59th St. Bridge

George Bellows (American, 1882–1925)
The Bridge, Blackwell's Island, 1909
oil on canvas
Toledo Museum of Art 1912.506
image: Toledo Museum of Art

While I seem to back in the habit of getting art up most days, Tuesdays are tough. I am taking a jewelry class on Monday nights and am usually a bit beat by the time I get home so for now we have Art of the Day, minus Tuesday.

I will also admit to my fall back of hitting up the small collection of works TMA has on their website when I am not feeling particularly alert to finding other art. But! This is never a bad thing since our collection is splendid! I love bridges, despite my still nagging fear of driving over them, I find them beautiful and fascinating, particularly when I am looking at them through a creative's eyes. The caption for this work on TMA's site mentions the Bellow's cropping of the bridge, "emphasizing its towering presence". I completely agree but what I find most comforting in the scene is the familiarity of the bridge. When we think of bridges we most like think of the bridge from a distance, the alluring view of it in its entirety, almost as a vista. Looking at this painting I think of the wonderful experience of viewing bridges from the perspective of the immediate shore. Of course, this bridge in particular holds a specific place in my history as it is was the bridge I traversed most often when I lived in Greenpoint.

I never really paid a lot of attention to this painting and while the image always looked familiar in some way I never realized that this was the Queensborough Bridge (59th St. Bridge) since the title refers to Blackwell's Island. I never knew this was an earlier name for Roosevelt Island.

I doubt I need to mention it, but the blue in this painting is gorgeous!

Monkey

Sitting Monkey, 2nd-1st centuries
State of Chu, Southern China
Lacquered carved wood
Mingqi (ming-chee, object for burial chamber)
Toledo Museum of Art 2005.49

Animals are fantastically prevalent in art throughout the centuries, from small companions and magical creatures to monkeys! Monkeys are so common in the TMA collection that there has been mention of having show just to showcase them. I discovered this wonderful little gem on my first jaunt into the Asian Galleries (and yes I should be reprimanded for not visiting them sooner, but hey my MA is in Modern and Contemporary Art! ;).

I think it is fairly cool that many of the objects I am attracted to, I later realize are highlights of the collection, which is also good because I need to build up that knowledge to be the best art librarian I can be of course.

This little monkey is particularly rare due to its age and being made out of wood, a material we would think would have long since ceased to exist after 2000 years in the form of this burial object. These figures were coated in a thin lacquer that proved resistant to insects and water. Funerary wares were so important during the Tang Dynasty that there was an government agency responsible for overseeing their manufacture. (nga.gov.au)

Yay for art, creativity and learning. A google search for mingqi brought up as a first hit an art project for students to create their own mingqi out of clay. The education programing that museums provide is fantastic, if you have a great kid in your life I highly recommend checking out what your local art center or museum offers for kids, from hour long drop in projects just for kids to recurring courses and activities for kids and adults to do together.

Painting or Photography?

Across the Salt Marshes, ca. 1905
Edward Steichen (1879-1973)
15 1/16 x 17 7/8 in
oil on canvas?
Toledo Museum of Art 1912.4
Image ALH

It's wonderful to find out an artist's creative history. Edward Steichen, who most people know as a photographer also trained in painting and drawing. His Tonalist (sorry this is a weak link) paintings share an affinity with his much of his photography. The soft focus and size of this painting (I'll pop in dimensions when I get to work tomorrow - need to look them up) remind me of a photograph. I was initially drawn to the quiet, soft beauty of the painting, and when checking out the wall label was surprised to see that it was Edward Steichen, I had never known he was a painter as well. A quick search brought up another work with a similar title, and wonderfully, it is a Steichen photograph of the same scene. Of course, due to the digital nature, its very difficult to pay a lot of attention to differences in the images. The photograph is also dated 1905 and I would assume it came first. His early photography had this dreamlike quality and helped to elevate his work to a fine status, being particularly painterly.

I'd like to note that in our museum collections system, the image of this painting looks utterly different than my photograph and what I recall seeing in the gallery, more purples and blues than the greenish blues. Ah, frustrations of imaging. I've also realized that the work comes across differently online when shown with its frame.

Steichen also rounded out his career as curator of photography at Museum of Modern Art, as a Fashion and celebrity photographer and a documentary photographer. "The Frustrating Genius of Edward Steichen".

Victoria Dubourg

Portrait of Victoria Dubourg, ca.1866-68
Edgar Degas (1834-1917)
Oil on canvas
81.3 x 64.8 cm
Toledo Museum of Art
image by me.


One of my favorite paintings at TMA is not what one expects from Degas. While I've always thought Degas paintings were nice to look at, I was never a fan of the focused subject matter of the ballerina (I've learned there is more, but we get so blinded by the popular). This painting shifts far from that focus. There is something intriguing about this wonderful portrait. It is one of those works that simply caught my eye as I was on my way to look at something else, now I can't walk by it without giving it a little attention.

Paintings can be realistic in that they give us a faithful reproduction of what one may see in real life, but this oftentimes is only topical in its realism. Portraits are often dolled up, the sitter overly aware that this is a portrait, they looking what they may consider their best (this a choice of the artist and/or the sitter). Here, with her relaxed position, her gaze towards the viewer, she could be simply be listening to a companion's story or just shifting leaning in because someone called her name. I think this portrait achieves an additional layer of realism, one in which you can really get a taste of this woman, who she might be. Victoria Dubourg is a fellow painter )of flowers) as well as the wife of Henri Fantin-Latour another peer of Degas.

Bodhisattva

Guanyin (bodhisattva)
Ming Dynasty, 1368-1644
painted wood
China, Sinxi Province
Toledo Museum of Art
image courtesy of ALH (click on the title for the museum's professional photo :)

This week, I am going to focus on art in the collection of the Toledo Museum of Art. I spent Sunday afternoon wandering through most of the galleries, visiting favorite works and venturing into galleries I haven't given much time to in the past. I discovered some wonderful new works.

Today, we venture to China. It's rare that I come up with pre-20th c. non-western art, and that is very much a significant gap in my knowledge and education (mostly my fault). I have a tendency to skip over these galleries but happily spent some time in them today. Guanyin is the bodhisattva (enlightened being who refrains from entering nirvana to help other achieve enlightenment) most associated with compassion and is usually represented as a female. In this sculpture, Guanyin is represented as the form of an androgynous prince. "One of the most popular Chinese deities, Guanyin comforts the souls of the dead and acts as mediator for the wishes of the living. Carved from interlocking blocks of wood and once brightly painted, this sculpture originally sat on an artificial rocky ledge as part of a visually rich temple setting in north China."(TMA caption) Seeing these wood sculptures in person is wonderful, as you can often see remnants of paint that have survived the years. I enjoy envisioning the sculpture in its original polychromed (multi-colored) form.

A new resource I came across while researching this entry, the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam has a pretty good art encyclopedia on its museum website, it is in English and has audio for the entries. The entries surely stem from their collections but they are decently broad so it has a lot to offer.

Agony

Agony in the Garden
El Greco (Domenikos Theotokopoulos) Spanish, 1541-1614.
Oil on canvas, about 1590–95
Toledo Museum of Art

One of the highlights of the TMA collection, this painting exemplifies what we know of El Greco. I don't have dimensions but it is a sizeable work, easily commanding it's space in the gallery. The Mannerist style and rich color of an El Greco makes it difficult to walk past one his works without stopping. I would love to talk more about Mannerism (as it never gets much attention) but alas, I must get back to work. Note the elongation of the figures, the compression of the space and follow the Mannerist link :).

"His emotionally charged religious images confirm his status as one of the most intensely original artistic visionaries of any era." (TMA description).

Real Inanimate

Tourists II, 1988
Duane Hanson
Autobody filler, fibreglass and mixed media, with accessories life size
Saatchi Gallery


To end the week with another foray into photo-realism we shift off the painted surface to the physical space of the gallery. Duane Hanson's hyper-realistic sculptures are practically indistinguishable from the real thing. With a focus on the typical every-day figure, the tourist, security guard, badly dressed person, Hanson creates exquisite incredibly life-like sculptures of middle-America.

Hanson casts from live models and recreates his sculptures in mixed media, often fiber glass resin (similar to Ron Mueck). I've seen many Hanson sculptures over the years, and am still occasionally duped (though briefly). The TMA has one of a forlorn, disheveled slouched man in a chair just to the side of the entrance of their contemporary galleries and while I am fully aware of it's existence as an inanimate sculpture, it still manages to command a presence. One which even as I intend to walk past it I am pulled to turn around to acknowledge as if he is a human sitting in the corner deserving recognition of existence.

"As amazing as they appear, there is much more to Hanson's sculpture than illusionistic wizardry. Hanson was a social realist, looking at a range of people in society and making observations about their condition in life. He recognized and admired ordinary people, like laborers and the elderly, who he believed had been marginalized by society. Through his art he sought to make the public aware of their presence and contributions to society." (Duane Hanson portraits from the Heartland -Mark M. Johnson)

Contemporary Sculpture

Piggy Back (A Caballit0) 1997
Juan Munoz (1953-2001)
Speed Art Museum Louisville, KY

I have a lot of thoughts on themes which I've been avoiding but I think I may follow one this week (we'll see what Tuesday holds...). Contemporary Sculpture will be my offering. I will try to share a range of work that has been created since 1980 and it may or may not cross over into installation (the history of sculpture class I took in college was predominantly installation - which I did find annoying at the time, my knowledge of sculpture history is not so good!)

Juan Munoz is one of my favorite contemporary sculptors (though he unfortunately passed away too soon in 2001). One of the special artists that always causes me an excited breath when I see one of his works in a museum visit. Happily, we have one of his sculptures at TMA, and I discovered a new one this past Friday at the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, KY (which I highly recommend taking a visit too, both the city and the museum)

The experience of a Munoz sculpture or installation can be a little unnerving at first. His figures have incomplete faces, yet are not expressionless. One feels as if they have interrupted the space of the figures. While near life-size, their stature appears small due to the their often hunched or slumped physicalness. It often appears as if their bodies are not complete or that they cannot completely fill the space of the materiality of their clothing. The figures invoke a quietude that in a way requests respect from the spectator. Munoz deliberately stops short of fully enhanced realism in his sculptures with the intention of allowing them a greater and fuller life in their abstracted openness. This also adds to the sense of isolation the figures invoke. “The more realistic sculptures are meant to be," Muñoz has said, "the less interior life they have." (Speed descrip.) These figures have often taken position amongst architectural spaces in site specific installations created by Munoz. Unfortunately, I've never see one in person, but fell for Munoz through an exhibition catalog of one of these installations (A Place Called Abroad) at the Dia Art Foundation which I bought having never seen the show years ago.