Last friday, June and I went to check out an exhibition at The Singapore Art Museum called Engraving the World: A Selection from the Chalcography Collection of the Louvre Museum. I've been wanting to visit the exhibition since I read about it and I'm glad I finally did before it ended on July 22nd. It so happened that our visit coincided with a guided tour so we learnt more about the artworks than we possibly could on our own. Oh and we got in for free because admission is free on friday nights :)On display were a selection of 138 etchings produced by the Louvre's chalcography department, chronicling the development of copper engraving in France over a period of a few centuries. Chalcography, which sounds like it has to do with charcoal drawing, is actually the art of engraving on copper. Subsequently, prints could be duplicated from the original copper plate using specially mixed ink and the appropriate paper. This tedious but dedicated form of printing was used way before modern techniques of photography and photocopying were developed and played a significant role in history.
We learnt that chalcography was first initiated by Louis XIV in 1663 as a form of art, propaganda and to facilitate communication between France and other countries like China. Much of the works we see in the galleries depict the glory of French monarchy like the Tuileries Palace which offered the French commoners a glimpse of how life was like inside. The King also ordered prints to be sent to the Chinese emperor so they could share and discuss knowledge on plants, science and other discoveries and developments. Among some of the more famous etchings we saw were Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, Jean-Baptiste Nolin after Arnould de Vuez Coronelli’s Celestial Globe and Gérard Audran's The Dome of Val de Grace: The Holy Trinity and its Principal Mysteries.
We really impressed by the intricacy and precision of the strokes and lines of the works. Even though the colours were monochrome and dull, closer inspection would allow you to see the tiniest details that add up to such realistic portrait on the whole. It got til a point whereby we were peering intently at the prints, pointing out people standing on bridges and ladders who are less than 0.1cm tall! and being totally amused by the the standard of definitude. Can you imagine the effort poured into these artwork to document events and images during that era as compared to now where photos can just be taken with a click of a button?
I won't profess to know much about art but I've always had some moderate inclination towards it. I believe that being exposed to different sorts of things does make life more enriching.
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Event Dates: 4th May 2007 to 22nd Jul 2007
Opening Hours: Mon-Sun: 10am - 7pm Fri: 10am - 9pm
Venue: Singapore Art Museum
Category: Exhibition
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