A Dürer Exhibit of Biblical Proportions

If you’re looking to see naked women, wounded civilians, and a rhinoceros or two, turns out the best place to find them is the Museum of Biblical Art. Who knew?

The latest exhibit at the MOBIA is a show well worth the mere six stops on the 1 Train it takes to get there. Once inside, proceed past the four or five tables in the bookstore laden with Bibles. You will then find yourself in a pale blue room ringed with Albrecht Dürer’s petite woodcuts and engravings—the largest of which approaches the size of a piece of notebook paper, the smallest, a bottle cap.

But don’t let the small scale fool you. Dürer’s engravings contain enough detail and narrative content to be at once representative of Renaissance style and at the same time refreshing for anyone in want of something new after trips to MoMA that offered up a little too much minimalism.

Pared-down composition is certainly not Dürer’s aim. He does not let an inch of paper want for attention or, often, pigment. If there is one look that characterizes these pieces, it is the indiscriminate detail afforded to every inch of the print-space.

In a piece from the Apocalypse series, for example, the four horsemen charge forth over a crumpled mass of skulls and wailing figures, backed by a sky scratched dark with ink and highlighted by billowing clouds. Dürer uses each of these background elements to underscore the ultimate sentiment of the piece, giving it both visual dimension and emotional harmony.

Of course, there is a bit of Christian moralizing in these works as well—in the upper corner of that particular print, a familiar ray of light beams down from the heavens, urging on the charge. But the Christian allegory and subject matter don’t overwhelm so much as provide an additional avenue for appreciation. It supplies a familiar narrative—one that was certainly commonplace for Dürer’s 13th-century audience, and that remains comfortably accessible today. In the quiet, bedroom-like space of MOBIA’s exhibit, the religious imagery invites a personal interpretation, and nothing more.

And it’s not all religious in subject matter. Dürer did work with secular topics as well, making a few forays into the fantastical, with dragons, the rhinoceros, and a captured maiden or two. These portraits and everyday scenes allow for close inspection of human emotion, a fun bit of anthropology, and a good dose of chivalric entertainment. And though they’re mildly informational and quite entertaining, they definitely don’t carry the same narrative weight as the other religious works.

This is a show that doesn’t especially provoke—rather, it aims to please. It can provide a space to contemplate the moral ideas latent in the art, but the quiet gallery space and its shared home with a Biblical society don’t especially invite or encourage debate. Still, the artistic value of Dürer’s work is what ultimately matters. It is dramatic, it is heroic, and it is entertaining. And we all need a bit of that now and then.

“Albrecht Dürer: Art in Transition” is showing at the Museum of Biblical Art through Sept. 21.