The Portrait Gallery Revisited

It was a rainy Monday (who has The Carpenters stuck in their heads now?) and the plan was to go to the Spy Museum with Mom and Warren.  Unfortunately, the Spy Museum seemed to be the plan for everyone else in the city as well.  We beat a hasty retreat and headed to the Portrait Gallery and American Art Museum. 

Mom, Ren and "The Curtain"
George Segal - 1974

Vaquero - Luis Jimenez - 1980

I got to revisit some of my favorite pieces and see a preview of the homage to Christo and Jean-Claude that was about to open

http://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/archive/2010/christo/

I have to reiterate my love of the Lincoln Gallery.  It is such a well laid out space.  The large scale pieces have room to breathe in a way that they don't in smaller cramped galleries.   If you ever need a place for a little meditation, Snail Space, a light installation by David Hockney, is it.  At one end of the Lincoln Gallery, you enter a small dark room with what appears to be an abstract theatre backdrop.  Colored lights rotate on a nine minute cycle creating an evolving pastoral scene as you sit and watch...art as a cure for hypertension. 

The National Gallery - West Building - Part 3

After a cumulative 10 hours in the National Gallery this month, I've made it through the galleries on the main floor.  The final galleries (52-93) didn't provide as cohesive an experience as my other West Gallery jaunts.   I started in 18th and 19th century Spanish art (in other words...Goya) and moved into 19th century French.

Thérèse Louise de Sureda - Francisco de Goya - 1803_1804

 I'm not such a fan of early 19th century work in general...too many pink people in pastel dresses, lounging around.  I found that I was more attracted to the frames in most cases than the paintings themselves. 

Diana and Endymion - Fragonard - 1753 - Frame Detail

I did enjoy one gallery that featured David and Ingres, two of my favorites from my French art history classes.  David's Napoleon is the centerpiece of the gallery, but I was drawn to the much smaller portrait of Madame David.  There is something so honest and open in her look and the way he painted her.  She looks like she is someone you could sit down with over a cup of tea.

Madame David - Jacques-Louis David - 1813

I was worried that things were going from bad to worse when I entered British and American Landscapes.  The cityscapes by Joseph Turner were the exception to this.  His use of light in all of his paintings is striking and draws me into the scene in a way that the random "field, mountain, lake with trees" scenes don't.  They are too big and too impersonal.

Keelmen Heaving in Coals by Moonlight    Venice:The Dogana and San Giorgio Maggiore

1834 and 1835 / both by Joseph Mallord William Turner

The last of galleries were a melange of British and American portraiture, American Primitive Paintings, and 19th and early 20th century American works.  The primitive paintings were captivating, in part because so little is known about the lives of the artists in many cases.  There were some American Impressionist works like Childe Hassam's Allies Day, that I enjoyed,  In general, I found myself drawn to gritty rather than pretty...the woman alone in Sargent's Repose or the inner city scene in Bellow's The Lone Tenement. 

Allies Day, May 1917                                         Little Miss Fairfield

Childe Hassam - 1917                              William Matthew Prior - 1850

Detail from The Lone Tenement - George Bellows - 1909

Repose - John Singer Sargent - 1911

Next weekend, the final installment of the National Gallery - West.....

The Renwick Gallery - The Art of Gaman

Gaman is a Japanese word meaning perseverance.  From what I've been able to glean online, gaman in less a word and more an approach to life.  No matter how bad things seem, you will keep going....gaman.  An appropriate title for the Renwick's new exhibition "The Art of Gaman: Arts and Crafts from the Japanese American Internment Camps, 1942-1946". 

After Pearl Harbor, Japanese-Americans, primarily on the west coast, were given days to pack their belongings and report to government organized assembly centers. From there, they were transferred to relocation centers around the country. Others, along with German and Italian nationals, thought to be more of a threat, were taken to Department of Justice camps and held as enemy aliens.  The youngest evacuee was 3 months old. 

Photo of a grocery store owned by a Japanese American

 Dorothea Lange - 1942

Map of the Assembly and Relocation Centers

The exhibition displays pieces, from crude furniture to exquisite jewelry to Buddhist shrines, put together often from scraps of wood and metal left behind from construction of the camps.  Ironically, paintings were often done on the evacuation orders sent prior to relocation.  Some of the objects are so delicate; it is hard to imagine that they were created outside of an art studio, much less in the austere prison environment in which the detainees were held. 

I was struck by how many of the interned had sons in the U.S. military while they were detained in the camps.  There was reference to children being drafted from the camps when they came of age.  How is that possible?  How could the government see fit to imprison a parent, yet send their child to war?  Similarly striking were the parallels to our post 9/11 world with enemy detainees and anti-Arab sentiment.  The exhibit was as much a thought-provoking lesson in history as an impressive display of art and craft and well worth the trip back to the Renwick.

Link to the Renwick: http://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/archive/2010/gaman/

Wikipedia Information on Internment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment

The National Gallery - West Building - Part 2

Rotunda at the National Gallery

In my quest to see everything in the National Gallery this month, I spent the day wandering through Galleries 26-51 hitting the Late Italian, Netherlandish, German, Spanish, and some French Art - spanning the 14th to 17th centuries.

My experience today is precisely what I love about this project.  Had you asked me my opinion of 14th and 15th Century German and Netherlandish painting this morning over coffee and pop-tarts, I would have been less than enthusiastic.   

As is happens, I LOVE 14th and 15th century German and Netherlandish Art...I would answer your question now by saying ...."Post-plague German Art?  Love it!" or  "Lucas Cranach the Elder is the man!"

The Crucifixion with the Converted Centurion by Lucas Cranach the Elder - 1536

There is such a change from the soft colors and round babies of most of the Italians.  The Germans use bold colors and clean lines and their figures are grotesque and tend toward the fantastic.  

The Raising of the Cross - Master of the Starck Triptych - 1480

The Small Crucifixion                   Closeup - Baptism of Christ

Matthias Grunewald      I love the man holding the flaming heart

After walking through the German galleries with my mouth hanging open, I headed into the Netherlands and was happily surprised by my long-time crush, Hieronymus Bosch.  I am pretty sure that I was grinning by this point...I just hope I wasn't talking to myself. 

Death and the Miser by Hieronymus Bosch - 1485

The made up creatures and combination of the beautiful and violent in all of these paintings hold the same appeal for me as Edward Gory, Tim Burton, Dios de los Muertos Mexican Art and tattoos (good tattoos, not butterflies or rosebuds).  The French galleries that followed were beautiful, but not inspiring. 

The Muses Urania and Calliope - Simon Vouet - 1634

The Spanish galleries were remarkable as well.   Murillo's Two Women at a Window" has a Manet-esque quality to it that I loved.  The gallery also has a number of El Greco pieces.  I had always assumed that that was his name...turns out, his real name is Dominikos Theotokopoulos.  El Greco ("the Greek") was just his nickname in Italy and Spain.  His paintings are interesting more than beautiful, but I'm a sucker for anything out of the ordinary and his elongated figures and use of white on color are definitely unusual.

Saint Martin and the Beggar             Two Women at a Window

El Greco - 1600                       Bartolome Esteban Murillo - 1655

Although not my favorite of the day, I feel obliged to mention that Rubens and Rembrandt were also featured in these galleries.  They were lovely...it's Rembrandt, I don't need to expound on his greatness.  

At the end of the day, I've tucked the German galleries away along with the Lincoln Gallery at the American Art Museum as favorite places that I can visit whenever I need a little inspiration. 

The National Gallery - West Building - Part 1

National Gallery West Building - Mall Entrance

The National Gallery was accepted on behalf of the people of the United States on March 17, 1941 (quite the gift from Andrew Mellon).  To celebrate its birthday month, I'm spending March getting to know all of the galleries of the West Building.  The building itself is immense and, when built, was the largest marble structure in the world.  It has more than 100 galleries housing the permanent collection with additional space for special exhibits. 

I started with a modest tour of the first 25 galleries featuring the 13th to 16th century Italian and some 16th century Spanish Art....or as I now think of them, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle galleries.  True, Donatello and Michelangelo aren't featured, but the only Leonardo da Vinci in the U.S. is there as well as a plethora of Raphaels. 

Ginevra de' Benci                                The Small Cowper Madonna

Leonardo da Vinci - 1474                                       Raphael - 1505

It is fascinating to see the transition over several hundred years from the beautiful, but two-dimensional icons of the 13th and 14th centuries, to paintings and portraits with a sense of motion and depth.  I think that my personal favorites were Raphael's St. George Slaying the Dragon and an exquisite triptych originally painted as a large altar piece done by Agnolo Gaddi in 1380.  The pinks, reds, and golds in the altar piece are so crisp and bright, it is hard to believe that they were painted over 600 years ago. 

Gaddi's Altar Piece - 1380

Saint George and the Dragon - Raphael - 1506

Next visit...onward to Germany and the Netherlands.

The Washington Monument

The Monument in March

It was a beautiful spring day today and, having intended to go up the Washington Monument for Washington's birthday last month, I decided to celebrate our first President's birthday a few weeks late.  The Washington Monument was started on July 4, 1848.  After a hiatus for the Civil War and because of the home terrorist actions of the Catholic "Know Nothings" (they stole the stone donated by the Vatican), it was completed December 6, 1884.  The finishing touch on the 555 foot 5 1/8 inch marble tower is an aluminum cap (that also acts as a lightening rod). 

I know it's the most touristy thing to do in Washington, but I loved going up the monument.  With the exception of the fact that the reflecting pool had been drained and the mall lawn was brown, the view was spectacular.   I may have to take another tour around the 500 ft top floor when the spring has fully sprung.

Eastern View

Southern View

Western View

Northern View