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FESTIVAL VISUAL ART | Previews
PREVIEW LEONARDO DA VINCI: THE MECHANICS OF MAN Extraordinary fusion of art and science
The fusion of art and medical science is presented in an extraordinary collection of work in Leonardo da Vinci: The Mechanics of Man, as part of the Edinburgh International Festival. Thirty sheets of multi-layered anatomical drawings, on loan from the Queen’s Royal Collection, show the artist’s exceptional grasp of recently discovered perspective, and for the first time these illustrations are displayed alongside CT and MRI scans, computer simulations and 3D films of the body in order to show the level of artistic skill and scientific accuracy achieved by one of the most advanced minds of the Italian Renaissance.
Leonardo’s scientific investigation of the human form spanned
some 25 years and his meticulous drawings – from skeletal structures and musculature to the cardiovascular system, principal organs and a foetus in the womb – would not look out of place in a contemporary medical textbook. Initially, his investigations were intended to form a treatise on anatomy, but for a number of reasons this did not come to fruition and his drawings remained largely unknown until around 1900. The illustrations are accompanied by extensive explanatory
notes and memorandums in Leonardo’s distinctive mirror- handwriting, filling every free space on the paper and giving us some insight into his thought processes at the time of this work. A catalogue and iPad app accompany the exhibition and offer translations of his text. The more medically savvy reader will be able to determine the accuracy of these notes, but if you are unlikely to be performing any autopsies in the near future you will have to take Leonardo’s words at face value. (Rachel Craig) ■ The Queen’s Gallery, Palace of Holyroodhouse, 473 2000, until 10 Nov, £6.25 (£5.70).
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PREVIEW PETER LIVERSIDGE: DOPPELGÄNGER Exhibition based on the etchings of 19th century Austrian artist
PREVIEW PAUL ROONEY AND LEEDS UNITED Video and text works that blur boundaries
PREVIEW MICHAEL NYMAN: MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA Installation of remakes by filmmaker and composer
Fetishism, symbolism and ideal wish-fulfilment all come to the fore in Peter Liversidge’s Edinburgh Art Festival exhibition concerning the etchings of late-19th century German artist, Max Klinger. Klinger was adept at demonstrating how you could take a small idea and turn it into a physical reality that would, in essence, live on in the minds of future viewers long after the creator had expired.
Here, Klinger’s ten prints – all hatched from his
dreams – focus on a glove he found at an ice- skating rink. The glove within these dramatic plates would appear to represent Klinger’s suppressed romantic yearnings for a woman whose face we never see. Clearly, the glove has an independent life of its own, and it lives on today, albeit as a piece of marble on the floor of the Ingleby Gallery. Every element of Liversidge’s work begins at the kitchen table before making its way to the typewriter, the subsequent page, then into the minds of readers who may realise his influence as a future thing (object) or event (happening). (Barry Gordon) ■ Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh, 556 4441, until 21 Sep, free.
90 THE LIST FESTIVAL 8–15 Aug 2013
If ever there was a match made in northern English heaven, it’s this one between Liverpool-born polymath Paul Rooney and arts collective Leeds United. While Rooney has plundered pop culture to create a series of fantastical parallel universes featuring the likes of open-top bus tours, 1960s counter-cultural icon Jeff Nuttall, and a sprite trapped in a 12” vinyl record called Lucy Over Lancashire, the pseudonymously inclined Leeds United appropriate other artists’ work for their own ends.
As Rooney returns to his alma mater mob-
handed, he and Leeds United sniff each other out in a series of mutual homages, mythologies and make-believe histories that break cover with a project begun in 2011 that blurs the boundaries of who exactly did what. Such death-of-the-author tactics include a new video and text-based works, including a video that attempts to claim the Loch Ness monster for the Museum of Modern Art and a bleak little film about Yorkshire rhubarb sheds.
Wearing their roots on their sleeves, this is the sight and sounds of the north rising again in a not- so-grim exchange of ideas. (Neil Cooper) ■ Edinburgh College of Art, 651 5800, until 1 Sep, free.
Michael Nyman is best known for his work as a contemporary composer who has soundtracked myriad films, including several directed by the painterly Peter Greenaway, as well as scoring mainstream success for his work on Jane Campion’s The Piano. Such visual motifs date right back to Nyman’s work on early Greenaway oddities such as A Walk Through H. All this is compounded in the series of ten remakes of Dziga Vertov’s pioneering 1929 film, Man With A Movie Camera, to make up the installation that forms Nyman’s first ever exhibition in Scotland.
Nyman’s original score for Vertov’s experimental exploration of cinematic techniques, by way of studies of Soviet urban life, was first performed by his band in 2002. And Vertov’s original film will be shown alongside Nyman’s remakes in such a way that will allow viewers to walk through the gallery space and watch all films or one. While Nyman mixes and matches his own footage, the aim of the collected works is to capture the essence of Vertov’s spirit, but to make something that plays very much for today. (Neil Cooper) ■ Summerhall, 0845 874 3001, until 31 Aug, free.