A HOUSE FOR MICHELANGELO

This theme seems almost preposterous.

How could one design a house for a Titan…?

It is almost as asking to design a house for Zeus, or our more recent God.

Maybe certain religions are right: God should not be represented, and equally, should not have a “house.”

But Michelangelo was not a god.

And he did depict himself, albeit rather “strangely” and self-deprecatory, somehow.

It is up to us, then, to do otherwise!

Remembering his death 450 years ago, on February 18th this year, we ask you nothing else but to design:

A HOUSE FOR MICHELANGELO.

We are afraid that maybe certain people might be tempted to imagine a grandiose house, or certainly one that would try to compete with the grandeur of much of the great master’s work.

But perhaps Marcel Brion was right in describing the complexity of Michelangelo’s own being and work as being at the confluence between a Renaissance mentality, a Baroque temperament and a Medieval spirit.

While the Renaissance and the Baroque constituents might not be so surprising, the Medieval spirit perhaps is.

But it was this Medieval spirit that counted for Michelangelo’s faith, a faith that was not affected by pudor, since it took "the breeches-maker"  Daniele da Voltera (and others) to cover the "sinful" bodily parts of many of the great human figures depicted on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel.

No great art is pudic.

And to place breeches on the great figures of the Old and New Testament was to diminish them, actually.

But the eye of the beholder was then as weak as ever.

It is hard to imagine human history in general and human art in particular without Michelangelo.

He can be uplifting, but also dwarfing.

Maybe without that “Medieval spirit” he would have been more dwarfing than uplifting. That “Medieval spirit” kept him modest, a modesty we feel all great artists have, despite their occasional outbursts into its opposite.

Design A HOUSE FOR MICHELANGELO.

Design a house for a tormented soul, and tormenting.

A HOUSE FOR SOMEONE WHO WANTED PEACE, RAVAGED BY AN INNER WAR.

DESIGN A HOUSE FOR THE QUINTESSENTIAL ARTIST.

DESIGN THE HOUSE OF UNENDING QUEST TO GIVE LIFE A MEANING.

Please send us ANY work, ANY size and ANY format that responds to the theme and we will publish it. There is no entry fee. The works should be submitted digitally, and the deadline is February 18th, this year, exactly 450 years since Michelangelo died. Let's remember and celebrate one of the greatest artists the human world ever had, in the only way we think would be truly worthy of him: as creatively as possible! To long to be like him, is to long for our very best! What else can we say...?!

Thank you,

ICARCH GALLERY

www.icarch.us