Nova biografia de Guimarães Rosa destaca trajetória multifacetada do autor de 'Grande sertão': 'Viveu várias vidas numa só'

  

Por Bolívar Torres

 

Um dos autores mais estudados do país, o médico e diplomata João Guimarães Rosa (1908-1967) teve a vida esmiuçada em diversos livros. Ainda assim, sete décadas após a publicação de “Grande sertão: veredas” e quase 60 anos depois de sua morte, o escritor mineiro ganha, pela primeira vez, uma edição que assume explicitamente o gênero “biografia” estampado na capa.

Fruto de duas décadas de investigação sobre Rosa, que foi eleito para a Academia Brasileira de Letras em 1963 mas só tomou posse dois dias antes de falecer, o livro de Leonencio Nossa, com lançamento oficial marcado para o próximo dia 7, reúne pesquisa em arquivos públicos e privados, além de depoimentos de familiares e amigos, para recompor uma trajetória romanesca, que atravessa alguns dos momentos mais turbulentos do século XX.

— Rosa viveu a Revolução de 1932, a Alemanha nazista, Bogotazo na Colômbia, testemunhou o início da Guerra Fria e viveu sob a ditadura militar — lembra Nossa, que já publicou dois dos três volumes de uma biografia do jornalista Roberto Marinho, além de livros-reportagens sobre temas brasileiros. — Tudo isso enquanto construía uma obra inovadora. Mesmo morrendo jovem, é um homem que parece ter vivido várias vidas numa só.

Urbano e rural

O livro de Leonencio Nossa desmonta uma das imagens mais enganadoras de Guimarães Rosa, a do autor “menino do mato”, como lhe chamou certa vez João Cabral de Melo Neto. Em entrevistas, Rosa dizia vir de uma família de fazendeiros, o que é uma meia-verdade. Quando ele nasceu, a família já não vivia mais da pecuária, e sim do comércio. Sua Cordisburgo natal era um lugar de confluências, ponto de circulação para viajantes, mercadorias, ideias e histórias. Desde cedo, a formação do jovem Rosa acontece na intersecção entre o Brasil rural e urbano, que se industrializava desde o século XIX. Essa infância híbrida ajuda a explicar por que sua obra nunca se encaixa totalmente nem no regionalismo clássico nem na literatura urbana moderna.

— A palavra “sertão” na obra dele confunde, porque de certa forma encobriu o que foi a vida dele em Cordisburgo — diz Nossa. — Rosa não nasce em um Brasil absolutamente rural, mas num período de transição. Na casa dele tinha revistas estrangeiras, que o deixava conectado com o mundo. Belo Horizonte, que está presente desde a sua criação, é uma cidade pujante de muita informação.

Rosa também não era um homem “do lombo do cavalo”, como se esperaria de um autor tão associado ao universo rural. Mariano Valério, personagem de uma reportagem do escritor publicada em 1947, disse que se surpreendeu ao ver retratos de Rosa “guapo em riba do cavalo”. “Não sei como tiraram aqueles retratos (...) Ora, seu Guima montava de mal a mal, segurando no arcão da sela o tempo todo, com medo de cair.”

Leonencio Nossa — Foto: Divulgação

Sertão dinâmico

Rosa nunca retratou o sertão como um mundo fechado, mas como um lugar de passagem, atravessado por viajantes, ciganos, vaqueiros e disputas políticas.

— O Sertão de Rosa é um mundo com seu dinamismo próprio, suas redes, suas interações, suas relações econômicas e políticas — diz Nossa. — Ele nunca disse que o sertão dele é rural. Foram os estudos, as camadas ao longo do tempo que sempre colocaram aquilo como um lugar fechado, isolado do mundo, como se fosse só o mundo da pecuária.

Obra viva

A originalidade de Rosa não estaria, segundo Nossa, em uma reinvenção radical da linguagem (no estilo de James Joyce), mas em um esforço de reunir e potencializar as oralidades brasileiras. O escritor teria buscado incorporar não apenas o português sertanejo, mas também vocábulos africanos, indígenas e até os sons dos animais, criando uma língua que fosse capaz de expressar a complexidade do mundo que queria narrar.

Essa linguagem é construída a partir da convivência de diferentes tradições, mas também de uma pesquisa incansável. O autor estava sempre anotando em um caderninho as suas descobertas.

— Sua obra é uma tentativa de criar criar uma situação em que todas as linguagens brasileiras possam ser utilizadas — diz o biógrafo. —Há certas tentativas de capturar a obra dele como se fosse de laboratório e não como uma obra viva, que trabalha as palavras do dia a dia.

A bisavó negra

Leonêncio Nossa resgata uma figura pouco explorada nos estudos sobre Rosa, a sua bisavó Graciana Teixeira Lomba. Possivelmente ex-escravizada, ela viveu um amor proibido com o bisavô Francisco de Assis Guimarães, que acabou se casando com uma mulher branca por imposição da mãe. Essa ancestralidade africana de Rosa nunca havia sido colocada antes, segundo o biógrafo.

Geração após geração, a figura de Graciana nunca foi esquecida dentro da família. Ela era venerada quase como uma divindade, tendo o seu nome sempre citado quando um neto ou bisneto estava em perigo. Em seu discurso de posse na ABL, o escritor citou o nome das duas bisavós maternas, a branca e a negra.

— Graciana não é apenas uma figura da infância, é uma figura que vai acompanhar Rosa a vida inteira — diz Nossa. — Há várias referências a mulheres negras na obra dele, embora, como outros autores de seu tempo, ele não fugisse de certos estereótipos.

Guimarães Rosa, na posse da ABL, em 1967 — Foto: Arquivo O Globo

Diplomata rebelde

A trajetória diplomática de Rosa o colocou no centro de tensões políticas internacionais. Durante sua passagem pela Alemanha nazista, suas cartas com ironias a Hitler chamaram a atenção da polícia secreta, que o monitorava. “Tutu, covinha, lombinho, pimenta-malagueta, dois limõezinhos. Se o Hitler provasse veria que há coisa melhor do que ‘Die Wacht am Rhein’”, escreveu o autor, zombando o empenho do ditador ao cantar o hino.

A ajuda a judeus durante a Segunda Guerra envolveu tanto Rosa quanto sua então companheira, Aracy de Carvalho. Enquanto ela se arriscava de forma mais explícita, disposta até a esconder refugiados no porta-malas do carro, Rosa era mais contido. Ainda assim, tomou riscos consideráveis ao assinar vistos que permitiam a saída de judeus da Alemanha, facilitar trâmites burocráticos e dar respaldo institucional às ações de Aracy dentro do consulado brasileiro em Hamburgo, mesmo sabendo que isso poderia comprometer sua carreira diplomática.

— Rosa comete atitudes muito rebeldes e que o colocaram em risco — diz Nossa. — Como autor, ele já foi muito criticado por não ser engajado, algo que o incomodava muito. Ele argumentava lembrando que seus personagens são sertanejos, boiadeiros, vaqueiros, gente atravessada por conflitos reais, por violência, por questões sociais profundas. Ou seja, há um engajamento ali, mas que não passa pelo discurso explícito, e sim pela forma como ele constrói esse Brasil.

Refúgio no GLOBO

Nos anos 1960, enquanto a cena cultural consagrava a vanguarda e a Bossa Nova, Guimarães Rosa passou a ser percebido como um escritor “folclórico”, “ultrapassado” e “arcaico”.

Era a época em que o Jornal do Brasil promovia uma série de provocações contra o autor de “Grande sertão: veredas”. Liderado por nomes da poesia concreta como Ferreira Gullar e Amilcar de Castro e visto como uma espécie de voz da elite cultural daquela era, o revolucionário suplemento dominical do matutino criou uma coluna só para atacar o escritor mineiro. “Acredita em Guimarães Rosa?”, perguntava o jornal em entrevistas curtas a escritores estrategicamente escolhidos, que quase sempre respondiam “não”.

— Naquele ambiente cultural do Rio, não havia espaço para ele — diz Leonencio Nossa. — Isso o incomodava, porque ele sabia que estava fazendo algo profundamente inovador, mas que não era reconhecido como tal.

Coluna de Guimarães Rosa em O GLOBO — Foto: Arquivo O GLOBO

Nesse período de descompasso, o autor mineiro encontrou nas páginas do GLOBO uma espécie de refúgio entre janeiro de agosto de 1961. Ele passou a publicar textos no caderno de cultura, que já contava com outros colaboradores de luxo como Paulo Rónai, Antônio Olinto e Luís Viana Filho.

O veículo abrigou sua coluna “Guimarães Rosa conta…”, que era publicada aos sábados. Alguns de seus contos mais famosos apareceram primeiro por lá, como “A terceira margem do rio”. Este e outros 11 textos seriam mais tarde incluídos no livro “Primeiras estórias” (1962).

Outro exercício literário dessa fase é o uso de heterônimos. No jornal, Rosa experimentou vozes diversas, assinando textos com outros nomes e explorando registros distintos, como se testasse possibilidades narrativas fora do peso de sua própria assinatura.

— O GLOBO foi muito importante nesse momento — diz Nossa. — Foi um espaço onde ele pôde continuar publicando, experimentando, sendo lido. Enquanto parte da crítica tentava enquadrá-lo como um autor do passado, ele estava ali, produzindo uma literatura que hoje a gente reconhece como absolutamente à frente do seu tempo. 

O GLOBO  

 

E o que querem os iranianos?

 

Rodrigo Tavares

Dezenas, centenas, milhares de notícias sobre o Irã e pouco se sabe sobre os iranianos. Entre vivas e vaias, o debate público tende a ficar prisioneiro da geopolítica da guerra, das sanções econômicas e da natureza repressiva do regime islâmico. Sobre os iranianos, resta-nos imaginá-los por dentro, as mulheres sob o véu negro do chador e os homens como personagens de Asghar Farhadi, cativos da honra patriarcal, da estratificação social e das lealdades familiares.

É uma leitura sociologicamente incompleta. O Irã é uma sociedade cujos níveis de desenvolvimento humano e de educação contradizem a imagem de medievalismo que tantas vezes lhe é atribuída. Segundo o Relatório de Desenvolvimento Humano 2025 do Pnud (Programa das Nações Unidas para o Desenvolvimento), o Irã integra a categoria "desenvolvimento humano elevado", com pontuação acima do Brasil, ou seja, é um país com bases sociais e educacionais relativamente sólidas. Em dezenas de outros indicadores socioeconômicos, como expectativa de vida à nascença ou anos médios de escolaridade da população adulta, o Irã está na dianteira do Brasil.

Ao contrário da imagem internacional, o regime iraniano não governa uma massa compacta de fanáticos religiosos ou uma sociedade etnicamente fragmentada ou mirrada; governa uma sociedade antiga relativamente instruída e urbanizada, com expectativas sociais suficientemente elevadas para produzir uma cidadania politicamente exigente, mesmo quando sua ordem política permanece inquisitorial. A história milenar da civilização persa pode ser testemunhada com uma visita a Persépolis ou à praça Naqsh-e Jahan, em Isfahan.

Essa dualidade entre modernização social e clausura política, entre a liberdade doméstica e a vigilância no espaço público, entre o tradicionalismo secular ("sonnati") da maioria e o islamismo ideológico de uma minoria, e entre um dinamismo econômico que coabita com um regime autoritário, é uma das chaves para compreender o país. Como um pêndulo, é o país de Maryam Mirzakhani, formada pela Universidade Tecnológica de Sharif, em Teerã, e primeira mulher a receber a Medalha Fields, muitas vezes descrita como o Nobel da Matemática, mas também o de Shirin Ebadi e Narges Mohammadi, duas laureadas com o Nobel da Paz perseguidas ou torturadas pelo regime dos aiatolás.

Em 1979, esta população instruída derrubou a monarquia repressiva do xá Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Foi uma mobilização muito ampla, que juntou setores islâmicos, mas também liberais, nacionalistas, estudantes, sindicalistas, comerciantes dos bazares e parte da esquerda, todos unidos contra um regime visto como autoritário, corrupto e excessivamente dependente do Ocidente, em especial dos EUA. Em sua gênese, nunca foi uma revolução apenas religiosa.

Voltemos a 2026. O ataque dos EUA e de Israel ao Irã parece carecer, até agora, de uma estratégia política clara, de uma justificativa sólida à luz do direito internacional e de um objetivo final bem definido. Como escrevi aqui, na Folha, o colapso da ordem internacional do pós-Guerra ainda não deu origem a uma alternativa que a substitua, abrindo assim espaço a um uso cada vez mais anárquico, difuso e desregulado da violência. Se a invasão norte-americana do Iraque, em 2003, desencadeou um clamor público global contra a sua precariedade legal, o ataque da mesma potência ao Irã, em 2026, também amplamente denunciado como ilegal, suscitou, no máximo, um resignado encolher de ombros.

Atualmente, no Irã, dois sentimentos coexistem sem contradição. A crítica ao regime não se converte, de forma automática, em apoio à ofensiva estrangeira. Pelo contrário. Em janeiro deste ano havia, pela primeira vez em muito tempo, a sensação de que poderia estar começando um verdadeiro processo de transformação democrática no interior da própria sociedade.

O ataque israelo-americano interrompeu esse movimento. Há um mês, havia gente na rua quase todos os dias, gritando palavras de ordem contra o governo, enquanto hoje, essas mesmas pessoas desapareceram do espaço público e voltaram para casa. Quando um país está sob ataque de potências estrangeiras e as pessoas sentem que suas vidas estão em perigo, o instinto de sobrevivência sobrepõe-se ao desejo de liberdade, principalmente em sociedades com um forte sentido de patriotismo, como a iraniana.

Quando forças estrangeiras destroem indiscriminadamente a infraestrutura civil de um país agravando a vida de mais de 90 milhões de pessoas que já vivem há décadas sob sanções, pobreza e enormes dificuldades econômicas, a reação natural dessa população dificilmente será apoiar os agressores. Escolas, hospitais, aeroportos, residências e monumentos históricos estão sendo destruídos no Irã. Na última semana, a inflação atingiu níveis catastróficos, paralisando a vida econômica.

Deixar um país em ruínas não é um incentivo para que ele se torne democrático. A ofensiva americana não transpira racionalidade, pelo contrário. Pode ser um mero reflexo da personalidade psicologicamente adoecida do presidente dos EUA, marcada por trauma infantil, ressentimento e narcisismo. É como se a destruição do outro e sua humilhação servissem de prótese moral a um ego ferido. Seu vazio interior se enche de pólvora.

A ofensiva militar nem sequer está ancorada no apoio aos setores iranianos mais hostis ao islamismo político ou está casada com uma estratégia crível de estabilização e transição para o pós-guerra. Por isso, é provável que a guerra provoque lutas civis de sobrevivência, o reforço do próprio regime islâmico, ou pelo menos o fortalecimento da Guarda Revolucionária iraniana.

Não há, neste momento, no Irã, nenhum movimento popular de larga escala de apoio a uma alternativa de poder. O país não tem um Władysław Sikorski, que liderou o governo polonês no exílio durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial. Não tem uma Aliança do Norte, que no Afeganistão encarnou a alternativa ao Talibã após a invasão americana de 2001. Não tem um Charles de Gaulle, o rosto da França Livre. O filho do antigo Xá, vivendo nos EUA desde os 17 anos (tem 65), dificilmente vai conseguir ser carregado nos ombros pela população.

Ou seja, para os iranianos, o pós-guerra pode ser tão castrador quanto o pré-guerra. Encurralados entre a repressão política e uma guerra, voltam a ser anulados como sujeitos históricos e políticos. Alguém lhes perguntou o que querem? No dia 20, começam as celebrações do Nowruz, o ano novo iraniano, celebrado há 3.000 anos. Em persa, "Nowruz" significa "novo dia", simbolizando o recomeço. Talvez seja esse o desejo da maioria.

FOLHA 

Raphael and the Renaissance of Divine Beauty

 

 

By Jason Farago

Visuals by Marissa Alper

CLICK ON THE IMAGES TO SEE THEM LARGER 

Why is she holding a unicorn?

A little baby unicorn: a foal with soft fur, a snub nose, a smooth muzzle, and a horn like a narwhal’s tusk spiraling up to heaven. The maiden that Raphael painted around 1505 cradles the critter, tender and tame. She’s sitting upright, at a slight angle, in this half-length profile. She’s gazing out and to the side: the same breath-of-life pose in which Leonardo placed a brunette named Lisa a few years before.

But why a unicorn? For status, perhaps: The mythological beast was an emblem of the Farnese family, one of Italy’s grandest dynasties. Or perhaps for marketing. Only a virgin could tame the dangerous unicorn, the legend went, and the wealthy sitter here was probably on the marriage market, advertising her chastity. (Always check the jewelry: a chunky ruby around her neck, but no ring on her finger.)

Look at the hands, though. How the maiden wraps her thumb and forefinger around the beast’s front hoof. The effortless show-off move of the unicorn’s tufted fur brushing her wrist. Virtue, purity, fecundity, charm: It’s as if Raphael is sabotaging himself. The blushing bride-to-be embodies feminine virtues to a degree present only in unicorn land. She is so beautiful she is not real.

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Only a virgin could tame the dangerous unicorn, the legend went, and the wealthy sitter here was probably on the marriage market.

The “Portrait of a Young Woman with a Unicorn” has traveled from Rome to New York for an exhibition of such sublimity and grace it is hard to square with the cold world outside. “Raphael: Sublime Poetry,” opening at the Metropolitan Museum of Art this weekend, is one of those blockbusters we used to take for granted in the United States — before the explosion of shipping and insurance costs, and less metaphorical explosions too — and, for the next three months, you have the chance to rediscover a Renaissance man who gave painting and drawing, tapestry and architecture, a radiance not reached since ancient times.

The show is a beauty, but not the kind you would chat up in a bar. Raphael’s is a forbidding, imposing beauty: the sort that seems to reflect the divine, and make us look puny by contrast.

A beauty and, if I may borrow for just a second the slang of the Silicon Valley low church, a unicorn itself. “Raphael: Sublime Poetry” took eight years to organize. It cost untold millions. It required five dozen lenders. No American museum, the Met says, has ever presented a full-scale exhibition on this prince of painters, and logistics are not the only reason.

In 1520, after Raphael died on Good Friday at the age of 37, Romans came out for a citywide deification ceremony that ended with his interment at the Pantheon. (“Why be surprised that you died on the day Christ died?” went one rather sacrilegious eulogy. “He was the God of Nature, you were the God of Art.”) For centuries after, his name was the supreme synonym for artistic genius.

Video

Views from a Met preview for “Raphael: Sublime Poetry.”CreditCredit...

But when classical ideals fell by the wayside, Raphael lost his pre-eminence too. Modern eyes gravitated to the sultry naturalism of Caravaggio, or the secular silences of Vermeer: neither a household name before 1900. Whereas this titan of the Renaissance came to seem just a little too perfect. His numerous sensitive depictions of the Madonna and Child, in particular, receded into Christmas-card staples. Teen tours at the Vatican now hustle through the Raphael Rooms, including the magisterial “School of Athens,” on their way to the Sistine Chapel and the gelato stand.

Reintroducing Raphael to contemporary audiences — our concentration shot, our Bible studies patchy, our palates scorched by sriracha — is the goal here of Carmen C. Bambach, a longtime Met curator. This is the last in a trilogy of shows she has organized of the three most renowned artists of the Italian High Renaissance. A Leonardo blockbuster opened in 2003. A hulking Michelangelo survey ran from 2017-18. (Donatello, the fourth Ninja Turtle, worked three-quarters of a century earlier.)

For the next three months, our critic writes, “you have the chance to rediscover a true Renaissance man who gave painting and drawing, tapestry and architecture, a radiance not reached since ancient times.”

She does not try to make Raphael modern, except for a few unconvincing sallies comparing printmaking to social media. Her strategy is to re-humanize this lapsed god of painting by packing the gallery with drawings: 140 of them, alongside 33 paintings, to show the year-by-year, day-by-day work of a country boy who became the right hand of two popes. We’ll see, I guess, whether these draw the same pilgrims as Leonardo’s nifty inventions or Michelangelo’s brawny saints. For my own part, I left awe-struck, and intimidated too.

Because painting did not look quite so flawless when Raffaello di Giovanni Santi was born in Urbino in 1483. His father painted and wrote epic poetry, but two other influences in central Italy would be even more decisive. One was the court, which the duke of Urbino had turned into one of the most sophisticated and refined on the peninsula: a home for poetry, dance, masques and the patronage required for them. (An earlier son of Urbino is my No. 1 Renaissance man: Donato Bramante, friend of Raphael and architect of St. Peter’s.) Urbino in the late 15th century was a hilltop redoubt of a new humanism, reflected in this show through an architectural fantasia of a geometrically perfect city, not to mention the Met’s slightly campy exhibition design of cutout arcades.

Perugino, “St. Augustine with Members of the Confraternity of Perugia,” circa 1500. On the right, Raphael, “Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints,” circa 1504. Credit...via Carnegie Museum of Art; via The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The other was Pietro Perugino, in whose Umbrian studio Raphael learned both the fundamentals of painting and the workings of papal and ducal commissions. Looking at master and student side by side, you see how Raphael adopted Perugino’s precise line, his otherworldly clarity. But where Perugino hewed to an older hierarchy — Christ and Mary biggest, the angels and donors smaller; your spiritual significance determines your height — Raphael’s early altarpieces present a shocking new naturalism. Suddenly, the saints and sinners are scaled like humans are. Like they’re in real, tangible spaces: a technique he may have picked up from the new, Netherlandish art that the Urbino court collected in bulk.

He struck out on his own, he made grand altarpieces and smaller pictures for private worship, and at the turn of the 16th century he went up to Florence. All the artists there were talking about a painterly battle royale, as two giants of the trade labored over murals on opposite walls of the Palazzo Vecchio. In this corner: Michelangelo, whose mastery of anatomy and the male nude made the young Raphael jealous. In that corner: Leonardo, hasty, experimental, blasting through a dozen ideas in his sketchbook while Raphael was still working from exact preparatory drawings.

Neither mural survives. But Bambach evokes the influence of these older rivals on the young Raphael through dozens of sketches and cartoons — including an illuminating sequence of efforts to work out the figures in an Entombment, with Greco-Roman space-making and Leonardesque lines. Many famous Raphaels that didn’t travel — the “Madonna of the Meadow” in Vienna, the “Sistine Madonna” in Dresden, the later “Transfiguration” at the Vatican — are represented through drawings of greater or lesser refinement. The show can get very academic in these moments. Specialists are going to delight in fighting over attributions and dates, though you may wonder if you need to see yet another sheet of the Christ child’s stubby thighs. (The catalog, too, is a pitiless thing, with no individual entries for the show’s paintings and drawings; Bambach has written a single giant essay running almost 300 pages.)

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“The Virgin and Child with Infant Saint John the Baptist in a Landscape (The Alba Madonna),” around 1509-11.

Yet there are moments of harmony here between painting and drawing, between hand and mind, of such artless magnificence that the world goes thin. Raphael’s vivid “Alba Madonna,” from around 1510, luxuriates in the luscious blues of Mary’s mantle and the geometric balance of its circular composition. When I’ve seen it in Washington, it’s always struck me as flawless but also impenetrable, as perfect circles are.

Here at the Met, though, the “Alba Madonna” appears with an arresting and much more human preliminary study — for which the model for Mary is a young man, presumably an assistant in Raphael’s workshop. Left leg extended, right pulled back. Right arm outstretched, left elbow thrust out. The Mother of God appears ethereal, but the image was built from life.

The real meets the ideal: Portrait of Bindo Altoviti, a debonair young papal banker. Raphael lavished care on his wispy sideburn, lips touched with vermilion.

The touch that makes Raphael’s Madonnas so tender can become provocative, and even lascivious, in his portraits. Facing the “Young Woman with a Unicorn” is another loan from Washington, of the debonair young papal banker Bindo Altoviti, turning his head back to us with androgynous wiles. Again, the real runs right into the ideal: Look at the care Raphael lavished on his wispy blond sideburn, the lips touched with vermilion. Altoviti is moving up, from Rome to Olympus. (Well, when you are young and rich and beautiful, you may as well flaunt it.)

Another classicization is his “Fornarina,” or female baker: a young woman raising a sheer veil to her still-uncovered breasts, in the manner of countless marble Venuses. Scholars assume the subject was Margarita Luti, one of Raphael’s models and mistresses, whose father ran a bakery.

The "Portrait of the Nude Fornarina” has traveled from Rome to New York for “Raphael: Sublime Poetry.”

He was still only 25 when he got to Rome, yet his reputation as a modernizer — plus the connections of Bramante: Urbino boys stick together! — convinced Pope Julius II to invite Raphael to decorate the room that would define his legacy for centuries. That was the Stanza della Segnatura, the first of four Vatican chambers now known as the Raphael Rooms (or just stanze), which the Met tries to evoke with projections at three-quarter scale. They cycle too fast — just 15 seconds per room — and the images appear bleached out, so before you enter the video reproduction, navigate the forest of drawings Bambach has gathered. Blind Homer looks skyward. Adam gazes back over his shoulder. Pythagoras and his disciples are ready to face Christ in heaven. In this room, at this time, where Raphael married the Bible to Greco-Roman antiquity, the past became not just something to emulate but to exceed.

Video

Raphael painted a suite of four interconnected, frescoed rooms on the second floor of the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican Museums, in the Vatican Palace; a digital video at the Met shows his monumental fresco cycles at about 75 percent scale.CreditCredit...

Like I said, it’s intimidating — and we haven’t even come to the Sistine Chapel tapestries, magnificent visions of the Gospel so lush they drove the papacy of Leo X into bankruptcy. (But when you go broke there is always someone richer. The three tapestries here are second editions, made for the king of Spain.)

But the real challenge, and also the merit, of the Met’s Raphael blowout isn’t its quantity; it’s how it defies modern expectations. The sweet Madonnas and philosophizing Greeks we now find so removed from our time were once, in the early 16th century, endeavors to reinvent everything — ideal visions from “the firstborn among the sons of modern Europe,” as the Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt called Raphael’s generation.

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Viewing the lush scenery of the late 1540s/early 1550s Flemish tapestry edition of Raphael’s “The Miraculous Draft of the Fishes” from the Acts of the Apostles series, woven in wool and silk. The original was commissioned by Pope Leo X, to be brought into the Sistine Chapel on special occasions.

Because the whole point of the Renaissance, articulated in every stroke and scratch of this exhibition, is that the past could never be reattained, not as it was before. It was only a guide, a model, to live a finer life in your own times. When Plato and Aristotle stare you down at the Vatican, when the Madonna looks as serene as Lake Trasimeno, when a woman with a unicorn promises this world can be better, you are witnessing not antiquity being reborn but human nature itself. Only that rebirth, that inner renaissance, could give a pope the confidence to tear down St. Peter’s, and to let a young man loose on the walls.

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Detail from “The Holy Family with Infant Saint John the Baptist (The Madonna of the Rose),” in “Raphael: Sublime Poetry.”

 

THE NEW YORK TIMES 

 

 

Sam Kieth, Creator of Surreal Comic Book Series The Maxx, Dies at 63

 A cocreator of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series, he dreamed up The Maxx as a homeless character in the real world and a superhero in a subconscious realm. It was adapted for an MTV series

 

 By George Gene Gustines

Sam Kieth, a comic book cartoonist who created The Maxx, a surreal series about characters leading dual lives — in the real world and in a subconscious realm — and who cocreated the popular series Sandman, died on March 15 at his home in Sacramento. He was 63.

His death was confirmed by his wife, Kathy Kieth. He had been diagnosed with Lewy body dementia in 2023.

At a glance, The Maxx, which debuted in 1993 in Image Comics and ran for five years, might have been mistaken for a typical superhero comic, but Mr. Kieth’s bold art aesthetic and exploration of mature themes gave it an adult edge.

At the center of the story is a woman named Julie, a rape victim who creates a subconscious world in which she feels safe. Mr. Gone, a serial rapist who had attacked Julie, can enter that haven. When Julie hits a homeless man in an automobile accident, the man is transformed into the Maxx, who becomes her behemoth protector in both worlds, a creature in a purple and yellow costume who has sharp white teeth and hands with middle digits shaped like claws.

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The character The Maxx was a homeless man who, after being hit by a car, is transformed into a behemoth with sharp white teeth and hands with middle digits shaped like claws.Credit...Sam Kieth/Image Comics

MTV adapted The Maxx for a 13-episode animated series in 1995. At the time, in an interview in Wizard, a magazine devoted to the comic book industry, Mr. Kieth explained the general concept behind the series:

“The closest thing I could think of was that it’s Don Quixote, a person stuck in an unpleasant real world who dreams of a world where he has control and power, but keeps returning to unpleasant reality.”

Though The Maxx was Mr. Kieth’s brainchild, he worked with the writer William Messner-Loebs for most of the comic book series, until he felt confident enough to handle the scripting himself.

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The Maxx meeting Mr. Gone, a serial rapist. “The closest thing I could think of was that it’s Don Quixote, a person stuck in an unpleasant real world who dreams of a world where he has control and power,” Mr. Kieth said of the series.Credit...Sam Kieth/Image Comics

Mr. Kieth caught early notice for his work in an issue of The Incredible Hulk and for his depiction of Wolverine in Marvel Comics Presents, a comic book anthology series. He was then recruited to Image Comics by the co-founder Jim Lee in 1992.

“Sam had hit big with his rendition of Wolverine in Marvel Comics Presents,” Mr. Lee said in an interview. Wolverine was typically depicted as short, squat and strong. Mr. Kieth’s version of the character was impossibly muscled and had a feral energy.

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“I thought it would polarize the audience,” Mr. Lee said. “Most people loved it because it was so different and original.”

The goal of Image Comics was for its artists and writers to have creator control of their characters and to enjoy the financial rewards. “Sam was the one who lived the dream,” Mr. Lee said. Mr. Kieth owned the character, he had complete creative freedom, and he profited from the MTV adaptation. Mr. Lee added, “I had such admiration and respect for what he did — and a tinge of jealousy.”

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Mr. Kieth’s version of Wolverine was impossibly muscled and had a feral energy.Credit...Sam Kieth/Marvel Entertainment

Samuel Coleman Kieth, an only child, was born in Sacramento on Jan. 11, 1963. His father, Samuel E. Kieth, was a barber and an aspiring artist, and his mother, Sammie (Robertson) Kieth, was an employment representative for the state of California, among other jobs.

Mr. Kieth, who wanted to be a comic book artist from an early age, dropped out of high school in 10th grade and began phoning comic book editors in New York, asking if work was available, his wife recalled. He married Kathy Frye in 1982, and they worked odd jobs as Mr. Kieth pursued his artistic ambitions.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by his mother.

Mr. Kieth’s first professional comic book credit, published by Comico in 1983, was a 10-page story, which he wrote and drew, about a killer rabbit. He found more regular work on the series Mage, written and drawn by Matt Wagner; Mr. Kieth inked several issues, beginning in 1985.

His first breakthrough came in 1988 with the fantasy series Sandman, written by Neil Gaiman. Mr. Kieth, the artist Mike Dringenberg and Mr. Gaiman together created the series, which went on to critical acclaim.

Mr. Kieth drew the first five issues of Sandman and seemed to be most in his element — drawing strange, misshapen creatures of the night — in issue No. 4, when the main character travels to hell. In that issue, Mr. Kieth drew a two-page spread in which Sandman and Satan are surrounded by a horde of demons.

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One of Mr. Kieth’s spreads from Sandman, a fantasy series he cocreated with Neil Gaiman and Mike Dringenberg.Credit...Sam Kieth and Mike Dringenberg/DC

In 2010, in an interview with Digital Spy, an entertainment news site, Mr. Kieth was humble about his contributions to Sandman. “All I did was draw a guy in a black robe, and they said, ‘Yes, that’s the character,’ so I got the credit for it,” he said.

Mr. Gaiman remembered being with his editor Karen Berger when she made an expensive phone call to Mr. Kieth to offer him the Sandman assignment. “We were in England, and the next thing I know, she’s making an international call to America, which at the time was very fancy,” he said in an interview.

But Mr. Kieth was not easily persuaded.

“I just remember having the strangest conversation with Sam,” Mr. Gaiman continued, “because he’s like, ‘OK, who dropped out? You don’t really want me.’ I could never tell if it was low self-esteem in reality or low self-esteem being deployed as a weapon.”

It ended up being a lucrative gig for Mr. Kieth. Creator credit comes with financial rewards when the property is developed into other media and when the work is reprinted. “We’re still getting royalties,” Kathy Kieth said.

In 1993, Mr. Kieth’s art was featured in a group show at Four Color Images gallery in Lower Manhattan. (A visit to the gallery by Abby Terkuhle, the president of MTV Animation, led her to develop The Maxx for the cable network.)

In 2013, Mr. Kieth won Comic-Con’s Inkpot Award for lifetime achievement, and his work was the subject of a 30-year retrospective at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco.

That same year, his mother asked him to participate in an event at World’s Best Comics and Toys, a store in Sacramento, so that she could watch him interacting with fans.

“He said, ‘Mom, probably only two people are going to show up,’” Ms. Kieth recalled.

The signing began at 11:30 a.m. and ended at 10:30 p.m.

THE NEW YORK TIMES 

 

 

 

When a Not-So-Dark Knight and His Sidekick Saved a Wacky Gotham

Joel Schumacher apologized for “Batman & Robin,” his corny 1997 superhero movie, but thanks to its ice puns and bat nipples, it’s since become an accidental parody worth howling at. 

 

By Maya Salam

After Tim Burton’s twisted takes on the Batman saga, complete with a repugnant Penguin and a latex-clad Catwoman, American audiences were demanding family-friendly “Batman” movies. At least that’s how the director Joel Schumacher remembered it, he said in a 2017 interview. So he stepped in to deliver — first with “Batman Forever,” in 1995, and then with its 1997 sequel, “Batman & Robin.”

“Batman Forever” was a box-office blockbuster, unseating “Jurassic Park” for the highest-grossing opening weekend. “I just knew not to do a sequel ever,” Schumacher said. But under pressure from Warner Bros. and propelled by his own ego, “Batman & Robin” — a high-energy, lighthearted, live-action comic book — came to be.

It stars George Clooney as a ho-hum Batman (replacing Val Kilmer from “Batman Forever”); Chris O’Donnell, reprising his role as the whiny sidekick Robin; Uma Thurman as Poison Ivy, the saucy star of the show; Alicia Silverstone as Batgirl, a watered-down Cher from “Clueless”; and Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze, a walking — well lumbering — meme.

With expectations high, “Batman & Robin” suffered a dramatic box office falloff compared with its predecessor and was deemed a disaster by critics and audiences. “After ‘Batman & Robin,’ I was scum. It was like I had murdered a baby,” Schumacher said. “I want to apologize to every fan that was disappointed.”

But The Times critic Janet Maslin seemed to pick up on the joke even then, calling it “a wild, campy costume party of a movie and the first ‘Batman’ to suggest that somewhere in Gotham City, there might be a Studio 54.”

It’s that excess that has kept the movie from slipping into obscurity, whether you loved it, have grown to love it or can’t help but lovingly hate it.

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A Slinky Poison Ivy and the Beloved Alfred

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Credit...Warner Bros.

In particular, Maslin praised Thurman’s performance as the femme fatale eco-terrorist Poison Ivy, correctly calling her the movie’s “most showstopping character.”

Thurman channels Mae West, doling out cheeky double-entendres with swagger and swinging hips. When she delivers a playful strip tease, emerging from a gigantic gorilla suit at a fund-raiser packed with Gotham’s elite — hypnotizing attendees with both her feminine wiles and a sprinkle of pheromone dust — it inexplicably works.

Michael Gough also returned here as the ever-heartwarming butler, Alfred Pennyworth, his fourth and final turn after the Burton and Schumaker films. His inclusion serves as a totem to “Batman” fans, no matter how disorienting the plot.

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What Makes It Bad?

Toyetic at Every Turn

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Credit...Warner Bros.

Comparing his experiences on both films, O’Donnell once said, “On ‘Batman Forever,’ I felt like I was making a movie. The second time, I felt like I was making a toy commercial.” The truth is, he pretty much was.

“Batman & Robin” was, in large part, a merchandising play that resulted in a movie so safe, it sometimes feels like “Scooby-Doo” meets the Ice Capades. According to a 2005 Los Angeles Times article, toy manufacturers were even invited to sit in on creative meetings.

Accompanying toy commercials hawked branded play-sets, vehicles and action figures, going particularly big on Mr. Freeze. “Ice terror Mr. Freeze launches a chilling strike,” one ad declares. “Blast wing Batman whips his massive cape to cut down the cold criminal!”

Speaking of …

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What Makes It Good-Bad?

Ice Puns and Bat Nipples

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Credit...Warner Bros.

Mr. Freeze speaks exclusively in agonizingly cheesy ice puns that have become perpetual internet fodder, prompting rankings, thoughtful reflections and a lot in between.

Some puns apply to whatever fiasco is at hand. Others are shoehorned in for no reason whatsoever. But even a statement as benign as, “All right, everyone! Chill!” can become immortalized thanks to Schwarzenegger’s signature delivery.

And that’s nothing to say of the enduring discourse around the film’s bat-suit nipples. Just last month, in an interview for the SAG-AFTRA Foundation, Clooney took it upon himself to mention them. “I know I was the best Batman!” he jokingly shouted toward the audience, which erupted in laughter. “You know Batman needed nipples!”

It’s eye-popping how prominently — like, really prominently — the nipples feature, starting with close-up shots in the opening montage. Schumacher said the idea was to make the suits more anatomical, inspired by Greek statues and medical-book drawings.

“Such a sophisticated world we live in where two pieces of rubber the size of erasers on old pencils, those little nubs, can be an issue,” he continued. “It’s going to be on my tombstone, I know it.”

THE NEW YORK TIMES