Who’d have thought that two seemingly disparate camps – Renaissance art mavens and pop cultists who love purveyors of the grotesque like Frank Frazetta and Terry Gilliam – would have a reason to celebrate in Fort Worth? Kudos to the Kimbell — and its recently hired director Eric McCauley Lee — for acquiring Michelangelo’s ”The Torment of St. Anthony” (1487-88), painted when the iconic gay artist was a scrappy little tween. Its bright colors, flat perspective, and hyperstylized characters would not be out of place in a 21st century graphic novel. BTW, if you want to learn more about the life of the desert-bound Catholic mystic St. Anthony before the picture hits the Kimbell walls this fall, check out Gustave Flaubert’s 1874 book/script ”The Temptation of St. Anthony.” Imagine if Christ was alternately beguiled and tortured by creatures from the imaginations of Blake and Lovecraft.
