This is one of my top 10 pieces of artwork. It has been since the moment I first saw it. There is just something about the dream-like state of semi-photo-realism that it exists in that makes it beyond stunning. It will literally stop you in your tracks.
Month: June 2019
Sunday
You can ask anyone: I am not a math wizard. However, I do enjoy a good pattern, and this is a good progression. It makes me feel happy, and it has ever since I first laid eyes on it. 🙂
Saturday
There are many artists that I have a complicated relationship with. Otto Dix is one of those artists. I’m not wild about the majority of his work, or his styles in general – the shock/horror genre mixed with surrealism doesn’t fly for me. However, for whatever reason, I find myself drawn to this particular work. Be it the juxtaposition of color, light, and dimensional tonality, be it the composition on interrupted diagonals, be it the fragmented fractal focus, it speaks to me on a primal level for some reason. I’ll listen for long enough to shut it up, then I walk away from it and find something else to look at.
Friday
Fun fact: my favorite color when I was a child was yellow. Secondary fun fact: when I was a child, I wanted to learn how to blow glass, until I learned just how hot glass was (and considering I couldn’t get a casserole dish out of the oven without burning myself, introducing wee me to the fiery depths of a hellish glass furnace would not have gone well).
Glassware is one of my favorite forms of artwork; in this case, the stark harsh lines are broken up by softer, flowing edges and gentler waves, giving the illusion of motion within the larger framework. The light dances between the angles and planes, refracting and reflecting, creating a gentle dance that is both masculine and feminine, which definitely designates the design as American and probably closer to 1858-1860, as earlier periods were slightly more ornate and bending more toward the effeminate, as toward the European styles.
Thursday
This is one of those pieces that I find challenging in that I have such a love-hate relationship with it as to be almost laughable. Intellectually, it trots out the ‘noble savage’ trope and throws it in your face in such a way that it smacks of historical revision, whilst at the same time being such an object of beauty and style that it makes your heart ache with longing to reach out and touch the texture of the sculpture and purr when you feel the tiny imperfections in the lines.
I love to hate it and hate to love it.
This is why art exists: to challenge us, to challenge the world around us. To make us hurt and feel things that we don’t want to feel.
Wednesday
Down on the first floor, hiding at the bottom of a stairwell, rarely noticed for the last 30 years or so has been this beautiful set of tilework. I say unnoticed because how many people actually look at what’s at the bottom of the stairwells? I do. I look everywhere at everything. I look in every nook and corner, around every doorway, up every staircase.
I’m in awe that these tiles have survived in this condition for this long; the colors are just as vivid now as the day they were fired. The scrollwork is just as ornate as the day it was painted. I love everything about them. They are one of my favorite hidden gems in the SLAM museum collection.
Tuesday
This might just look like a big hunking chunk of glass, but if you look a little closer, you can see layer upon layer upon layer of copper and glass inside the greater structure. These layers are fused together to create an intimately abstract sculpture that is more than the component parts of the piece, and certainly more than just a piece of glass.
Monday
The medieval galleries are some of the most interesting in the entire building; everything from tapestries, armour, weaponry, relics, religious art, etc., are to be found within them, and even a couple of surprises (that I won’t spoil for you). The mail cape is hidden away in a little corner room and if you don’t know where to look, you’ll never find it. When the sun is shining down into the room and glinting off of the metal, it is truly a stunning sight to behold: glinting in the light and blinding in its intensity, it is a testament to its creator, long-gone.
Sunday
I’ve been racking my brain all day trying to remember the first time I actually saw this piece in terms of date. The placard says it was donated in 1991, so that gives me a rough period of time in which it could have been. I think the first time must have been 1996 or thereabouts, but definitely before the 1998 Angels of the Vatican exhibition.
Regardless, this wardrobe has always been an immense favorite of mine (one of my top ten in the entire collection) because of several factors. The craftsmanship is solid, well-designed, and imposing from rooms away. It is functional as well as a statement piece. The detailing is exquisite. It has been cared for and loved and lived through for hundreds of years and is a living piece of history.
This is a piece of sheer perfection in wood.
Saturday
I truly apologize for the light glare in the photo – there is glass over the top of the painting and there is no way to get a shot without some kind of reflective glare regardless of no-flash and low-light photography.
The truth of the matter is this: the textiles in this work of art are second to none. Say what you will of the composition, say what you will of the subject matter, say what you will of the colors and the execution of all of the above; the fabrics in this painting are some of the most exquisitely rendered textures ever captured in paint by human hands. Until you’re up close and can see the effects with your own eyes, you cannot and will not understand.
I have seen Old Master works up close and personally. I’m apparently descended from Hans Holbein (which leads to merry games of ‘spot the Holbein’ in museums wherever I go). I’m not talking out my backside when I say I know what a good cloth is meant to look like in paint.
I’m only cross that my photo doesn’t do it adequate justice so I can share the euphoric sense of wonder with you all when you realize it for yourselves.