Contact: Sally Widman or Wendy Greenberg, 610-409-3300;[email protected][email protected]
COLLEGEVILLE, Pa.-For five days in October, Ursinus students will have a close brush with the High Italian Renaissance, as New York painter Barnaby Ruhe recreates his own version of Raphael's famous masterpiece, "The School of Athens," using Ursinus students, faculty, the college's dean and president as models.
The original "School of Athens" is a fresco depicting Plato and Aristotle in discussion with groups of famous Greek sages of different eras and philosophies. Prominent contemporaries of Raphael posed for the likenesses of Euclid, Pythagoras, Socrates, Zoroaster, Diogenes, Parmenides and others--53 in all. The Ursinus painting will echo that tradition with College Dean Judith T. Levy posing as Aristotle and President John Strassburger supplying Plato's face.
The 26-year-old Raphael was commissioned by Pope Julius II to decorate the walls of the Vatican's papal apartments during the same period that Michelangelo was painting the Sistine Chapel. Raphael completed "School of Athens" in about 1511. It occupies a wall of the Stanza della Signatura, the Pope's library. It is considered Raphael's greatest masterpiece and the embodiment of High Italian Renaissance classicism.
The Ursinus "re-enpaintment" of this apex of 16th Century art will be a dramatic and massive participatory exercise for the Ursinus Class of 2004, and the rest of campus too. All first-year students must take the college's Liberal Studies Seminar, also known as the Common Intellectual Experience (CIE), a course which covers a series of texts, examines great works of literature, art and music, and through them, the evolution of timeless questions of human existence. "The School of Athens" is one of this semester's CIE topics.
Barnaby Ruhe will begin his acrylic-on-wood extravaganza at midnight, Monday, Oct. 2, on Olin Plaza. He will need the darkness in order to project a slide of the painting onto the 8ft. x 12ft. Luan plywood tri-panel that has been prepared for him with four prime coats of Gesso.
Working under floodlights, with the help of student assistants, he will trace and rough in the background and many of the image's figures with charcoal. The campus will be invited to witness the birth, and treated to hot chocolate and cookies as the scene unfolds. Throughout the next day, the artist and his student helpers will complete the background and paint the figures' togas.
From 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, Oct. 4 through 6, Ruhe will superimpose the faces of student and faculty sitters onto the figures of his ancient philosophers. Of the total, 22 will be students from each of the CIE sections and 22 will be the professors teaching those classes. Others may include alumni, assorted administrators and even members of the media who happen by. Each sitter will pose for 30 minutes. A rotating cadre of students will assist the artist throughout, but no breaks for him--"Ruhe goes on," he says.
Careful scrutiny of Raphael's original reveals more than 53 faces, notes Ruhe. "Raphael betrayed his impeccable geometric schema in 'School of Athens,' adding guest sitters' portraits into niches when more friends showed up late. That's why I started to pore over photos of the original with a magnifying glass and--presto!--another face showed up in the wrong place." He figures to do the same, adding extra faces, if the situation warrants it.
The ebullient Ruhe is something of a Renaissance Man himself. A teacher and painter at New York University and "the city at large," he is also a one-time Naval officer, Art/World senior editor, cellist, captain and coach of the USA Boomerang Team, dancer and marathon runner. He received his BA in history and French from the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis; an MFA in painting from the Maryland Institute, and his Ph.D. in "Shamanism and Contemporary Painting Process" from NYU. He has painted, exhibited, performed and written extensively, and made media and broadcast appearances in the U.S. and internationally, including a guest shot on "Jay Leno" and a mention in "Ripley's Believe It Or Not." Last month he was in Paris "throwing boomerangs on their 'Tonight' show."
Out of his actual running of a marathon in 1978 came Ruhe's invention of the "portrait painting marathon genre, a 26.2 hour nonstop painting binge." Since, he has held more than 100 painting marathons. Ruhe concedes that his Ursinus appearance will be more of a painting triathlon.
His Ursinus interpretation of "The School of Athens" will culminate at noon Saturday, Oct. 7, in the midst of the Ursinus Homecoming festivities. With throngs of alumni looking on, Ruhe will complete the face of Strassburger/Plato, and then the entire work will be formally "unveiled." All students who have helped with the project will sign the painting along with Ruhe, and the Collegeville "School of Athens" will remain on display throughout the rest of the fall semester.
The rarified Raphael happening is the brainchild of Ursinus Creative Writing Professor Jon Volkmer, one of the 22 CIE faculty members, whose niece is married to Ruhe's younger brother. Knowing of Ruhe's ability to paint "alla prima"--in a rush--he proposed the idea to his colleagues and his artist kin. "This is an Italian Renaissance re-enactment for the short-attention-span age," Volkmer explains. "Students will see an imitation of a masterpiece emerge in five days. It's a triple-layering effect: Raphael put [papal architect] Bramante's face on [Greek engineer] Parmenides; Barnaby Ruhe will put a student's face there. As they study the history and significance of the painting, I think the students will come to realize what a great honor that is."
Raphael's painting depicted scientists on the right and poetical philosophers on the left. In his "School of Athens retread," Ruhe plans to portray "Dionysic frenzy on the left, Apollonian stuffy rigor on the right....There may be a subplot brewing as Ursinus students and teachers are asked to choose between order and chaos," he says.
(To view "The School of Athens" and read commentary about it, visit the Vatican online.
Click here for a map of the known philosophers in the original School of Athens.
Click here to find out more about Barnaby Ruhe.
To download a print of School of Athens, click Here
Ursinus College, founded in 1869, is a highly selective, nationally ranked, independent coeducational liberal arts college, located on a scenic, wooded 165-acre campus, 28 miles from Center City Philadelphia. Ursinus is one of 11 members of the Centennial Conference, along with Swarthmore, Haverford and Bryn Mawr colleges, and one of only 8 percent of U.S. colleges to possess a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa. The college Web site is at http://www.ursinus.edu.
###
RSS