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Meeting the Moderns...
Nov. 24th, 2003 11:03 pmIt had been years since Galina or I had been to a museum, and perhaps decades since we went together. I seem to recall the last time we went was to the Metropolitain Museum in New York, for the Tutankhamen blowout in the late 70s, if memory serves.
In any event, KRTS-FM had been touting a special exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts here in Houston, on loan from the Museum of Modern Art in that same den of iniquity, oftimes referred to as the Big Apple. The showing of the 200 paintings and sculptures went by the sexy title "The Heroic Century."
By and large, I enjoyed the show. What I liked pleased me, and what I didn't particularly care for, well... I had a couple of laughs about that, too. The exhibit was arranged more or less chonologically, with Van Gogh and the Impressionists up front, and the pop artists and later near the end.
Speaking of Van Gogh, his The Starry Night was hanging in the first exhibit hall, big as life, but also covered by some kind of transparent layer.
For some reason, the transparent layer made me think I was looking at a cheap print in a cheap frame when I was standing up close. Stepping back, I tried to appreciate the painting, but the thought of that transparent... plastic? glass? kept interfering. Finally, I sort of got into the painting, but I was affected much more by Van Gogh's The Olive Trees, which hung nearby. The gnarled state of the trees, it seemed, was matched only by the gnarled state of the land on which they were growing.
In the same room was an interesting example of Fauvism, titled Woman beside the water, by Henri Matisse. I was particularly struck by how the woman's figure and the nuances of her figure jumped out from the canvas.
There were a number of other interesting stopping points, including Jackson Pollock's Number 1, painted in 1948, and Salvador Dali's Persistance de la mémoire (although somehow I get the feeling it was a preliminary version, it was so small), but I could have probably spent the better part of the day enclosed between three mural-sized canvases of Giverny by Monet, and four panels done by Vasily Kandinsky for the entrance hall of Edwin R. Campbell's apartment in New York. Here's one of them:
Frankly, as I sat there, looking at the four canvases, I got to thinking how... energizing it would be to step into one's home or apartment and see this item (and its three siblings) on the walls. There is crazy... balance to the panels, internally.
On the other side of the Kandinskys was an angry canvas by Carlo Carrà, Funeral of the Anarchist Galli. What particularly struck me about this work was the illusion of motion that was provided by the simple expedient of drawing multiple images of an object, as if photographed by a strobe.
Things started to get a little weird for me at about the time I passed the Pollack works. Someone named Ad Reinhardt earned a spot in this collection by painting a square piece of canvas black. I looked at it for a full 30 seconds, and aside from some slight pattern discernible in the warp and woof of the canvas, I saw nothing else. My conclusion was that this would be a remarkably easy piece to forge, though I'm probably wrong, and anyway, why would anyone care to do so? The Reinhardt piece was only a space or two down from Blast, I, done in 1957 by Adolph Gottlieb, which I actually liked.
As we zipped through the "pop art" era, we came upon something called 144 Lead Plate, so called because it consists of 144 lead plates arranged in a square on the floor. The observer from the museum encouraged us to walk on the artwork, but cautioned us - with a smile - that museum rules forbade us to reach down and touch the plates.
After exiting the exhibit, Galina and I went upstairs to see what the rest of the museum had to offer. Like any good museum, the place is too large to be digested in one session. However, both of us, I think, felt a little more comfortable among the more traditional, older works of art that hung on the wall.
* * * There's not much to tell about the first day on assignment, except that I can see it's going to be a gruelling couple of weeks. The client is closed on Thursday, which basically gives me a choice of taking work home that day (yech!), or not making money that day (yech!). I may compromise and take home about a half-day's work, so as to preserve some time with the family.
My weight loss was apparent to some of the folks at the office, who had last seen me... whenever. It's something of a rush to hear such words; it's very encouraging. I'm increasing my vegetable intake slowly and still keeping the carb consumption down. I'd like to get down to 220 before moderating my rate of weight loss.
Cheers...
In any event, KRTS-FM had been touting a special exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts here in Houston, on loan from the Museum of Modern Art in that same den of iniquity, oftimes referred to as the Big Apple. The showing of the 200 paintings and sculptures went by the sexy title "The Heroic Century."
By and large, I enjoyed the show. What I liked pleased me, and what I didn't particularly care for, well... I had a couple of laughs about that, too. The exhibit was arranged more or less chonologically, with Van Gogh and the Impressionists up front, and the pop artists and later near the end.
Speaking of Van Gogh, his The Starry Night was hanging in the first exhibit hall, big as life, but also covered by some kind of transparent layer.
For some reason, the transparent layer made me think I was looking at a cheap print in a cheap frame when I was standing up close. Stepping back, I tried to appreciate the painting, but the thought of that transparent... plastic? glass? kept interfering. Finally, I sort of got into the painting, but I was affected much more by Van Gogh's The Olive Trees, which hung nearby. The gnarled state of the trees, it seemed, was matched only by the gnarled state of the land on which they were growing.
In the same room was an interesting example of Fauvism, titled Woman beside the water, by Henri Matisse. I was particularly struck by how the woman's figure and the nuances of her figure jumped out from the canvas.
There were a number of other interesting stopping points, including Jackson Pollock's Number 1, painted in 1948, and Salvador Dali's Persistance de la mémoire (although somehow I get the feeling it was a preliminary version, it was so small), but I could have probably spent the better part of the day enclosed between three mural-sized canvases of Giverny by Monet, and four panels done by Vasily Kandinsky for the entrance hall of Edwin R. Campbell's apartment in New York. Here's one of them:
Frankly, as I sat there, looking at the four canvases, I got to thinking how... energizing it would be to step into one's home or apartment and see this item (and its three siblings) on the walls. There is crazy... balance to the panels, internally.
On the other side of the Kandinskys was an angry canvas by Carlo Carrà, Funeral of the Anarchist Galli. What particularly struck me about this work was the illusion of motion that was provided by the simple expedient of drawing multiple images of an object, as if photographed by a strobe.
Things started to get a little weird for me at about the time I passed the Pollack works. Someone named Ad Reinhardt earned a spot in this collection by painting a square piece of canvas black. I looked at it for a full 30 seconds, and aside from some slight pattern discernible in the warp and woof of the canvas, I saw nothing else. My conclusion was that this would be a remarkably easy piece to forge, though I'm probably wrong, and anyway, why would anyone care to do so? The Reinhardt piece was only a space or two down from Blast, I, done in 1957 by Adolph Gottlieb, which I actually liked.
As we zipped through the "pop art" era, we came upon something called 144 Lead Plate, so called because it consists of 144 lead plates arranged in a square on the floor. The observer from the museum encouraged us to walk on the artwork, but cautioned us - with a smile - that museum rules forbade us to reach down and touch the plates.
After exiting the exhibit, Galina and I went upstairs to see what the rest of the museum had to offer. Like any good museum, the place is too large to be digested in one session. However, both of us, I think, felt a little more comfortable among the more traditional, older works of art that hung on the wall.
My weight loss was apparent to some of the folks at the office, who had last seen me... whenever. It's something of a rush to hear such words; it's very encouraging. I'm increasing my vegetable intake slowly and still keeping the carb consumption down. I'd like to get down to 220 before moderating my rate of weight loss.
Cheers...
