Mall Walking in Winter - Degas, El Greco and Thoughts about Mr. Turner

I haven't posted a Mall Walking post for a while.  When I say Mall Walking I mean the National Mall in Washington DC.

During the Holidays I was off for a few days and decided to go to the National Gallery of Art to see two exhibits I've been meaning to see:  Degas's Little Dancer and El Greco's 400th Anniversary.

As a perennial student of art history Degas and El Greco are two of my favorite artists.  

Edgar Degas is a favorite because when I was in school and college and even beyond I was a great lover of ballet. I used to go standing room to see the great dancers that came to our city. (Oh, how I miss those student discounts.) So I had lots of prints and posters of Degas' dancers on my bedroom wall. One of my favorite Degas paintings is part of the NGA exhibit.

The focus of the exhibit is the only sculpture Degas ever showed publicly, at the impressionist exhibition in 1881, Little Dancer Age Fourteen.

It was a wonderful experience to see the sculpture up close. I really felt the personality of this young girl and her determination.  

The El Greco exhibit brings together the artist's paintings owned by the National Gallery and works on loan from Washington collectors. It traces the evolution of Domenikos Theotokopoulos (El Greco) as an artist and his influence on modern art and artist. 

One of El Greco's paintings on exhibit was once owned by Edgar Degas:

Saint Ildefonso, c. 1603/1614

If you happen to be in or near DC between now and February, don't miss these two exhibits. You can read and watch more about the exhibits and the two artists on the NGA website by clicking the links below:

http://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/features/modeling-movement.html

http://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/exhibitions/2014/el-greco-400-anniversary.html

For Richard Armitage, Aidan Turner, and Hobbit fans you can watch Thorin and Kili as artists Claude Monet and Dante Gabriel Rossetti in two UK TV series. (And you get some Degas with your Monet as well)

Richard Armitage in The Impressionists:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0496201/

Aidan Turner in Desperate Romantics:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1346018/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

Desperate Romantics also stars Rafe Spall as William Holman Hunt one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and a desperate romantic.  I recently saw his father, Timothy Spall as artist J.M.W Turner in the movie Mr. Turner. 

A few impressions of Mike Leigh's film Mr. Turner 

I wanted to fall in love with this film. Timothy Spall gives a great performance as the enigma that is Turner the man. The supporting cast is perfect, and many familiar faces if you watch UK television and films. 

The movie in visually stunning, the beauty of the landscapes almost brought me to tears. Some of the interior scenes are so beautifully meticulous in their detail.  We see the real transferred on canvas. Turner's paintings become more and more abstract. Visually this is a great film.

Yet I didn't fall in love. As perennial art history student I know a tiny little bit about Turner and have seen some of his work in museums. I wanted to leave the film understanding Turner's art as well as the man, yet I left knowing less than ever. Maybe that was Leigh's intention. 

We do learn about Turner's rather complicated private life and curmudgeonly personality from middle-age to death. How this grumpy and not always likable man of few words, and some inexplicable deeds, created his works of art is puzzling. Through Spall's performance and Turner's outdoor wanderings we see his great dedication to his work. But for me there was a disconnect. Why did Turner turn more and more towards abstraction? Why light and landscape? We do see the politics of being a successful artist in his time, but what about his art?

But maybe that was the director's message, that art, like love, is inexplicable. 

(bad photos of DC  and inside NGA are mine, others from NGA website, or Google Images)

Mall Walking - Joan Miro: The Ladder of Escape at the National Gallery

A few weekends ago I spent the day at the National Gallery of Art (NGA) in Washington DC.  I wanted to see the new Joan Miró exhibit that was organized by the Tate Modern in London and the Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona. (I'll refer to him as JM from now on, difficult to do the accent on my English keyboard). It is not a full retrospective of Miró's career, but takes a frequent image he used in his work that represented his own struggle to represent the turbulent times of his life, World War I, The Spanish Civil War, World War II, Franco, and the world of his imagination.

I was lucky enough to get to the museum just in time to join an excellent Gallery Talk at the exhibit. If you visit the NGA I would recommend going along for a Gallery Talk, it's free and given by one of the wonderful staff lecturers at the museum. I don't always view an exhibit this way, but when I do I always learn so much and enjoy the exhibit so much more than I would just going through the gallery on my own. 


The first room was one of my favorites of the exhibit. It has JM's early work and one of his most important paintings of this period, and one of my favorites, The Farm.

I also loved seeing a wall full of JM's most important and better known paintings known as the Constellations. This series of paintings started as an accident when he looked at a piece of paper he had used to clean his brushes and decided he liked the background effect. He then let it dry and painted over it. JM worked on this series from 1939-1941.

"The story that unfolds is a complex one. Was Miró an activist, a fantasist, or both? Did his art emerge despite or because of difficult times? Miró always kept a figurative "ladder of escape" – one of his favorite images – with him, and he would scale it to flee from harsh conditions into the freedom of his imagination. Yet his ladder was firmly planted on the ground, and he often climbed down to decry oppression. These two impulses, however different, were resolved in Miró's powerfully simple definition of an artist as "one who, amidst the silence of others, uses his voice to say something."

Quote from the NGA website, www.nga.gov

This summer, if you're in the DC area or are in the area for a visit, don't miss this wonderful and comprehensive exhibit,on view through August 12, 2012.

Disclaimer: I'm not an art critic, but an eternal art history student and museum lover.

A Day at the Mall: Andy Warhol and the Pastrana Tapestries

I spent part of my Thanksgiving Holiday here in the US at the Mall. No, not a shopping mall in unarmed combat with fellow shoppers on Black Friday, but this Mall:

The Mall in Washington DC

Most of it I spent at the National Gallery of Art visiting two temporary exhibits separated by centuries. If you are in the Washington DC area, or visiting any time between now and January both exhibits are worth a visit.

Warhol: Headlines

Photo from www.nga.gov

Andy Warhol is one of the best known artists in the 20th Century and continues to fascinate lovers of contemporary art. Known by most of the public for his Campbell Soup Cans and for his own otherworldly appearance and personality, Warhol was very interested in celebrity and the tabloid press. From the 1960's until his untimely death in 1987 he worked to incorporate newspaper tabloid headlines from around the world into his art. The current exhibit at the National Gallery explores this interest and his work including prints, videos, sculpture, drawings, and his source materials. 

I found his collaborations with artists Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, and his stitched photographs to be the most interesting. His videos are always thought provoking if sometimes puzzling. For those of us that were around in the 70's and 80's it is interesting to see some celebrities of the day in these videos that have now gone from the scene or are no longer as famous (and I don't mean Madonna). 

 Work by Keith Haring and Andy Warhol

http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/warholinfo.shtm

There is also a Warhol exhibit at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden that is part of the Warhol on the Mall celebration this fall in Washington DC.  I hope to see it during my Christmas break :) 

The Invention of Glory: Afonso V and the Pastrana Tapestries

From www.nga.gov

Now lets go from the 20th Century to the 15th Century and to another wonderful exhibit at the National Gallery of Art. The exhibit has brought together these four recently restored Belgian tapestries commissioned in the 1400's to commemorate the conquest of two cities in Morocco by the king of Portugal Afonso V.  The detail in these monumental tapestries is amazing from the elaborate armor and faces of the warriors on both sides, to the ships masts on the harbor and the city walls teeming with people. This is epic warfare long before CGI.

http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/pastranainfo.shtm

(Disclaimer: I am an art lover and eternal student of art history, but I am not an expert and have no more than general knowledge of art.)