, but the artist plays with a frame's inherent tension as boundary and threshold.

Although I agree with Smith that wit is central to Durer's art, I am not always convinced by some of the cited examples, which might have been explained more thoroughly. For instance, the Madonna in a Circle woodcut (65) shows an upper roundel of two angels crowning the seated Mary who stares lovingly at her swaddled son. This scene floats above and seemingly independent of the abbreviated rocky landscape below. Smith cites this as an "interplay between different pictorial modes and between order and disorder." The serenity of the enclosed upper garden contrasts with the wildness of the landscape below. The former's completeness is juxtaposed with the raggedness of the latter. Rather than viewing this merely as an artistic contradiction, rich in ironic potential, I would urge a reading rooted in contemporary devotional attitudes. In this instance, the worshiper has been taught that Mary is omnipresent. Although physically outside our imperfect daily reality, the Virgin as queen, mother, and intercessor functions as a comforting ideal who is provided here with pictorial form. Like the memories and mental imaginings that one constructs, Mary is reassuringly present regardless of the roughness or the hostility of the viewer's world, depicted here in abbreviated fashion. Her presence provides a means for the devout to negotiate through the secular world. In other cases, I feel that the satire can be applied more broadly than Smith has done. For example, he reads the Coat of Arms with Lion and Rooster (9) as a playful tweaking of chivalry. I concur, yet, as any visitor to Nuremberg's St. Lorenz or St. Sebaldus churches with their wealth of oversize family crests can attest, the local patricians with their social ambitions and pretensions are equally the target of Durer's wit. In spite of my disagreement with the readings of some prints, including the portraits of Ulrich Varnbuler (69) and Erasmus (72), I believe that Smith's speculative essay offers scholars a new and potentially rewarding avenue for exploring Durer's art and, I think, by extension that of some of his contemporaries.

Working with the thesis that "representation is always a deliberate act of meaning," Guenther examines the narrative structures that Durer utilized in the Life of the Virgin, the Small Passion, and the Engraved Passion print series. I heartily recommend Guenther's essay since she offers a very sensitive reading of Durer's intentions in each of these series. Critics have often been baffled by the chronological sequence and diversity of scenes in the Life of the Virgin woodcuts. While acknowledging these concerns, Guenther concentrates instead on selected features that unify the cycle. For instance, she notes that Durer used the "disorderliness and disruptiveness of everyday time" as a means for heightening the narrative. In contrast with the more iconic and symmetric character of the earlier Large Passion series, the artist accents a diversity of thresholds, such as arches, a consistent left to right arrangement, and more diverse range of emotional responses as means for heightening the selective realism of his scenes and for encouraging viewer response. Recalling that the Life of the Virgin was issued originally as a book, I wonder whether the subtle left to right structuring of compositions results in this instance from Durer's interest in guiding the reader who literally needs to turn the pages until he or she finally reaches the concluding and more symmetrical Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin that closes the cycle. Guenther briefly discusses Durer's growing concern for tonal and atmospheric values, as well as his enhanced play with "acts of beholding," within his Small Passion and Engraved Passion series.

Smith, Guenther, and their colleagues have written a short yet very rewarding exhibition catalogue that deserves our close attention. Both essays provide a stimulating introduction into the complexities and shifting concerns of Durer's art.

JEFFREY CHIPPS SMITH University of Texas, Austin