Between offerings at the Arts Center and the Museum of Fine Arts, downtown St. Petersburg is practically a print-lovers' paradise this season. While Johns takes over the Arts Center, the MFA features engravings and woodcuts by Renaissance virtuoso Albrecht Dürer drawn from the Hessisches Landesmuseum in Darmstadt, Germany.
To complement the Dürer exhibition, the museum has installed a small show devoted to the history of woodblock printing and wood engraving upstairs from the grander galleries where more than 100 Dürer prints appear to be attracting a healthy crowd on weekends. In the smaller space, the survey traces a progression from Renaissance prints to examples from early commercial advertisements, to the medium's German Expressionist heyday (notably, in the work of Hans Friedrich Grohs), to a handful of lovely contemporary examples, like Luisa Chase's glowing Dawn (a just-right sunrise in orange, pink and violet).
But siphoning any attention away from Dürer's jaw-dropping technical ability is a nearly impossible task — and the real treat here is simply to give yourself over to the marathon display of the German artist's work. Though the density and sheer number of these prints may make for a challenge to most modern-day attention spans, viewers will find a reward inside nearly every frame — from the painstakingly rendered anatomy of a Christ figure to transcendent moments when Dürer's unique gift for imbuing the scratchings of an engraving tool with spiritual feeling shines through, as in the unforgettable St. Jerome in His Study (1514).
As a deliciously politically incorrect counterpoint, genre scenes provide a glimpse into bourgeois curiosities of the time, from dancing peasants to a disfigured man (the uncouth "other") seeming to offend his female companion with bad manners. Along with Dürer's famous and fantastical zoological study, The Rhinoceros (1515), the engaging prints clue us into what collectors during the Renaissance liked to look at — and it's pretty telling that the same images still make for excellent viewing today. "Albrecht Dürer: Art in Transition, Masterpieces from the Graphic Collection of the Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt, Germany," January 17-April 12, Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg. —Megan Voeller
This article appears in Feb 11-17, 2009.