Art I'm Seeing #52

The Smithsonian American Art Museum has just opened an exhibition of the paintings of iconic American illustrator/painter Norman Rockwell from the collections of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, two American icons in their own right. Included are many familiar paintings by the somewhat reclusive New Englander. Cartainly this image titled The Connoisseur from 1962,
or this one from 1941 titled The Flirts. But that's the thing about Rockwell you get the feeling that you've seen any and everything that he's ever painted!

As a child in the 60's and 70's I lived in a world for more attuned to the message of The Connoisseur than that of The Flirts. The world was leaving Rockwell's innocence and charm and grappling with paradigms of honesty and rapid social change; a social order that was learning how to let go of nostalgia in favor of an unknown and radically more egalitarian future. A world that made about as much sense to the establishment as the abstract painting in the first image.

As I look at these painting now, through the shattered window pane of history, I am; however, far less critical. There was a time when I rejected Rockwell as quaint and out of touch. Now I see just how in touch he actually was. There lies within his paintings, at least some of them, an absurdity. What starts out as a joke, ends up as a pathetic and embarrassing, or in the case of The Jury, (a scene in a jury room where eleven chain smoking, bedraggled men beseech the lone hold out, an Audrey Hepburn look-a-like who sits calmly with her arms folded across her chest at the end of the table) amazed that a world run by men ever existed or managed to survive.

And the times, he loves to define the power and masculinity of men with cigars! I can't imagine how people survived the stench! Even poor Gary Cooper in this 1930 painting called Gary Cooper As The Texan.

Remember, I mentioned that whenever I see a Norman Rockwell painting, I feel like I've seen it before? That isn't always true, and this last image was quite an interesting example. Especially, since Rockwell traded on the truth of his fantasies (Santa Claus not-with-standing.)

So Mermaid from 1955 was a delightful discovery.

It's a wonderful little show. Enter from the west side of the atrium, it's there through the first of the new year.

SAAM

SAAM
Originally uploaded by Randuwa

Whenever an art museum is renovated there is reason for celebration. And nowhere is this truer than at the Smithsonian American Art Museum/National Portrait Gallery. Prior to its multi-year face-lift, SAAM/NPG was definitely a backwater of DC museums.

Since the renovation, it's a freaking hive of activity and visitors. Before, when I went there, it was like going to the library, now it's like going to a shopping mall! How wonderful is that?

The final stage is complete. Like so many of the block-sized structures in DC, the actual building wraps itself around an inner courtyard. With the renovation, that courtyard is covered in a geodesic canopy reminiscent of those at the British Museum and The Walters Collection, both in London. It's a weatherproof enclave with planters containing full grown trees and ferns, a cafe, and two extremely shallow reflecting pools that you can as easy walk across as discover your image in.

Visiting DC? Go to SAAM/NPG and experience it for yourself, you won’t be disappointed.

Art I'm Seeing #27

johnalexander
Originally uploaded by Randuwa

A great holiday weekend to spend time in museums.

The show is a John Alexander retrospective at the recently renovated Smithsonian American Art Museum. I had never heard of this artist before visiting this exhibit. And it really was enjoyable. His works run a wide range of subjects and he has both great competence in oil and watercolor.

His oils tend to lean toward garish, colorful subjects full of spontaneity and wit. This top image is an excellent example: "Go Jesus Go". In it we see the flaming skeleton of a crucified individual. All around are the illuminated suggestions of a garden with a trinity of flaming bunnies.

In direct opposition to his oils are his watercolor/drawings. They are often images of flora and fauna with an almost scientific exactitude. It was this area of his work that convinced me to purchase the catalogue.

I love finding new artists and it's to the credit of the SAAM that they choose to expose the public to retrospectives of living American masters.

Joseph Cornell

bluepeninsula
Originally uploaded by Randuwa.

An additional thought on Jospeh Cornell's work. As delighted as I was by the exhibit at the SAAM, one moment in the museum continues to peck at my mind. I was moving from one set of works to another when I passed a couple in the their mid-50's. The man in tow mumbled to the woman, "So these are Cornell's boxes?"

The comment has made me ponder the hidden power in these "boxes". Take this one, for example, titled "Toward the Blue Peninsula (for Emily Dickinson)". This is not a box, it's a world. It's a world of confinement and of limitations: the cage, the sterility, the cloister. And it's a world of possibility, of hope, and of escape. The wire mesh is broken, the bird is gone. Where? That's your call. The window is open and blue beyond it beckons the traveller to a new world, and new dimension, guided by the ghostly set of Cartesian coordinates suggested by the shadow from the wire mesh.

Cornell was so like Dickinson in ways that must have resonated passionately with the artist. Both never to marry, both to live in their family homes (their cloisters), both to treat "ideas like stars", and create art from the intensity with which they viewed the world around them, the world beyond their windows. It was said that Dickinson lived out the adult years of her life only wearing white, and jotting down her enigmatic verse on small scraps of paper, like the two pieces snipped and resting in the bottom of this "box."

Art I'm Seeing #14

josephcornell
Originally uploaded by Randuwa.

There's a wonderful exhibition of Joseph Cornell works at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) which opened on November 17th. The exhibition includes dozens of his "boxes" along with an equal or greater amount of his artifacts and collages. Cornell is a quintessentially American artist, and SAAM is the perfect venue for his works.

I arrived, foolishly, at 10 AM; and the museum doesn't open until 11:30! So I went to the National Gallery and spent a couple of hours "killing" time, before returning to SAAM. As an exhibit, it was very crowded. I was happy to see so many young people and families with children roaming through the galleries. The exhibition obviously anticipated this and provided opportunities to engage a younger audience in the experience. Bravo SAAM.