My favorite little men are coming to New York - The Game of Kings: Medieval Ivory Chessmen from the Isle of Lewis opens at the Cloisters on November 15. Bug-eyed Kings dismayed at the prospect of close and bloody combat, Queens holding worried faces, Soldiers so eager to begin that they bite their shields in anticipation, Bishops gripping their croziers, Horsemen hunched and ready: these little ivory creatures give us a world that faded long ago, though their iconic battle persists and endures in the game of chess.

It is a fact that these delicate but vigorously carved ivory creatures were found in 1831 on the Scottish Isle of Lewis. It's agreed that they date from around the 11th century (partly attested by the style of the Bishop's miter) but beyond that almost all is speculation. Are they Icelandic, or Norwegian, for whom were they created, by whom were they used? The pieces have so much personality; it's frustrating that they can't tell more of their story.

The game of chess predates these 'men', which are likely pieces from four sets - some are now in the National Museum of Scotland and some in the British Museum (which lent theirs for the show.) Chess began sometime around 600 in northern India or Afghanistan - the vocabulary of chess and the basic forms and rules come directly from those origins. Here  Krishna and his consort Radha play Chaturanga, the precursor to chess.

Chess became very popular in aristocratic Europe during the 11th century - the quality of the Lewis Chess Set identifies the owners, whoever they were, as being of wealthy and privileged rank. Even the backs are carved, in the intricate woven patterns consistent with the time and place. Norse mythology is written in these pieces, particularly in the 'Berserkers' - those avid soldiers - Berserkers in the sagas were soldiers so frenzied by battle that they fought in a trance.

The pieces are small, but larger than the ordinary chess 'men' of today's game - it is said that the board needed for a full game would have measured about 3 feet across - and that the board may have been red and white rather than black and white. Either color opposition makes symbolic sense: archetypal opposition can be seen as dark vs light, or as blood/passion red vs purity/innocence.

A drafty battle tent, a lofty hall in a great stone castle, a blustery cold wind flapping and wuthering, the light from a fire flickering over battle-worn hands, faces creased as they ponder their moves and shift these woeful, charming little creatures - the Lewis Chessmen tell us silently that they were there, even if they can't tell us exactly where.

Click these links to learn more about the exhibit and the Lewis Chessmen
http://www.nms.ac.uk/our_museums/national_museum/lewis_chessmen_unmasked/meet_the_chessmen.aspx

http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2011/the-game-of-kings-medieval-ivory-chessmen-from-the-isle-of-lewis

Are You A Chess Player? Is it just a game for you or an iconic battle of life and death?

Goya has always been hard to pin down. The discovery of a 'new' portrait, albeit hidden under an existing one, just adds to the complex story of this fascinating artist. Who is among the most modern of 'old masters'? Goya. Who made his living painting fawning portraits of powerful court patrons? Goya. Who is one of the most subversive of all painters? Goya. Who was one of the first realist painters? Goya. Who painted the darkest, most terrifying images in all of art? Goya. And did I mention that he had 24 children? 

The new painting, an unfinished formal portrait of a man wearing the important bling of a Napoleonic officer (it may even be Joseph Bonaparte, appointed King of Spain by his brother the Emperor) was discovered with the fresh out of the box Scanning Macro X-ray Fluorescence Spectrometry, a technology developed in the Netherlands and Belgium. This is a technique that "fires high-energy x-rays at the painting, which energizes the atoms causing them to release their own x-rays. By observing and analyzing this information, researchers are able to develop a color map of what lies beneath the top layer of paint. The result shows remarkable detail about what was originally on the canvas."(thanks to Geekosystem.com)

The portrait on top - the only one that counts for most of us - is one of Goya's masterpieces and the only painting by Goya in the Netherlands (at the Rijksmuseum.) It is a beauty - the subject is Judge Don Ramón Satué, a man in whose face intelligence, skepticism, compassion, and confidence all jockey for position. His hair is fashionably feathered forward, his black velvet costume, accented with white ruffles and red sash, is stylishly comfortable - no formal robes for this judge. It was painted in 1823, ten years after the French were driven out of Spain. It seems probable that Goya was commissioned to paint the underlying portrait during the French occupation; one speculation about the reuse of the canvas is that he needed to get rid of any evidence of collaboration once Ferdinand VII was restored to the Spanish throne.

It's unlikely that Goya would have cooperated willingly with Napoleonic forces. His powerful The Third of May from 1808 is an eyewitness account of injustice; it screams out Goya's protest against the inhumanity of that occupation with his pitting of an innocent man - clearly marked as a symbol of all innocence by his bright white shirt and crucifix pose - against the faceless brutality of a uniformed firing squad. 

Goya lived at one of the cruelest and most crucial cusps of history, a time when old tyrannies were exploding in revolutions. Harsh, inhumane oppressions in response, did little to stem the tide of inevitable progress towards equality and democracy, but led to wide-spread misery for many innocent people. Goya witnessed all of this - in his work we find the cycle of history. The golden, sunlit days of court life edge into clear-eyed observations and documents of the wealthy and powerful, perhaps with a touch of muffled but barbed criticism, as in his celebrated portrait, The Family of Carlos IV.

The march of his witness continues - he spares no detail about the unspeakable horrors of war with his incredible series of etchings, The Disasters of War. We then watch him descend into a personal world of darkness, losing his hearing, going into exile in Bordeaux, and creating the searing, unspeakable Black Paintings and Horrors. 

Click the link below for an interactive look at the new and old Goya portraits (Thanks to The Guardian UK)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/interactive/2011/sep/20/goya-painting-satue-rijksmuseum-interactive?intcmp=239