Letter Ghost

Letter Ghost, (Geist eines Briefes) 1937
Paul Klee
Pigmented paste on newspaper, 13 x 19 1/8"
Museum of Modern Art

Paul Klee today. My love for Klee wavers depending on the work. There is a wonderful little work at a wonderful little show at my museum right now, Between the Wars, which enabled me to discover the wonder of the works on paper that the museum has in its collection. That, plus my current preoccupation with printmaking has sparked an interest in drawings and graphic works so bear with me if I inundate you with them (I'm sure my interest will easily be swayed any day now but...).

"In much of his work, he aspired to achieve a naive and untutored quality, but his art is also among the most cerebral of any of the 20th century. Klee’s wide-ranging intellectual curiosity is evident in an art profoundly informed by structures and themes drawn from music, nature and poetry."(MoMA)

Enjoy this open-eyed ghost, slightly alien in appearance, its face constructed as the overlap of a letter.

Line and Arabesque

The Piano Lesson, 1916
Henri Matisse
Oil on canvas, 8' 1/2" x 6' 11 3/4" (245.1 x 212.7 cm). Mrs. Simon Guggenheim Fund. © 2008 Succession H. Matisse, Paris / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Museum of Modern Art, Find it Here.

One of my favorite paintings, one which I went looking for when I was at MoMA this past spring but alas it had been removed. This always makes me a little sad but then I am happy that other works are getting their chance to be loved and discovered as well. Museums have thousands of works in storage, many of which rarely if ever see the light of the upper floors, rotation of permanent collections is incredibly important to sustaining the excitement of art, even if you must sometimes miss your beloved.

I didn't start out as a Matisse fan but over the years the combination of figure and line, flat perspective, Cubism and Fauvism, color and grayscale draw me in more. In this work Matisse is combining both his own physical world with that of his art, from his son Pierre and what appears to be his female teacher but is an excerpt from another painting and his own bronze figure which graces his living room (see excerpt from MoMA publication) Depth does not draw a line between the view through the window to the outside, but an actual line delineates this perspective along with the arabesque curves of the iron balcony, echoing the music stand.

Unique Forms

Umberto Boccioni. (Italian, 1882-1916). Unique Forms of Continuity in Space. 1913 (cast 1931). Bronze, 43 7/8 x 34 7/8 x 15 3/4" (111.2 x 88.5 x 40 cm). Acquired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest

I went through some of the images I have in my "art" folder on my computer today and came across a favorite sculpture. Displayed in a small room at MoMA alongside other Futurism works, Boccioni's sculpture is one I always make my way through the throngs to see. Despite the weightiness of the bronze the sculptural movement creates the sense the sense that the figure will walk off at any moment.

The title, despite many years of trying I can never consistently get right in my memory, could be attributed to most of the paintings and sculptures in the room. The Italian Futurists were interested in exposing and embracing the burgeoning Industrial present of the early 20th century in their work, attempting to break from the conventional artistic past of Italy.

Happy Monday!