Coastal Life
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Story by DAVID CAMPICHE
El Greco’s journey
D
own the river, over the moun-
tains and through the woods
— the pioneer’s journey
from Portland to the Oregon
Coast involved days of arduous
travel. The trail unraveled in slow
wet steps along a serpent’s path through
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thick imposing woods stymied Lewis and
Clark.
Today, the highway out of our own
River City to the teeming metropolis of
Portland can be driven in 90-minutes
or so, and therein lays the potential for
rich adventure. And so it happened this
month. Our mission was to see El Greco,
or more on task, to see his paintings at
the Portland Art Museum’s ongoing se-
ries “Masterworks | Portland.”
Once inside the handsome museum with
its cornucopia of art treasures, I queried a
docent about the collection of El Grecos.
“Upstairs and to the back of the medieval
collection,” was his answer. The response
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as a rectangle hardly larger than a closet.
Up the stairs we rushed, full of expecta-
tion. At the end of the gallery of 15th- and
16th-century European paintings, another
masterwork awaited. Here was the prize,
an authentic late 16th-century El Greco.
Immediately, I was disappointed. That sin-
gle article translates joyously into just one
El Greco — a stunning portrait, yes — but
a single painting on its own. All alone! And
that is the dilemma of a small museum.
That is why we must continue our support.
For sure, the Portland Art Museum is
not the great Prado of Spain, the renowned
museum that houses the world’s largest
collection of the same Greek painter, Do-
menikos Theotakopoulos, known as El
The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Friends of the Cleveland Museum of Art in memory of J.H. Wade
Greco, who spent his best years painting
El Greco [Domenikos Theotokopoulos] (Spanish, born Greece, 1541-1614), “The Holy Family with Saint Mary Magdalen,”
in Spain.
$UW KLVWRULDQV GH¿QH (O *UHFR DV D 1590-1595, oil on canvas.
Mannerist. By that they mean, this paint-
er and a few others, began to distort the to high Renaissance painters, Titian, Ra- spective of the human form on canvas
human form to achieve greater expres- phael and Michelangelo and their quest or board. The Mannerists then, extended
sion. It was perhaps a natural response to achieve perfect proportion and per- six-foot perfections of human beings up-
4 | February 5, 2015 | coastweekend.com
ward to 10 feet. Human giants.
At least, these are elegant cartoons. At
best, they are masterworks. In this paint-
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pis-blue turbulent sky in an existential time
and space. Joseph is there, and Mary Mag-
dalen, she, staring at the Christ child with
a sorrowful gaze, as if alluding to Christ’s
ultimate suffering and death. Jesus himself
squirms in an infant’s body, but his telling
eyes speak far beyond his early years. His
small hand reaches forward, gently, ele-
gantly. Already, he seems to foreshadow
the gift of God.
The backdrop of the “Holy Family with
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real light, a Holy light. Colors compete in
a play of brilliant light and dark shadow, a
technique foreshadowed by Leonardo and
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not the infamous Ninja Turtle. How chal-
lenging it must have been to follow that
great Renaissance master.
The painting is universally called a
masterpiece. Because of the artist’s reli-
giously induced vision and his mastery of
the paint brush, El Greco will be forever
associated with brilliance, if not genius.
Abstraction of his subjects propel El Gre-
co’s paintings beyond time and place; pro-
pel them beyond a normal painter’s reach
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Gogh or Picasso. I choose to believe that
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This Spaniard, known as “the Greek,”
expands a painter’s limits to the extreme.
Remember, this is the end of the 16th cen-
tury. Remember, the Inquisition and its
consequences. El Greco took chances. He
was not always safe.
This, then, begs a greater question:
Would you travel 100 miles to see a single
masterwork? Might you forfeit a Sunday
sports game to see a painting of such stat-
ure? I humbly suggest this could be a good
idea. The exhibit is on loan from the Cleve-
land Museum of Art until April. Opportu-
nity missed is opportunity lost. Chances
are, El Greco will not return.