Monday

There is a lot of crossover between Rococo design and Victorian Impressionism; the repression of sexuality in public while glorifying it in private, all the while alluding to it in portraiture, sketches, etc., is very similar. Renoir’s palette of ‘girly’ pastel hues and feminine lines makes this painting flirty, fresh, and inviting in a borderline naughty way.

Sunday

There is something very powerful about the nature of this work; it screams strength in solitude, but also strength in nature’s embrace. Without one, you cannot have the other. There is beauty in the madness, and softness in the darkness.

Saturday

This particular painting is very small but very mighty in its mastery of spacial acuity, color, dimensional flow, and everything else that goes with holding the attention of an audience. By far, it is my favorite of the newest additions to the collection.

Friday

This is another sculpture where you can feel the emotions that are meant to be communicated without any kind of extraneous filler nonsense. Rodin knew his shit.

Thursday

The textures of this sculpture are really something else. There is a richness and a feel to it that is lacking in many other similar works. The overall feeling of pained resignation and a determination to carry personal dignity right to the very end is literally leaping out of the bronze.

Wednesday

This is like the precursor still life to all of those random still lives we saw in the 1980s that ended up in washrooms all over the USA. It’s like the Golden Girls of still lives: and I don’t mean that in a bad way. It’s just a very specific style that’s been reused so many times over the years.

Tuesday

My artistic relationship with Max Beckmann is complicated. Some of his work is good, some of it makes me crazy. This is one of the pieces I don’t mind at all. In fact, I do rather like it. There’s a boldness about it that is refreshing and it’s not taken too seriously.

Monday

This may simply look like a bunch of squares and rectangles in a circle, but it’s really so much more than that. I’ve spent a long time trying to understand the compositional balance between the placement of the colors and the sizes of the forms and there’s just some bloody piece I’m missing. But regardless, it’s a beautiful piece of art.

Sunday

So, this particular piece speaks to me not of jazz and boogie-woogie, so much as the days of Art Deco and of the smooth lines of the Empire State building, the Chrysler Building, and so on – those paragons of delicious modernity from the late 20s and mid 30s that still loom high in the skies and make us think of better times.