Tag: painting

Sunday afternoon museum walk

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The new MoMA had recently reopened after a four month closure, the last phase of a multimillion dollar expansion and renovation, and it was high time we explored all that extra space. These are a few of my favourite things:

  • Ludwig Mies van der Rohe || Friedrichstrasse Skyscraper, Berlin – Project, 1921
    Charcoal and graphite on paper mounted on board
  • Heinz Schulz-Neudamm || Poster for the film Metropolis, directed by Fritz Lang 1926 – Lithograph
  • Film stills from Metropolis, 1927
  • Film still from Metropolis, 1927
  • Film still from Bride of Frankenstein, 1935 – gelatin silver print
  • Film still from Frankenstein, 1931 – gelatin silver print
  • Film stills from Der Golem, 1920 – gelatin silver prints
  • Egon Schiele || Portrait of Gerti Schiele, 1909. Oil, silver, gold-bronze paint, and pencil on canvas
  • Pablo Picasso || Boy Leading a Horse, 1905-06. Oil on canvas
  • Pablo Picasso || Woman Plaiting Her Hair, 1906. Oil on canvas
  • Edvard Munch || Man’s Head in Woman’s Hair, 1896. Woodcut
  • Julia Margaret Cameron || Mrs. Duckworth, 1867. Albumen silver print
  • Alfred Stieglitz || A Dirigible, 1910. Photogravure

MoMA New York

December 8th, 2019

”The Fall of the Rebel Angels”, by Pieter Bruegel I

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Elaborately worked details define most of the Elder’s paintings but, in The Fall of the Rebel Angels, he manages to surpass even himself! If anyone could encompass an entire cabinet of curiosities in one painting – and have tons of fun in the process, that must be Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

So absorbed was I by all these wonderful details – every little one a work of art in itself, I almost missed the violence the work is supposed to depict, with the fall of Lucifer and his fellow rebel angels, chased away from heaven by Archangel Michael.

Another ”fun” detail: The Fall of the Rebel Angels by Pieter Bruegel the Elder is one of the masterpieces at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium. The Royal Museums acquired the painting in 1846 thinking it was the work of his son, Pieter Brueghel the Younger. The work was then attributed to Hieronymus Bosch (1450-1516) until 1898 when the date and signature “MDLXII / Brvegel” were found in the bottom left-hand corner, hidden by the frame.

Thus the painting was finally attributed to its legitimate creator, Bruegel the Elder. [source]

Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium [Musée Oldmasters Museum], Brussels

October 19th, 2019

The fun is in the details

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The Old Masters may be all divine symbolism and biblical images, but who said they couldn’t have fun?

Detail #1: apparently, keeping squirrels as pets is not a new idea.

  • Master of 1518 (Jan van Dornicke?) Triptych of The Abbey of Dielegem
  • Master of 1518 (Jan van Dornicke?) Triptych of The Abbey of Dielegem [detail]
  • Master of 1518 (Jan van Dornicke?) Triptych of The Abbey of Dielegem [detail]

Detail #2: the ”Oh, man…” look on the Demon’s face.

(Suzanne, a married woman, sends her maids away while is she is taking a bath. Once alone, two elders who secretly desire her, make advances. Suzanne refuses, but is later accused of adultery by the very men she refused. She is found guilty and condemned to death).

  • Jan Massys, Suzanne and the Elders, signed 1567
  • Jan Massys, Suzanne and the Elders, signed 1567 [detail]
  • Jan Massys, Suzanne and the Elders, signed 1567 [detail]

Detail #3: Carnival costume inspiration.

  • Pieter Brueghel II, The Battle of Carnival and Lent
  • Pieter Brueghel II, The Battle of Carnival and Lent

Detail #4: the Younger having fun copying the Elder but, in a bout of originality, appropriates a barrel to sign his work.

  • Pieter Brueghel II, The Numbering at Bethlehem
  • Pieter Brueghel II, The Numbering at Bethlehem [detail]

Detail #5: the original. As in most of the Elder’s paintings, there’s so much going on here, you’re bound to discover something new every time you look. This time, the eye lingers over the warm red sun setting far at the background, beyond the dark bare branches of the tree.

  • Pieter Brueghel I, The Numbering at Bethlehem
  • Pieter Brueghel I, The Numbering at Bethlehem

Detail #6: Going commando in the 17th century was the norm, apparently.

  • Pieter II Brueghel (or workshop of), Fair with theater and procession
  • Pieter II Brueghel (or workshop of), Fair with theater and procession [detail]

Detail #7: so much to see, so little time… *yawn*

  • Pieter I Brueghel? (according to), The yawner

Detail #8: what did you see first?

  • Anonymous master from the Southern Netherlands, Anthropomorphic landscape. 
    Portrait of a woman

Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium [Musée Oldmasters Museum], Brussels

October 19th, 2019

La Barque de l’Ideal, 1907 || Constant Montald

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Adorning the Great Hall at the entrance of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, together with its companion ”La Fontaine de l’Inspiration”, it is so striking one simply must stop and stare. These monumental paintings (they measure around 400x500cm) were created by Montald specifically for the Museum, but were both rejected by its acquisitions committee and returned to him – yet, in a symbolic twist of fate, they ended up back were they belonged!

  • La Barque de l’Ideal, 1907 || Constant Montald
  • La Barque de l’Ideal, 1907 || Constant Montald [detail]
  • La Barque de l’Ideal, 1907 || Constant Montald [detail]R

Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels

October 19th, 2019

The ”Not Quite Human” Contortionists, by Hayv Kahraman

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No sooner had we discovered Hayv Kahraman‘s distinctive figures in MASS MoCA earlier that month, than we came across them again, in Jack Shainman Gallery, Chelsea. I’m sure one could hold lengthy discussions about the artist’s technique and style, but it was the calmness – bordering on apathy – on the women’s faces while their bodies twisted and bent, assuming these impossible positions, that I found particularly attractive.

September 21st, 2019

Art that moves me no end

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Aleah Chapin @ Flowers || Richard Serra @ Gagosian

  • Aleah Chapin || Turning (Self-Portrait), 2019 || Oil on panel
  • Aleah Chapin ||Splitting the Silence, 2018 || Oil on canvas
  • Aleah Chapin || And it Caught Fire, 2019 || Oil on canvas
  • Aleah Chapin || We Held the Mountains on Our Shoulders, 2017 || Oil on canvas
  • Aleah Chapin || Deborah, 2019 || Oil on panel
  • Aleah Chapin || Our Voices are Still Singing on the Margins, 2019 || Oil on canvas
  • Aleah Chapin || Max, 2018 || Oil on linen
  • Richard Serra
  • Richard Serra || Combined and Separated, 2019 [detail]
  • Richard Serra || Nine, 2019
  • Richard Serra || Nine, 2019
  • Richard Serra || Inverted, 2019

Chelsea Gallery Walk

September 21st, 2019

Anselm Kiefer

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Dark || Stark || Emotional || Intense. Art that will stop you in your tracks.

Images from the Anselm Kiefer long-term exhibition:

die Schechina (Sefiroth), 2010
Painted resin dress, glass shards, steel, numbered glass discs, and wire in inscribed glass and steel vitrine

Engel-Sturz (The Fall of the Angels), 2010
Painted cotton dresses, wire, steel frame, glass pane, and oil, emulsion, acrylic, shellac, clay on canvas in inscribed glass and steel vitrine

Jakobs Traum (Jacob’s Dream), 2010
Lead ladder, painted cotton dresses, wire, resin fern, and oil, emulsion, acrylic, shellac, clay on canvas in inscribed glass and steel vitrine

Étroits sont les vaisseaux (Narrow are the Vessels), 2002 (detail)
concrete, steel, lead and earth

The Women of the Revolution (Les Femmes de la Révolution), 1992/2013 (detail)
Lead beds: dimensions variable

Winterwald (Winter Forest), 2010 (detail)
Oil, emulsion, acrylic, shellac, ash, thorn bushes, synthetic teeth, and snakeskin on canvas in glass and steel frames

Velimir Chlebnikov, 2004 (detail)
30 paintings: oil, emulsion, acrylic, lead and mixed media on canvas

MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA
September 2nd, 2019

Sol LeWitt’s Wall Drawings: Bold, Bright, Beholding

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Second day in Mass MoCA, because it would have been impossible to absorb so much art, all at once!… (tickets were valid for two consecutive days then, this may have changed post-Covid).

…”Each wall drawing begins as a set of instructions or a simple diagram to be followed in executing the work. As the exhibition makes clear, these straightforward instructions yield an astonishing—and stunningly beautiful—variety of work that is at once simple and highly complex, rigorous, and sensual. The drawings in the exhibition range from layers of straight lines meticulously drawn in black graphite pencil lead, to rows of delicately rendered wavy lines in colored pencil; from bold black-and-white geometric forms, to bright planes in acrylic paint arranged like the panels of a folding screen; from sensuous drawings created by dozens of layers of transparent washes, to a tangle of vibratory orange lines on a green wall, and much more. Forms may appear to be flat, to recede in space, or to project into the viewer’s space, while others meld to the structure of the wall itself, like gauze.” [source]

Images of wall drawings:

793A – Irregular wavy color bands
340 – One of a Six-part drawing
396 – A black five-pointed star, a yellow six-pointed star, a red seven-pointed star, and a blue eight-pointed star
414 – Drawing Series IV (A) with India ink washes (detail of 24 drawings)
527 – Two flat-topped pyramids with color ink washes superimposed
439 – Asymmetrical pyramid with color ink washes superimposed (plus us in playful mood, trying to agree which wall would work best in our home)

Sol LeWitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective

On view through 2043

MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA

September 2nd, 2019