Pop Goes the Artist!

Friday morning I visited the National Gallery of Art on a self-guided field trip for two different classes. For my Renaissance class, I had to visit the “Prayers and Portraits” exhibit, which contains more than 30 Netherlandish diptychs from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It’s an especially interesting exhibit because many of the diptychs on display have been seperated over the centuries and only now are the proper halves, through the wonders of modern technology, being temporarily united.

Unfortunately, photography was not allowed in the exhibit, so you’ll have to rely on the NGA’s website for images (there’s actually a downloadable pdf of the exhibition brochure), but almost every piece in the exhibit was stunning. One particularly striking diptych, for example, featured an unusual contrast between the crucified Christ in the arms of God the Father (a common medieval motif) and an image of Christ as a baby on Mary’s lap in a contemporary (for the period) domestic setting. I’ll actually be writing a paper on that one, which I picked because it was unusually packed with theological and symbolic meaning.

There was also a pair of paintings by Jan van Eyck, The Angel Gabriel with The Virgin Annunciate, that made me do a double take because of the unique approach van Eyck took: both Gabriel and Mary were painted as though they were marble statues, with nearly photo-realistic precision. Even their wooden frames were painted to resemble marble. (The photo to which I linked, from Olga’s Gallery, gives an idea of the techinical mastery of this work, but does not remotely do it justice.)

Most of the other diptychs were composed of a portrait of Mary with the Christ child on one said and a portrait of the person who commissioned the work on the other, since diptychs were primarily designed for private, household prayer. The most striking of these portraits, in my mind, was the portrait of Diego de Guevara, which depicts an incredibly delicate sensitivity as well as the subject’s genuine grief at the suffering of Christ. Phenomenal.

All in all, it was a great exhibit, both because of the rare opportunity it presented to see many of these works as they were meant to be displayed, and because it featured both strong portraiture and deeply symbolic and beautiful religious art.

I actually got this link from the professor of my Renaissance history class, since we’re currently looking at Renaissance art.  It’s a fairly in-depth analysis of one of my favorite Vermeer paintings, Woman Holding a Balance, which is in the collection of the National Gallery of Art.  Check it out!

There are also some pretty exciting-looking exhibits coming up in DC.  The National Museum of Women in the Arts is doing an exhibit called “The Book As Art: Twenty Years’ of Artists’ Books from the NMWA,” which looks really interesting.  Their homepage features a nifty “interactive page turner” that allows you to flip through some of the books from the exhibition (particularly check out Miriam Shenitzer’s “How to Talk About Art”).  Part of the kick-off for the exhibit, which runs from October 27 to February 4, is a lecture by the author of one of my favorite books (Audrey Niffenegger, who wrote The Time Traveler’s Wife), who is also a printmaker and book artist.  Exciting!

Opening tomorrow at the Phillips Collection is an exhibit called “The Societe Anonyme: Modernism for America,” featuring some of my favorite modern artists, including Paul Klee and Alexander Calder, as well as Piet Mondrian, Wassily Kandinsky, and others.  It should be a diverse and colorful show.  It runs tomorrow (October 14) through January 21.

But the show I’m probably most excited about is “In the Beginning: Bibles Before the Year 1000″ at the Sackler Gallery.  I mean, wow.  Old Bibles tend to be really interesting, because of their (often) dual status as religious objects and status symbols for the wealthy patrons who commissioned them (particularly in the Middle Ages, when the art of illumination was at its height).  Most of the Bibles at this show probably won’t be that ornate, especially the very earliest ones, but it still looks like a fascinating exhibit.

Apparently there’s also an exhibit, continuing indefinitely, of ancient and medieval metalwork at the Sackler Gallery, on loan from Dumbarton Oaks, which I just found out is DC’s source for medieval art and history.  (Too bad it’s closed for renovations until autumn of next year.)  Either way, I’ll have to make sure to check that exhibit out as well, when I go see the ancient Bibles.

Looking like it’s going to be a very nice winter.

Well, it’s been awhile. Since finishing up the drawing of my eyes and setting up my display in the library (which, by the way: SO COOL to walk through the lobby and see it in the display case all official-like), I’ve done basically nothing arty, other than some sketches at the beach, which barely count. This was beginning to depress me, because no matter how much I tell myself that my bursts of creativity have always been cyclical in nature, I never quite believe it when I’m in an “off” period. That, and I’m always afraid that I’ll do to myself in art what I did to myself in writing: burn myself out so thoroughly that two years later, I still haven’t recovered the will to write. I’m terrified of the same thing happening in my art, and every time I go through more than, say, a week without doing something creative, I’m afraid that I’ve lost it altogether. Well, maybe that will happen someday, but it’s not now.

I went down to DC yesterday to see two exhibits at the Phillips Collection (more on that later) and then stopped at the Utrecht store near Metro Center and bought a couple of canvases. I’d like to do the fourth and final painting in my Lucy series (Blue Lucy) before I go back to school. It needs to be landscape orientation, but I’m not sure what photo I’ll use yet, since I have several with potential.

Right now, I’m just beginning work on a square painting of a dachshund. I got it from WetCanvas’s Reference Image library, and while I’m normally reluctant to work from other people’s photos (even when I have their permission, as I do in this case), I just couldn’t resist the combination of the breed (I love dachshunds), the pose, the expression, and most of all the dog’s very unusual color–a sort of sandy yellow that I’ve never seen in a dachshund before. It should be a challenge, but I’m looking forward to it. Pictures shall follow.

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Yesterday’s museum excursion was a lot of fun. As I said, I went down to the Phillips Collection in Dupont Circle, which is currently doing an exhibit entitled “Klee and America” as well as winding down its extremely popular “The Renoir Returns” exhibit. The word “the” in the title of that last exhibit is very important, since the exhibit contains only the one Renoir, The Luncheon of the Boating Party, which at this point is almost a cliche. I’ve never been a huge fan of Renoir as compared to the other Impressionists, so I was actually rather pleased that the rest of the exhibit was less him and more the others.

The Paul Klee exhibit was much better. I’ve always been a fan of Klee, but have never been familiar with very much of his work, other than a few paintings like Twittering Machine. After seeing the exhibit, which featured about 80 of his works, I think it’s safe to say that I’m still a fan. I was most impressed by the sheer range of his work–from fairly large canvases to very small drawings. All abstract or at least very stylized, but the colors and techniques he used were really interesting. In particular, I loved a series of small works in which the background was done by spraying on watercolor, over which he added stylized, detailed line drawings. From a distance, all you could see were his luminous watercolor washes, but once you got closer, a whole new aspect to the work revealed itself. Very, very cool. And, as someone who experiments with a variety of media and styles, it’s always encouraging to see well-regarded “art history book” artists who didn’t limit themselves, for whatever reason, to one small niche in the art world. (Pictured above is “Red Waistcoat” by Paul Klee. Image from Olga’s Gallery.)

Woo!  The Hokusai exhibit is on at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in DC, and according to the Washington Post, it’s great.  But it just reminds me how behind I am in gallery visits.  Apart from Cezanne at the NGA and now Hokusai, there’s a Degas, Sickert, & Toulouse-Lautrec exhibit at the Phillips Collection.  There’s also a Picasso exhibit at the Baltimore Museum of Art that I’d love to see, perhaps over Easter break.

Hi, my name is Claire…and I’m a museum junkie.

I haven’t been doing much in the way of my own artwork lately, but I’ve been lucky enough to get more than my fair share of great art museums in the past week or so. I just got back Saturday night from a trip to Paris, which involved two trips to the Louvre and one to the Musee D’Orsay. Both were, of course, absolutely amazing. D’Orsay was by far my favorite, simply because I’m a huge fan of Impressionism and post-Impressionism, but the Louvre was also great. I got to see the Venus de Milo, the Winged Victory of Samothrace (simply put, one of the greatest pieces ever sculpted), the Mona Lisa (of course), two Vermeers, and one of my other favorite sculptures, Cupid & Psyche (detail photo at left). At the moment, I’m working on getting together a Webshots album with all my photos from Paris, nicely sorted by theme (Chartres, Notre Dame, Eiffel Tower, amazing artwork, etc). It’s very, very far from complete at the moment, but the link is right here. I’ll try to add more pictures every day.

In other news, I’ll be going home this weekend and I plan to set aside a couple hours to finish up the painting of the old Beetle that I started over Christmas break. I haven’t posted a picture of that here yet, but I will when it’s done–so probably this weekend.

I’m also considering a trip to the National Gallery tomorrow to see the Cezanne exhibit, which is apparently phenomenal. (Wait…it’s Cezanne. Of course it’s great.) My next few weekends are booked solid, but I figure it will probably be less crowded on a weekday anyway. Perhaps I’ll swing by the Dada exhibit too, by means of contrast.