Once in a Lifetime Art Exhibition!
The Red Room, 1908
Henri Matisse
The Hermitage Museum, Paris
You may feel a surge of joy when you see the ORIGINAL Matisse “The Red Room.” You may be brought to tears. You will certainly be stopped in your tracks.
Perhaps you think you know “The Red Room” from a thousand dorm room posters, but no reproduction can capture the depth of the vermillion wallpaper streaking down right onto the table, the cobalt blue of the sky from the window, the yellows…oh, oh, oh…
Pastorales Tahitiennes, 1892
Paul Gauguin
The Hermitage Museum, Russia
The artworks of the finest impressionists — Matisse, Gauguin, Picasso, Monet and many others — are on display until mid-February 2017, at the new Fondation Louis Vuitton Museum in Paris.
Fondation Louis Vuitton Museum, Paris
Frank Gehry, Architect
Temporary installation: Observatory of Light by Daniel Buren
One hundred thirty works of art have been allowed to leave the major museums of Russia, the Hermitage and the Pushkin, for the first time. Odds are we will never see these works together again in our lifetime.
The study in Sergei Shchukin’s house.
Photograph: Heritage Images/Getty Images
The collection was put together in the late 1800’s by Sergei Shchukin, a wealthy textile industrialist from Moscow. Twenty years later, after the Bolshevik revolution, Stalin and Lenin “nationalized” the collection, branding the paintings “degenerate” and dispersing them throughout Russia, some even exiled to Siberia!
Today, 100 years later, the collection is for the first time reunited in Paris, the blockbuster of all blockbusters…”Icons of Modern Art.”
Bonjour Paris!
America How Great Thou ART!
Flag, 1967
Jasper Johns
The Broad Museum, Los Angeles
Jasper Johns was an acclaimed artist known for his paintings of flags, targets, and other ordinary objects in the mid 20th century. He helped usher in the Pop Art era.
Jasper Johns:
“In Savannah, Georgia, in a park, there is a statue of Sergeant William Jasper. Once I was walking through this park with my father, and he said that we were named for him. Whether or not that is in fact true or not, I don’t know. Sergeant Jasper lost his life raising the American flag over a fort [Fort Moultrie, American Revolutionary War].”
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Morning Day on the Farm, 1951
Grandma Moses
Anna Mary Robertson Moses, nicknamed Grandma Moses, began painting at 78 and lived to 101. Art historians say her work portrays homely American farm life and rural countryside. But Grandma Moses had a different way to describe her subjects: “I like old-timey things—something real pretty,” she said. “Most of them are daydreams.”
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American Gothic, 1930
Grant Wood
Art Institute of Chicago
With the onset of the Great Depression, the painting, American Gothic, came to be seen as a depiction of steadfast American pioneer spirit.
The Kiss and Art
The Kiss of Betrayal
“Kiss of Judas” Fresco (detail), 1304-06
Giotto di Bondone
This magnificent fresco portraying the betrayal of Jesus, was painted by Giotto over 700 years ago in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, Italy.
Giotto portrays Judas thick browed, eyes deep set and dark, almost Neolithic.
Christ’s face is alive: living, breathing, grieving, hurting. Yet we see Christ’s forgiveness and sorrow for Judas and the enormity of his deed…the Judas kiss, the kiss of betrayal.
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The Maternal Kiss
Sleepy Baby, 1910
Mary Cassatt
Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, Dallas, Texas
Whoa! This is not just another sentimental, sugar sweet painting of mother and child! Ponder this painting for a moment: Mother and child share a deep and common love. There is a passion there, a bliss, an ecstasy. The mother and child are physically and intensely wrapped up in each other…almost like the feeling of being “in love.”
It was astonishing that Mary Cassatt (1849-1926), could capture these images as she herself eschewed marriage and a family of her own.
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The Kiss of Passion
From Here to Eternity
Lancaster and Kerr in the beach scene at Halona Cove, Oahu, Hawaii
The greatest beach-kiss scene in film was made in 1953 in a tiny cove on Oahu, in the Hawaiian Islands. The film was adapted from James Jones’ excellent novel, “From Here to Eternity.”
Take a look at this video and you will see why Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr made movie history! Click here if you are unable to view the video.
Ahhh-mazingg’ Art Museum
AHHH-MAZINGG’!
Hottest new museum to hit USA is the Broad Museum in downtown Los Angeles! The architecture alone is worth the trip…a honeycombed boxy building tilted on its side filled with natural light.
Broad Museum
Los Angeles, CA
September 20, 2015
But, ohhh, the art… Blue-chip-masterpieces from the likes of Jeff Koons, Roy Lichtenstein, Joseph Beuys, Damien Hirst, Kara Walker, and Andy Warhol. And emerging artists as well!
Balloon Dog (Blue), 1994-2000
Jeff Koons
Flag, 1967
Jasper Johns
It is really the private museum of one of Los Angeles’ wealthiest men, Eli Broad. Together with his wife, Edith, Broad has been collecting art for 45 years, often buying works from unknown artists who are now superstars.
A multi-billionaire who made his money in the unglamorous business of tract housing and insurance, Eli Broad says, “we want this to be a gift to the city of Los Angeles.” And sure nuff it is…the admittance to the museum is free and no matter how long the line to get in, no one is turned away.
AHHH-MAZINGGG’!
Video: Art in the Broad. Click here if you are unable to view the video.
(If you are unable to view the video on a mobile device, open your internet browser or YouTube app and try to play the video again, or view on a desktop computer.)
Artists to Watch in 2016!
Spielbergian Climax, Hebru Brantley, 2014
Hebru Brantley
33 years old and 6’8″ tall, Hebru Brantley is Chicago’s fastest-rising visual artist. A street painter turned fine artist making comic-book style pop-art paintings, his figures reflect his growing up on the south side of Chicago. Brantley’s works can command upward of $100,000.
Leaning into the wind,
Dumfriesshire, Scotland, 15
January 2015,
Andy Goldsworthy
Andy Goldsworthy
Scottish artist Andy Goldsworthy’s latest work is all about the elements of nature. He explores and seeks intimacy with nature by using leaves, stones, snow, ice, and wind…yes, wind. Goldsworthy makes his art, it stays for a while, and then it is gone.
The art may disappear but Goldsworthy photographs each piece, the process, and the moments of peak and decay. We may no longer have the art, but we have the memory.
Ladies Chatting, Genieve Figgis, 2013
Genieve Figgis
Irish painter, Genieve Figgis, produces paintings rich in color, texture, humor and the macabre. Her canvases draw upon art history, featuring sumptuous domestic interiors and stately country homes. The protagonists are dressed in finery and are innocently feasting, horseback riding and entertaining in their grand salons.
But all is not well. Behind the most mundane facades, Figgis’ figures appear as either faceless or foolishly grinning, ghoul-like creatures. The viewer is shocked, bewildered and intrigued at the turn of events and stops dead in his tracks.
“Art just did its job!”