The enigma variations: Michael Allgoewer takes us within and deconstructs a puzzle by Dürer
Michael Allgoewer deconstructs a 505-year-old puzzle
Michael Allgoewer puts us in the picture.
The picture is “Melencolia I” an enigmatic 505-year-old engraving by Albrecht Dürer, a German painter and printmaker.
“I have been looking at this print since childhood, when I first came upon it in my father’s art books,” Allgoewer tells me.
Allgoewer (born in 1954), a Hamilton painter and installation artist, has created an installation that deconstructs Dürer’s engraving and invites us to be surrounded by some of what’s in the print. The exhibition, at the McMaster Museum of Art, is titled “1514,” the date of Dürer’s engraving.
In Dürer’s print, a batlike creature holds a banner reading “Melencolia I.” This refers to the winged female seated in the foreground on the right. She is the personification of melencolia, or melancholy, one of four tempera-
ments described by earlier medieval physiologists. Her hand-to-head attitude is traditional and signifies thought, but can also convey despair.
She’s accompanied by a small winged putto, or cupid, and an emaciated dog. She is surrounded by many objects, all of which are loaded with meanings. Contemporary Northern European viewers loved to unravel the meanings of the many objects artists put into their compositions.
The print continues to be subject to varied, often conflicting interpretations that include geometry — she holds a pair of compasses — and alchemy. Melencolia can be linked to creativity, some say, or the loss of it.
Allgoewer’s installation is composed of nine sculptures and photographs arranged in a spacious way that contrasts with Dürer’s horror vacui. But Allgoewer’s work is just as complex and layered.
Each of Allgoewer’s pieces can be viewed on at least two levels. First, all can be found in Dürer’s engraving. Second, many are also associated in some way with Allgoewer, his creations and the artists who have inspired him.
“Wing” is one of the first things we see on entry. The steel and mixed-media sculpture consists of a pair of wings atop a nine-foot-high stand attached to the wall. The two photographs on the wall focus on dead birds.
“‘Wing’ and the accompanying Wing photos are allusions to ‘Melencolia’ and the putto,” Allgoewer says. “There is also a reference to Dürer’s beautiful watercolour studies of the wing of a European blue roller.”
“Dürer’s Solid,” a plywood polyhedron, recalls the one leaning into the base of the ladder in Dürer’s print. Allgoewer is also referencing the sparse box sculptures of Donald Judd, an American modernist.
“Ladder,” a steel structure with seven rings, is one of the few objects Allgoewer has not made himself. Dürer’s ladder might lead to the heavens, but Allgoewer’s has hit the gallery ceiling.
Allgoewer also had in mind Joseph Beuys’s ladder — the last sculpture made by the avant-garde German artist.
“Meteor,” at the back of the gallery, comprises a rough black concrete ball on a stand. A chain runs from the meteor to part of a picture frame hanging high on an adjoining wall.
Dürer envisions a meteor exploding in the sky under the rainbow. The idea for Allgoewer’s chained sculpture is based on the meteor Dürer saw chained to a wall in a German church.
As for the frame, that is all that is left of one of Allgoewer’s outdoor installations on the grounds of McMaster University.
Regina Haggo, art historian, public speaker, curator, YouTube video maker and former professor at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, teaches at the Dundas Valley School of Art. dhaggo@the spec.com