This is gorgeous tribal American art from the northwestern coast of the United States. It’s symbolic, it’s stylized, it’s complex, it is exquisite. The symbolism of the people’s faces trapped within the bodies of the animals is not lost on me, nor should it be on anyone who knows the history of this continent.
Tag: painting
Monday
This, to me, is like disembodied, atonal notes from a warm-up. I love it, but it’s not really harmonious or full of reason. It’s very much an improvisational, casual style and feel.
Wednesday
There is a dreamy, ethereal quality to this canvas that reminds me of sinking into the ocean and holding my breath for the longest time, looking through the sunbeams at fish. Living in Hawai’i for a time probably contributed to this.
Saturday
This is another one of the paintings that I like to make a special visit to every time I’m in the museum. I enjoy the balance of colors, the simple childishness of the work, and how it makes me feel. I smile every time I see it, and that is a rare feeling in my life, so I will take it for all it is worth.
Thursday
What I love about this painting is the organic feel of the design; all of the lines mesh together in a way that is very harmonious. Nothing feels over the top, nothing feels out of place. It is all about balance.
Wednesday
We could talk for hours about the balance of the composition, about how the curves enhance the overall effects, of how the colors work to draw your eye from one part of the canvas to the next… Or we could just say that my favorite color is green and leave it at that.
Monday
This is one of those examples of landscape art where the true beauty of the painting isn’t actually of the landscape itself: it’s of the stormy sky and the light peeping through the clouds. Everything else is immaterial.
Sunday
This is one of those paintings that you just have to experience in person. No mere photograph is ever going to do it justice. You turn the corner from a room full of 18th century religious art and find yourself looking through a doorway with the long view that I’ve presented one of the photos above of this absolutely magnificent piece of stunning beauty. I was dumbfounded the first time I saw it, and it always makes me giddily happy to see it when I turn that corner. It isn’t a particularly overwhelming subject (in fact, if you asked most art historians, they would poo-poo it and roll their eyes at it as a bit of play-acting attempting art), nor a particularly effective execution of the subject itself (if you look closely in the detail shots, you can see that the statues are rendered rather poorly, and the bones in the sand are out of proportion, etc.), however, the overall effect is stunning. When the sun is shining and the light comes in just so from the outer galleries, it causes the frame to catch the light, which illuminates the sunset even more, giving it almost an ethereal glow.
Good thing I didn’t go to school for this shit, right? I just make it up as I go along!
Saturday
So here’s where I start to turn on the nerd a little bit… This painting, while definitely being high Victorian (as evidenced by the cluttery nature background and the ‘false modesty’ drape for the boy while leaving the girl nude aside from the flowers which are an allegorical reference in and of themselves), is also a masterclass in emulating high Renaissance portraiture ideals, 18th century framing and pastoral design, and 17th century color palettes. And that, my friends, was a run-on sentence of epic proportions.
I love this work because it shows a striking balance of color, composition, and simplicity despite being incredibly complex stylistically.
Monday
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.