Of all the contemporary/modern artists on display at SLAM, Gerhard Richter is my favorite. I know how that sounds, but I adore all of the pieces of his that the museum owns – including this one. I hadn’t seen it before they unveiled the Bauhaus retrospective exhibition, but I kept coming back to it and going, “Oh, I love that so much.” I hadn’t even looked at the plaque, just the painting itself – and then suddenly, it all made so much sense. It has a very dreamy feel, much like Grey Mirrors (literally grey paneled mirrors) and Betty (a portrait version of his daughter), while maintaining an almost abstract version of real objects.
Category: European Art
Wednesday
One thing about Cezanne: you can’t mistake his work for anyone else’s. It’s too distinct, even within the repetitious Impressionist movement.
Tuesday
Another example of the ‘small but mighty’ club, this panel painting is a precursor to the impressionist dynastic linage of Monet, Manet, and Degas. You can see hints of what would become Monet’s outdoor inspiration in the skyline’s coloring and the execution of the sand, and the juxtaposition of colors speaks of Manet and a bit of van Gogh, if you had to point to those who took their inspiration from these earlier works.
Monday
This painting looks more like a crayon sketch than a painting in many ways, and I think that’s why I like it so much. It isn’t studied or overly pretentious in any way whatsoever.
Sunday
It still astounds me that people can take a block of stone and go, “Hey, there’s a person inside of here.” And then chip away at that block of stone until there’s literally a sculpture of a person sitting there. I don’t even know how they do it. It’s a special kind of magic.
Friday
There is no right or wrong way to view or interpret this painting. The way I feel about it is not the way you may feel about it; the way I believe that it communicates may not be the way you believe it communicates. There is no one size fits all. And that is very important.
Friday
This, again, is another one of those bridges between Baroque and Rococo that doesn’t quite fit either genre but shares elements of both movements.
Thursday
Again with the Rococo and its erotic imagery.
Wednesday
This is kind of your typical bridge point painting for what happened between the Baroque and Rococo – it was landscapes and a sense of uneasy peasant whimsy with just a hint of aristocratic finery that’s out of place.
Tuesday
Every time I go into the Museum, I comment on how so many of the things seem to have come out of the original countries in times of war or just after war. (Aka, many of the Islamic items are from 1919 – collapse of the Ottoman Empire, many of the French items are 1945, post-WWII, etc.) I feel sad that we’re the beneficiaries of, basically, the equivalent of looting a country of its treasures in order to maybe barely feed its people for a few days.
In this case, what a treasure it is. No exaggeration.