Domenikos Theotokopoulos, called El Greco (1541–1614), is almost always not only good but exhilarating. Bizarre, twisting saints, roiling night skies, faces flush with piety, and a psychedelic palette . . . It all seems inconceivable, but in the hands of a master painter and designer, he gets his message of Christian faith across to all but the densest. He’s wild enough to be pagan-friendly, too.
El Greco: Ambition and Defiance is the new survey show organized by the Grand Palais in Paris and the Art Institute of Chicago. I saw it at both places, two weeks ago in Chicago before the business district off the Loop was trashed by those pesky — I think we’re to call them “mostly peaceful protesters.” I wrote about the Paris iteration for NR, finding the show worth a visit — it’s El Greco — though I didn’t like the arrangement of objects in Paris and thought it suffered from intellectual thinness, which, alas, no amount of lush, electric, wild El Grecos can cure.
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