Hello everybody and welcome back to My Weekly Flickr.
Well, my vacation has come to an end but I thoroughly enjoyed myself with a veritable orgy of art which I will relate below. The weather cooperated very nicely as well.
I went back to the Met this morning and went through the Sargent exhibit again. I think that’s going to be a regular stop for me until it closes, whenever there’s nothing else doing. It’s just magnificent and it certainly doesn’t lose anything in multiple viewings. While I was standing in front of one of the paintings a man standing next to me told me that from a distance I looked like the poet Ezra Pound. I laughed and told him I hoped I had a better personality as he was a traitor during the second world war. He asked if anyone had ever told me that before and I said no. He must have considered it a compliment. I didn’t say so but years ago when I was in my late 20’s, early 30’s I looked somewhat like the actor Richard Dreyfuss. This was pointed out by my bus driver who greeted me one night by saying hello, Mr. Dreyfuss. The penny didn’t drop as the only Dreyfus I thought of was the investment house. When he explained, it made some sense, there was a slight resemblance because of the hair, beard and glasses. Now, as an old man, I tell people the story and say that neither of us looks like Richard Dreyfuss anymore.
I also went back to the Met last Monday and saw The Royal Hunt - Courtly Pursuits in Indian Art. It’s hard for me to put into words my feelings about this art, other than to just say, it’s very different from the European and American, not to mention Japanese art which I’ve come to appreciate. Perhaps it’s the fact that it’s unrealistic and in many of the images it seems very repetitive, that is, if it’s a hunt with many followers, it appears the artist picked a template and then more or less repeated it throughout the canvas. It was an interesting exhibit and I’m glad I went but I still haven’t really warmed up to it.
When I wrote to my brother about this he replied , “It does take a while to orient yourself to the visual world of Indian art. It is not like anything else and it’s not immediately beautiful or ingratiating. But I’ve found over time that it has grown on me. I had started with the extraordinary Persian miniaturists, and in comparison the Indian artists who followed them seemed much coarser. They are in some ways, but it’s a different approach rather than an inferior style. In all this art you need to focus on the details, which are exquisite, and not the overall image. That’s the essential difference between Western and non-Western art. Western art shows you a whole scene and the whole scene is the point (the Crucifixion, the Battle, whatever). But Eastern art show you details—one after another without really worrying about the impression made by the whole. It’s the difference between looking at a painting on canvas and looking at a scroll on paper—you see the portrait in one glance, but the scroll can roll on and on, and with every turn of the roll you see other things.”
So, I will have to bear this in mind in the future when I see exhibits of this genre of art.
This is a link to the Met website description of the exhibit with images in the gallery.
http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2015/royal-hunt There is an enormous Chinese installation put on by the Costume Center that really is of no interest to me but in one of the galleries there is a video loop of scenes from Anna May Wong films. This was really a lot of fun. Anna May Wong was a Chinese-American actress of the 20’s, 30’s and 40’s who was very beautiful and always dressed exotically, quite often playing a dragon lady part. She made a number of movies where she was in romantic situations with her leading men but could never actually consummate a kiss due to the Hays Code which didn’t allow for depictions of miscegenation in the movies. She is part of the exhibit because of the costumes she wore, some of which are on display in the gallery. From comments by other museum goers I think I can safely say that the majority of them have no idea who Anna May Wong was. This is a link to the Met website description of her and the exhibit,
http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2015/china-through-the-looking-glass/exhibition-galleries/209 On Tuesday I went to an exhibit of the illustrator Al Hirschfeld at the New York Historical Society. It’s very good. He lived to be 99 years old and his drawings appeared in newspapers and magazines for close to 80 years, most notably in the Sunday edition of the New York Times, every week. It’s a very big exhibit and it was filled with things I had never seen before. I hadn’t known that he was married three times, or I had forgotten that I read it in his obituary in the Times. Wikipedia didn’t mention the first marriage., so I wrote to them and it took me two times but they added the information. My small bit of keeping the web correct.
This is a link to the website description of the exhibit with images
http://www.nyhistory.org/exhibitions/hirschfeld# This is a link to an interview with the curator also with images.
http://behindthescenes.nyhistory.org/the-hirschfeld-century/ On Wednesday I took the train to Princeton to their art museum. I’ve been there a few times now but that never means I know where I‘m going. I was a little confused as to where the DINKY shuttle was this time but I found it. The conductor on the main train took my ticket and I didn’t think to ask for it back but when I told the DINKY conductor he just mumbled that I should get it back next time. I found the museum without too much trouble but I walked the wrong way on the way back. Finally found someone who pointed me in the other direction and I was able to find it but I missed my train. I did this so off the cuff that I forgot that the DINKY has a schedule which I should have checked. I sat on it for about 15 minutes before it pulled out. Then at Princeton Junction I had to wait about another ten minutes or so for the train home. But it was a local which took a long time and when I got to my connecting junction, my train home was 50 minutes away. But the exhibit was wonderful.
It was their watercolors and it was filled with favorites of mine, I’ve put in links where I could find them, they can all be enlarged.
William Trost Richards, Near the Inlet Atlantic City,
http://artmuseum.princeton.edu/collections/objects/18960 Thomas Eakins, this is a link to the picture 70 Years Ago
http://www.blog-arte.net/?attachment_id=10839 and this is a link to a discussion of Eakin’s life and watercolors,
http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/artist44.html 2 Winslow Homers, The Trysting Place,
http://www.winslow-homer.com/The-Trysting-Place-large.html Eastern Point Light
http://tinyurl.com/o3r6jrn 2 John Singer Sargents, Girgenti,
http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-singer-sargent/girgenti#supersized-artistPaintings-266123 Thomas Moran, Venice,
http://artmuseum.princeton.edu/collections/objects/11406 3 Edward Hoppers, Lime Rock Railroad,
http://artmuseum.princeton.edu/collections/objects/5505 Trawler & Telegraph Pole,
http://artmuseum.princeton.edu/collections/objects/5506 2 Maurice Prendergasts, Sea and Boats,
http://artmuseum.princeton.edu/collections/objects/42193 New England Shore,
http://artmuseum.princeton.edu/collections/objects/16347 Childe Hassam, Newfields, New Hampshire
http://artmuseum.princeton.edu/collections/objects/5238 William Constable, Mill at Parkman Town… you have to scroll down to the section on Constable,
https://graphicarts.princeton.edu/category/medium/painting/page/3/ There were many more, it’s a brilliant collection.
This is a link to the museum website description of the exhibit, with some images.
http://artmuseum.princeton.edu/story/painting-paper-american-watercolors-princeton This is a nice image of the third Hopper
http://www.artfixdaily.com/artwire/release/2165-painting-on-paper-american-watercolors-at-princeton-on-view On Thursday, I visited the Morgan Library. I saw their current drawing exhibit which was a wonderful show. JP Morgan must have bought the bulk of his drawings in one lot in 1909 as so many of the drawings have that date for acquisition. He didn’t get cheated. 3 Ingres, pendant drawings of a husband and wife and a wonderful portrait of his wife with a self-portrait stuck in next to it. Sargent watercolor of his friend Paul Helleu. Very early Van Dyck and a study for Anna Van Thielen. Rembrandt sketch of Saskia sleeping, twice. Giovanni and Lorenzo Tiepolo, Matisse, Picasso, Toulous Lautrec, a wonderful Hendrik Goltzius of a young man with a skull and tulip,
http://www.themorgan.org/drawings/item/128202, Degas, Joseph Wright of Derby, Gainsborough study for The Hall which hangs in the Frick, several Bernini’s, a really charming self-portrait by Louise-Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun
http://www.themorgan.org/drawings/item/110095 and a bunch of others.
There’s a photo exhibit upstairs which didn’t move me but interspersed with the photos are more drawings. Rembrandt, Botticelli, Samuel Palmer, Claude Lorrain, 2 William Blakes, Goltzius Melpomene, Gaugin and Watteau plus others. This is a link to the Morgan website where you can see images, listed by the artist. You can then call up individual drawings and enlarge them.
http://www.themorgan.org/drawings/artists There was an exhibit on Alice in Wonderland and her creator C.L. Dodgson or Lewis Carroll, that was fun as well, photographs, books, manuscripts and drawings. Very enjoyable.
This is a link to the Morgan Library press release describing the exhibit and listing all the artists in it. In the release are images for Rembrandt’s Saskias, Joseph Wright of Derby, Goltzius and Picasso, all of whom I mention above.
http://www.themorgan.org/sites/default/files/pdf/press/LifeLinesPressRelease_0.pdf On Friday I walked downtown to the Meat Packing District to visit the new home of The Whitney Museum. Hop Stop, a website which gives transit and walking directions in NYC, told me to walk down 8th Avenue and go right on 13th Street and left on Gansevoort. Google maps showed 9th Avenue turning into Gansevoort so I walked down 9th Avenue. I don’t think it turned into Gansevoort but I did find it. Not that it will be any easier if and when I go back. It’s a beautiful, wide open building with glass walls that allow for a very nice view across the river. Of course for someone like me who is directionally challenged I couldn’t tell you if it’s Manhattan, New Jersey or another borough. Or France. While I waited on line there were three tourists from, gauging their accents, Australia, standing on line behind me. I was looking at the newspaper coverage of the baseball game and the Father saw it and they spoke of baseball. When the Father spoke of three balls and three strikes I looked up while the Mother corrected him and looked to me as arbiter when he argued. I agreed with her. They had been mentioning the venues they had visited and I immediately told them to go to the Frick and they quickly noted the address so I feel I did a cultural good deed.
The Whitney may have a new building but nothing really has changed. I knew it was going to be only items from their collection but I didn’t really see anything that wasn’t on view uptown. And half of it was of the type I’m not really excited about. I had hoped they would have brought some things out of the basement or attic and given them a showing but I guess they felt they had to show familiar things to all the people who would be visiting for the first time. They had three Hoppers on display though, all good ones but still, all very familiar, Seven A.M.,
http://www.edwardhopper.net/seven-am.jsp#prettyPhoto Early Sunday Morning,
http://www.edwardhopper.net/early-sunday-morning.jsp and Railroad Sunset,
http://www.edwardhopper.net/railroad-sunset.jsp which is really exquisitely beautiful. Otherwise, for me, it was Sheeler, DeMuth, Bellows, Benton, Marsh, O’Keeffe, Hartley and others. The one thing that was new to me was woodblock prints by a 20th Century Japanese artist Chiura Obata. They were very beautiful and I thought they hewed nicely to the style of Hiroshige and the other Japanese artists of the 19th Century that I have only recently come to appreciate. I was particularly taken by this one, Full Moon Pasadena, Ca,
http://collection.whitney.org/object/46366 I’ll be curious to see what upcoming exhibits they have as time passes, none of the upcoming exhibits for the next year on the website indicate I will be going back soon.
And as my ancient Aunt was fond of saying, before I knew it, my vacation was over. But I look forward to another week at the end of August and one more between Xmas and New Year’s. Something to keep me functioning through the hum drum days of work.
And now, as you’ve all been so patient, let’s go to the Flickrs.
Andy G.
marie_antoinette_02
https://www.flickr.com/photos/128510274@N06/18326314265/ 0108shinymeri-(4)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/meritats/17702881923/ stretched my legs
https://www.flickr.com/photos/katvarina/18043141250/This is going to be a fun girly day
https://www.flickr.com/photos/kirasydney/18113340899/Home alone. yahoo!
https://www.flickr.com/photos/natalia_femina/18019128228/Cute Yellow Mini-Dress
https://www.flickr.com/photos/57172609@N04/17390491393/ VWS 2015 #12
https://www.flickr.com/photos/marie_sunshine/17950490382/ Sunday in the park
https://www.flickr.com/photos/blackietv/18210220119/ DSCN0959 copy
https://www.flickr.com/photos/rudi_burnell/17844547023/ Mirror Mirror
https://www.flickr.com/photos/sexykellie/18464895265/ IMG_6003: mini one-piece, ready to go out
https://www.flickr.com/photos/mimo-momo/4442620182/ 
Betty's Pub 20.1
Topic: Well, I guess it’s safe to start the Spring Flickr now. (Read 28438 times)
