This looks like a boxcar graveyard to me, and as such, graffiti and all, the painting has done its work.
Tag: 20th century
Saturday
It kind of looks like a clown vomited all over a horror show carnival. I’m not sure I’m down with it. It’s like a cotton candy nightmare. How does that embody feasibility?
Friday
This fickle, fascinating thing is like an oil slick on water, or drops of paint in a layer of thick cream. It’s a different technique than I’ve seen used before or since, and I kind of feel like it was an experiment gone a bit awry – but that’s why I adore it.
Thursday
*points* And that, boys and girls, is minimalist pre-deco in the form of a bowl.
Wednesday
I have such love for the little collection of University City pottery that SLAM has, and there is no finer showcase for the collective talents of the group than this. I mean, look at it: it is breathtakingly simple and elegant, but deliciously modern in a way that was groundbreaking for the early 20th century. The color palette is subdued but makes you feel content with it, and it’s just hella lovely. 10/10, would absolutely visit again and again and again.
Tuesday
While this platter doesn’t look like much and seems rather plain, it is actually a testament to patience and perseverance on a number of levels. The craftsmanship is flawless, especially when you get close enough to the glass to be able to see that the glue lines are basically invisible (meaning they were sanded away to flush with the wood itself), and the entire effect appears as wood grain or even as age rings, rather than a disjointed affectation. The overall effect is that you are looking at something natural rather than something manufactured.
Monday
You guys. You guys. These lines, these colors: I will go to my grave believing that these two pieces were designed to work together, despite them clearly being separate entities made at separate times in different places. Just look at the way the colors and lines and planes interact with one another: there is no way that it is mere coincidence that they came to be in the same collection together. This is cosmic karma in action.
Saturday
I am so excited to talk about this clock, you have no idea! It has been one of my favorite pieces ever in the whole of art history since it came to reside in SLAM in 1997.
This clock does not fit any school of design with any degree of affinity, even the up and coming Dadaism or surrealism movements. It has elements of naturalism, elements of modernism, and elements of art deco, but conforms to none of those things. It is truly a unique animal. When you come around the corner and walk down the corridor toward it, it looks like molten, shifting metal that slowly resolves itself into a form – however, even up close, it never quite loses that molten feel, and it always seems to be in motion even though it is clearly not changeable and is not in a liquid form. It all seems very amateur and avant garde in the same moment, and many people pass it by and dismiss it straight out of hand without another thought.
Part of the reason I adore it so much is that it is so different, so unique, and there is no reason beyond Gaudi giving zero fucks and doing exactly what he wanted to do. This was his piece, and the beauty of his genius was that it still stands up today as what could be a completely contemporary piece of artwork.
Saturday
I love how Vuillard’s work always seems to be done with the utmost haste and willful disillusionment, as if he has zero fucks left to give. But the very gentle treatment of the subject belies the lack of fucks theory and, instead, gives us insight into the way he cared for his subjects and the world around him even as he treated it with ineffectual disdain and a kind of ADHD slapdashery.
Friday
Brown is not my favorite color. Brown is not a color: it is all the colors mixed together, and as such, is a non-color. This painting is non-color to the nth degree. However, I still enjoy it for the x factor that it has – the bit of blurry watery-edged give no damn attitude and the way that it just shrugs and says, “take it as it is or not at all”. We all need that.