Michelangelo self-portrait on Sistine Chapel ceiling?!

Hello everyone, welcome back to Buy More Art. This is a weekly news show where we'll look at some of the weird, strange, and downright odd things that have happened in the art history fields. I'm your host and personal curator, Amara Andrew.

This week, oops, sorry. This week, we're looking at Michelangelo's self-portrait in the Sistine Chapel, an ancient Roman bust for sale at a Texas Goodwill, and a city resisting AI with cats. So, we have all that and more coming up on this episode of Buy More Art.

Let's get to it.

Sorry, I jammed the audio down, like way down. My chubby little sausage fingers slipped on the on the knob. If you're not watching this, I have this little handy recorder that I use to record all the sound and audio at one time, and it makes my life a hell of a lot easier.

So, anywho, how are you doing this week? I hope you are doing very well.

I'm recording this a day earlier than I normally do, so I'm a little thrown off, and I'm like,. This week has been pretty good so far. Like I teased in the last episode, Jeff got, well, okay, so in the last episode I talked about how an artist, Jeremy Cowart, he's a famous photographer, and he's photographed basically most famous people ever known.

And he's done really amazing work. He's also done really amazing work in the NFT space as well, and he has a bunch of different projects that are super cool. I fucked up the name on both of them, so I'm so sorry.

And I am an idiot. But one of his latest projects is called Auras, and I teased that it's just such a cool project. You have to go look it up.

I think it's, let me see, what was the website? Cowart.io/auras. I'll have it linked in the description below.

I have it linked in the previous episode also, so you can go check it out. And I talk all about the Auras project in that episode, too. It is such a cool project.

And I teased,

And I'm getting to the point, that Jeff got one of them, and he did. I'm going to have it up here for you. Jeff is my boyfriend.

And it is such a cool piece. He actually got one of the coolest ones. It's number 140 in rarity out of 10,000.

And if you listen to the episode, it's two different screens and two different ways that images are being projected onto not only Cowart's body, because he is the canvas, and just go listen to it or watch the full live event video. It's really cool.

But the image is actually projected on him, and then a separate image is behind him. This one, however, that Jeff got, it is it's all quilted, and it looks like it all works together. I don't know, it's very cool, very interesting.

He also Jeff also got a couple others. There's one with that has kitties in the background, which is really cute, really cute. I'm having trouble talking today, so this will be an interesting episode.

But, anywho, he got a lot of really cool ones. I still need to get one, so I'm so sorry, Jeremy. I'm buying them soon.

But, that was my little update for that. I think I also mentioned it in the previous episode, I really don't remember now, though. But we bought our first piece of outdoor sculpture, which is really cool.

We have a couple different art pieces throughout the house. We don't have, like, too much, just because our aesthetic is pretty grey and pretty, like, open, I will say. But, slowly but surely, we're building up our art collection, just a personal one.

Not, like, Michelangelos or anything like that, but we're buying just pieces that we really enjoy.

We did get our first piece of outdoor sculpture at an art fair, and it is really freaking sweet. So, I have a photo up here, if you're watching this. It's all rusted metal, and it has, like, cutouts in it.

It's about, like, four feet tall or so. And it's, like, this really pretty, rusted, red, kind of metal. It's really neat.

It looks like, we call it the potato, or the raisin. I really love it. I want to make I was saying to Jeff, too, I was, like, maybe this will be the start of our sculpture garden.

He's, like, "What the hell are you talking about?" I was, like, "I don't know, it would be cool to have a sculpture garden. I could be that lady." So, anywho, that was I think those are my only two updates. Oh, we actually, this Friday, this past Friday, we also went to Manifest, which

My undergrad, Columbia College Chicago, is amazing. I really love it. I'm one of the few people that's actually, like, "Yay, it's so cool." But I just I had such a good time going to school there, so I like being able to support the school in any way that I can now in the future.

And I also teach there also, which is really fun. That's a separate story for another time. But I always like going to Manifest, which is a showcase where both graduate and undergraduate students can showcase their work, their creative work.

So, Columbia is it's a liberal arts college, but it's mostly, like, an art school.

So, you get to see all this, like, cool, weird, fun, different sort of art, and just see, kind of, the their creativity that students have been pouring into their work. And a lot of it is I mean, all of it is amazing, but a lot of it is, like, really cool. And I always like going just to see what people are creating right now, and kind of how people are talking about things.

And, I don't know, it's just really fun to go, and I always feel so creatively revitalized. Like, I just felt so creative when I was there, and I always like going there. I would probably hang out there, honestly, if I lived closer, so I don't want to be, like, that weird, like, hanging out at your at your college all the time.

But there's just, like, such a creative, fun energy, and everybody that works there is wonderful. Anyway, blah, blah, blah. It was a very fun time.

I like getting to see

All the people, and I never know if I've only taught online, so I never know if any of my students are there. So then it's always, like, " maybe I taught you, I don't really know." But, anywho, it's just always a really nice vibe, so that was very fun. And I think that is all I have for updates.

It's pretty boring. I'm just making a lot of content and trying to grow my business, Mayven, which I'm repping in my sweatshirt today. So, anywho, I'm just going to get straight into the stories, because you're probably, like, "Can you just shut up already?" And I know I know, I'm sorry.

So, let's just get to the stories.

In the past few episodes, I've been talking about a lot of new theories surrounding these famous artworks. So, I think in episode 27, we were looking at the Eiffel Tower theory and the Starry Night, and how those two might be connected somehow. And then in the last episode, we talked about episode 32, we talked about the Mona Lisa and how a scholar thinks that they identified the bridge in the back, like the background of the Mona Lisa.

Well, we have another one this week. This week, we're looking at yet another famous artwork, and this one actually might include a self-portrait of Michelangelo. So, according to scholar Adriano Marinazzo, Michelangelo may have created a self-portrait in the Sistine Chapel.

And this is a really interesting story, because he actually uses tech. Well, we'll talk about it.

I'm just I'm jumping ahead. But Marinazzo believes that Michelangelo may have actually modeled God in the Creation of Adam after himself. He has some good reasons why, so let's just jump into those.

Just as a little refresher to start, though, the iconic fresco, the Creation of Adam, is on the ceiling of the Vatican Sistine Chapel, just so you know. If you're watching this, I have images up here, but if not, if you're listening to this, then you should go check it out, if you haven't. Just as like a little refresher.

God is depicted as an elderly, bearded man whose outstretched arm and finger just barely misses touching Adam's, or like, humankind's. So, he's in a prone position. He's laying down.

His legs are crossed, kind of, like a little bit. And then, he has his little finger just about to touch, but not quite, which is a little infuriating for me if you want to have the completion. It's just like, touch him already.

I don't know why. It just it irritates me. That is one of the things about that, where it's like, just fucking touch it.

Anyway, my own hang-up. Like I said, Marinazzo is positing that Michelangelo, or Michelangelo, I'll just I'll alternate between the two. But he's positing that Michelangelo based the image of God on himself.

To support this point, Marinazzo is pointing to a letter that Michelangelo wrote a friend when he was painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. In the margins of this letter, which, if you listen to this podcast for a little bit, you'll know that I'm a huge fan of marginalia. I am obsessed with it.

I talk about it as much as possible, which actually isn't a ton, but I love marginalia. I'm obsessed with it. When I was an archivist, marginalia was like, "Oh, my god.

I love it." So, in the margins of this letter that Michelangelo sent to his friend, Marinazzo's claiming that the figure that is drawn in there, and I'll have these up also so you can see them, that the figure is standing upright and has their arm outstretched. And while it doesn't look exactly like the image of God on the ceiling, there are some similarities in the pose.

The drawing itself has been known by scholars, because these letters are publicly accessible, and because he's like a famous Renaissance artist, everybody's like, "Oh, my god, I want to look at all of them." So, the image has been known, and it's actually been supposed to be a self-portrait of Michelangelo, like drawing on the ceiling, or drawing, painting on the ceiling.

But this is where it gets a little different. So, Marinazzo, while he was creating a syllabus for his new class on Renaissance art and computer-generated 3D modeling, he did something a little unique and used 3D modeling to see how these two were similar. In the drawing, he states that the artist holds a brush that approaches the ceiling's surface, but doesn't touch it, just like God's index finger with Adam.

He also points to the crossed legs. Like I mentioned, God has his legs a little crossed. So does the figure in this drawing.

He has his legs a little crossed, which if you think about it objectively, that is a very odd pose for the human body when you're standing on scaffolding painting upside down, cuz it's on the Creation of Adam is on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. So, you're like, he laid down for a lot of it, but standing up and crossing your legs is very weird to do when you're trying to balance to paint very carefully.

As you can imagine, as with many of the other theories that we've talked about, too, this has been met with a lot of speculation, which I wholeheartedly endorse. I think speculation can be very healthy if done the right way. So, it could just be a coincidence that Marinazzo's reading a little too much into these drawings, but it could also just be that, you know, it could be a cheeky nod that Michelangelo is saying, you know, "I am God, I am the artist, I am creating just like God created Adam, I am creating this beautiful painting on the Sistine Chapel." So, it for now it's just still a theory, but maybe in the future I will have an update and be like, "Yeah, it totally was." But, either way, it's it's very funny.

Sorry, I looked directly at the camera and I don't know why. It's a little weird. Anywho, the next this next story is my absolute dream.

I would seriously love to be able to find stuff like this at Goodwill or yard sales or whatever. I guess I don't spend enough time at either of those, so that might be part of the problem. Anywho, a woman in Austin purchased a bust for $34.99 at a local Goodwill.

And as you can probably guess, this wasn't just any old bust. It was an ancient sculpture. This bust weighs about 52 pounds, is made of marble, and features a face of a nameless man.

So, it definitely is an ancient statue of some sort. It's also amazing, because it looks like the nose is actually intact. I think it's the original nose, too.

I obviously, I can't really tell, but it looks like it is.

So, the woman who purchased this bust didn't know it at the time, but she allegedly bought it just because she was, quote, "I was just looking for anything that looked interesting." So, you might be wondering, "How the hell did this ancient Roman bust end up on a shelf at a Texas Goodwill?" We know a little bit. We don't know the entire story, just because provenance is very weird and very spotty for most ancient artifacts and things like that.

But, we do know a little bit. So, the bust itself is believed to be of Italian origin, and it was originally housed in a replica of a Pompeii home known as Pompejanum in Germany. Then World War II hit, and the bust itself was moved to storage, because it was like, "Hey, this might actually be destroyed if it's kept in here," which a lot of artworks were moved during World War II, which was good that they actually had the foresight for that, because the entire Pompejanum was destroyed, and it wasn't rebuilt until the 1960s, or it wasn't finished rebuilding until the 1960s.

So, then this bust was sitting in storage. Somehow, it's believed that a US soldier stole it from storage, wherever it was, and then brought it back to the United States. I'm assuming then that the person who brought it back to the United States passed away, and it was just in their house, and then one of their relatives not really caring what it was, and just trying to move shit out of the house, was just like, "Just give it to Goodwill, I don't really care." And then that's probably how it ended up on the shelf at an Austin Goodwill.

So then, the person who owned it, she eventually was just like, "Okay, I think this actually might be worth something, or this might be something." She reached out to a couple different people, and then they were just like, "Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's an ancient Roman sculpture." Sotheby's got into contact with her, blah, blah, blah.

Then eventually, I believe It was a little spotty in some of the articles that I read, the provenance for this was a little spotty. I believe then she probably gave it to the San Antonio Museum of Art to be able to be the stewards of it, I'm guessing. It's currently on display there.

And at the SAMA, I'm just going to call it that for short, the San Antonio Museum of Art, they believe that this might be a portrait bust of military leader Sextus Pompey, though others believe it might be Roman politician Sextus Claudius Drusus Germanicus, so jury's still out on that. It has been confirmed by Sotheby's that this bust was 2,000 years old.

So, like I said, it's at the San Antonio Museum of Art now. It's actually going back to Germany next week, as of this recording, and it's either going to live at Pompejanum or Munich's Glyptothek, so we'll see where this bust ends up. Very short story, but I just thought it was very interesting, so we'll see where it goes.

So, like I've talked about in I think basically every single episode now, AI is a huge, huge issue in the creative discipline. I think you also have now screenwriters who are striking against AI and its use in the creative writing space and everything like that. So, even though there's a lot of shunning of AI and computer-related tech for creative practices, some others though are using it to their advantage.

Specifically, I want to talk about a new marketing campaign by the city of Vienna. They are creating AI-generated images using actual famous artworks, which we'll talk about what those are in a second. However, they are subverting it by making the central figure cats.

I mean, I think I'm moving to Austria. If Thomas Kinkade used more cats, I think I would like his paintings a lot better. As of now, I can't stand them personally.

Jeff loves them. Creative differences. So, the city of Vienna is creating these cat versions using both Midjourney and DALL-E to generate the images.

They also have, you really should look this up, it's on a website. Or actually, I'll link it below in the description so you can actually you can watch this. The video is spectacular.

It's very cinematic. It feels like you're watching a BBC documentary, but really it's just a video of a guy explaining the physical like the formal and contextual aspects of these famous artworks, and then also the ones that have cats in them. It's very well done.

I really enjoyed it.

So, in the video, art historian Marcus Hübl goes to a few of Vienna's art museums to ponder these three famous paintings, like I've teased, and their AI counterparts. So, the painting is behind him and then he has the AI-generated image on an iPad that he's looking at and showing the viewer and everything. So, like I said, he talks about the symbolism in the original artworks behind him, and like specifically looking at, Gustav Klimt's "The Kiss." That's the first one that they look at, and talking about the masculine and the feminine and blah, blah, blah.

And then he also talks about that in relation to the cats that are in the AI image, and this domesticity of felines and things like that. It's it's very well done. I really enjoyed it.

I already mentioned that he looks at Gustav Klimt's "The Kiss," but then he also goes to look at "Tower of Babel" by Pieter Bruegel the Elder and "Self-Portrait with Chinese Lantern Plant" by Egon Schiele, one of my favorite artists of all time. So, like I said, in "The Kiss," it's the two kitties and they take the place of the male and female.

"Tower of Babel," it's a seven-tiered structure, and instead of the typical scene that you'll see in the original painting, it's just covered in cats. The AI also did a very good job, or whoever was generating the image, who was typing in the commands and stuff, they did a really good job with the cats because some of them have human faces, so it looks very medieval.

It looks perfectly period appropriate, and it's actually a little terrifying. And then in Schiele's work, there's a cat who is the central figure, instead of Egon himself as the central self-portrait figure, it's a kitty, and it looks a lot like Grumpy Cat.

In addition to being absolutely adorable, I do think that this is a really interesting idea to, well, let me just read what it says on the city of Vienna's website to describe the project. They say, quote, "AI minds vast repositories of existing artworks for data before replicating their substance and style. So you could say it was era-defining artists like Klimt," a huge cat fan, by the way, "and Schiele that made AI artworks possible in the first place." End quote.

So, to me, that almost felt kind of like a resistance to AI a little bit by them. Like, they are using the technology to show to educate the viewer, like, "Hey, this is actually where AI has gotten their ideas from, and when you type in a command like 'make me a portrait like Gustav Klimt,' they have to rely upon the actual original image." They're saying, too, that, you know, AI-generated images wouldn't exist without all this different artwork, which is very true.

I mean, obviously, because otherwise then what would they pull from? So, I just thought it was a very interesting campaign. I don't really have a ton about it.

I thought it was a it's a really cute idea and it is to be a marketing campaign to be like, "Hey, come to our city. Come look at the actual pieces of artwork in the museum." And like I said, I personally do read it as a little bit of resistance to AI. Like, yes, they are using the actual technology, but I do see it as, well, no, like we are still here, we are still museums, and don't forget about the original artwork as you're getting caught up in all the AI-generated art, I don't know.

I find everybody's reaction to AI very fascinating, because like I talked about in a couple episodes a couple episodes ago, I think it was episode 27, when I talked about Bennett Miller's, his whole gallery exhibition, where he's critiquing photography and everybody's reticence to use it, and kind of hatred of it when it first came out and seeing it as not a real art form.

But now Miller in his exhibit was saying, "You know, we have kind of the same feeling and aggression toward AI-generated artwork." I don't know, I'm still on the fence about AI-generated art. I think it is really fascinating, and I think it's silly to not embrace it, because it's here. Like, we're we have to deal with it and we have to kind of get used to it, because I mean, it's sure as shit not going anywhere.

So, to be fully against it, not see its usage and how you could actually utilize it for creative practices, I don't know. I'm just blabbing right now, but I think, you know, I've used AI, specifically looking at ChatGPT personally, just because it's helped me tremendously be able to accomplish a bunch of things which normally I'd be slogging through trying to figure out how should I write this, what should I say, what's a catchy, pithy title, and things like that.

So, I think there are merits to using AI-generated technology, and I think they can still work together in the future. I mean, look, photography didn't totally take away traditional painting. Like, it still exists.

It's just a different It's just different from what it was before, but you can still do it. I mean, it's amazing. So, I think that I think that we can have world peace with all of these different art forms.

So, anywho, I just I don't think we should be quite quick to say no to it, but I don't think we should I think we should just be aware, is all I guess, so anyway, I'm just flapping on and on and on, Jesus.

That is it for this episode of Buy More Art. Let me know how you feel about AI-generated artwork in the comments below. I do think we need to like get on board with it a little bit more as a society and not be so like, "No!" Especially as creatives, like I think we can use it to our advantage.

Anyway, okay, I'm done talking about it, so thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed this episode. And if you like this episode, please be sure to like it.

It really helps me out. And same with subscribing. I appreciate all of you who have done so far.

You are amazing and wonderful, and I love you all very much. And, yeah, that's it. So, I'm Amara Andrew.

Never stop creating.