Jackson Pollock, Number 1, 1949, 1949. Enamel and Metallic Paint on Canvas, 63 in. x 102 in., 160 cm x 259.1 cm; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

Jackson Pollock, Number 1, 1949, 1949. Enamel and Metallic Paint on Canvas, 63 in. x 102 in., 160 cm x 259.1 cm; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

A long overdue post–on December 31st, my friend Kayla and I to the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles. I am not particularly a “fan” of contemporary art, so knowing myself, I would have never gone to this museum by myself. So I am glad that Kayla pushed me to go to this museum. And she was right, what’s so great about contemporary art is that the artists are willing to experiment–even if sometimes it’s downright bizarre.

This Jackson Pollock piece was the first thing that caught my eye. It was placed down the middle of a corridor and could not be missed. Also, it is just enormous. There were so many ways to look at this piece–from afar for a full view or right up to it to see the thickness of the paint. And from whatever angle, it’s like a new point of view. While looking at it, I wonder what Pollock was thinking because he places his canvas on the ground and drips the paint as he walks on it. While he works on it, he never sees it the way a viewer would. 

My favorite part was the quote that came along with the piece.

“On the floor I am more at ease. I feel nearer, more a part of the painting, since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting. This is akin to the method of the Indian sand painters of the West.”

I absolutely love it. When you see a Pollock painting, you know that he put his entire body into it.

Some other highlights of the museum. (Taken with my brother’s Canon Rebel.)

Kayla admiring some artwork.

Edward Ruscha’s Chocolate Room.

Yes, it is made out of chocolate.

Robert Moskowitz’s Cadillac/Chopsticks.

One of my favorites–very charming.

Right outside the MOCA.

J

Vilhelm Hammershoi, Interior with a Girl at the Clavier, 1901. Oil on canvas.

Vilhelm Hammershoi, Interior with a Girl at the Clavier, 1901. Oil on canvas.

Hammershoi is a Danish painter known for his quiet and calm paintings. He is most famous for his lack of bright colors, and instead, opts for muted ones. His work is often described as melancholy, as the figures are always turned away from the viewer.

I wouldn’t necessarily call his work melancholy. I love the muted tones, especially the blue in the wall with the white patches of paint scattered across it. It feels as though I’m not looking right into a scene, a cloud is covering my vision. It gives it such a soft and ethereal touch.

However, in this painting, Interior with a Girl at the Clavier, I feel as though I am invading the girl’s privacy. I stand behind a table to keep my distance from her, in case she hears me. Maybe I feel this way because that’s how I view my piano–it’s my space to practice, to make mistakes, to read my sheet music. That’s probably why I enjoy the Steinart practice rooms at Brown, so much. Even though they are these strange boxes you step into, you can lock the door, they are soundproof. You can practice without any distractions. And that’s what I think Hammershoi captured so well.

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Johannes Vermeer, The Milkmaid, 1657. Oil on canvas, 17 7/8 in. x 16 1/8 in., 45.5 cm x 41 cm; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

Johannes Vermeer, The Milkmaid, 1657. Oil on canvas, 17 7/8 in. x 16 1/8 in., 45.5 cm x 41 cm; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

Over Thanksgiving break, I went to New York City and of course, when you are in New York City, you have to make a stop at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This was only my second time visiting–and this time, I had a lot more time. What’s so great is that the Met is so busy, so full of life, with crowds of people walking in and out all the time. With more time, I realized how large the museum was and how much art it held–it was overwhelming (in a good way).

It is impossible to go to the Met for one day and even try to appreciate, or even simply look, at every piece of artwork. There were so many Courbet, Degas, Manet, Miro paintings that I had learned about, had never seen, and I wanted to give them each the time they deserved. And then, you also want to go to the special exhibitions. If I lived in New York, I would go to the Met every weekend to just stay in one wing or even just a few rooms to understand each piece of artwork.

The day before I was to go to the Met, I didn’t even know that they were holding a exhibition on Vermeer until my friend told me. It could not have been better timing–because it was the second to last day of the exhibition. I could not contain my excitement. To see a painting, in person, up close, by your favorite painter is not something you can describe.

Being so close to the painting made me nervous. I could see every single crack and it felt like the painting was just going to collapse right in front of me. But being so close also reminded me why I love Vermeer so much. His use of color is so vibrant. The blue in the milkmaid’s dress is no blue that you could find in a box of crayons, it is so bright and contrasts so well with the red that it immediately catches your eye. And his use of light is so delicate–slowly shading the back, white wall and subtleties of the light from the window hitting the milkmaid’s hand.

My favorite part of the painting is the bread. You could never tell from looking at a reprint online, but Vermeer paints the bread with single dots that blend together to form the texture of the bread. It is such a meticulous and delicate technique–but it makes the bread that much more real, more tangible.

The exhibition also had only a few of his other paintings. I loved seeing the cartography in the background of his paintings and it must have taken him so many months to just paint the maps, as they are so detailed. It was also just so great to see so many people in the small room, so eager to see all of Vermeer’s paintings. It was nice to be amongst people standing for more than five minutes to admire Vermeer’s beautiful work.

Other paintings:

Ilia Efimovich Repin’s Vsevolod Mikhailovich Garshin

What a great capture of a mentally struggling writer.

Norman Rockwell’s Town Meeting

It reminds me of my childhood, when I would look through my cousin’s oversized Norman Rockwell book. Doesn’t this painting just inspire you?

J

Rene Magritte, The Voice of Silence, 1928. Oil on canvas, 57 cm x 73 cm; Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA.

Rene Magritte, The Voice of Silence, 1928. Oil on canvas, 57 cm x 73 cm; Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA.

Usually, I really dislike surrealism. There is something about it that I find about it to be disingenuous, as though this glossy film is placed on top. It might be because surrealism did stem from Dadaism, which was an inherent rejection of the ideas of “art,” while still creating art. In that sense, I found surrealism to be somewhat mocking and not as inviting as other styles of art.

However, this past Friday, for my Roman Art: Hadrian to the Late Antiquity class, we took a small field trip to the Worcester Art Museum. I was expecting it to be a small, little town museum, with around three rooms, but it surprised me. It was pretty large and had a great collection of work. We went to mainly look at their floor mosaics that were on display in the main room. But after an hour or so with the curator, we had about an hour of free time.

In the very last room, I found this Magritte painting, The Voice of Silence. It’s the Worcester Art Museum’s first surrealist painting. What immediately caught my eye was the immense amount of black on the left side–and looking closely at it, it was completely black. Not just extremely dark grey, but completely black. And just looking into the black space made me, almost feel afraid–as though something was going to jump out.

I just feel this ominous sense from the painting, as though there is someone in the dark room, but we, as the viewer, just don’t know. And even though there aren’t any people on the right side of the painting, I get this sense of “never being alone”–people are always around and listening. You don’t know who is in the next room. And it is accentuated with the stark contrast of color, the symmetry of the space between the two sides of the painting, and the placing of a thick wall right in the middle.

J

The Guild of Food Writers Logo

Isn’t this logo just absolutely charming? It’s the logo for the Guild of Food Writers, which is an association for food writers in the UK. After reading a little about the group, I’m really amused that one of its activities is “campaigns for improvements in the quality of food.” I wholly support that.

What I love about logos are that they are so clever. They are so simple, but always manage to blend ideas together–an obvious one and then a not-so-obvious one. In this case, the obvious one is that it is the tip of a calligraphy pen, symbolizing the art of writing. But if you just look at the logo a little bit more, the negative space creates an image of a spoon.

Even though this logo seems like a black stamp of the end of a pen, it’s so witty in the way that it incorporates exactly what the Guild of Food Writers is all about.

J

Forever Young by Bob Dylan

Forever Young by Bob Dylan and illustrated by Paul Rogers

I saw this at Barnes and Noble the other day. It’s a children’s book based on Bob Dylan’s hit song, “Forever Young.”

1. Bob Dylan is amazing.

2. I love Paul Roger’s 60’s-esque style of artwork.

3. It is too adorable.

J

Nicholas Nixon, Self (03), Brookline, 2008. Photograph. de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA.

Nicholas Nixon, Self (03), Brookline, 2008. Photograph. de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA.

A few weeks ago I went up north to San Francisco and decided to go to the de Young Museum. It was interesting because I’ve never been to a museum connected to so many other attractions. It was surrounded by the Japanese Tea Gardens, Golden Gate Park, California Academy of Sciences. The area was so busy with tourists and several cars driving by. de Young was especially busy because it was featuring a King Tut exhibition, but I wasn’t too interested in that and instead, just went into the regular museum.

Nixon specializes in portraiture and documentary style photography. I was immediately drawn to this photo, not because it is black and white (all the photos in the photography exhibition were black and white), but because it was of a neck. The neck is such a vulnerable place and I don’t think people give it much attention. Also, Nixon doesn’t photograph just a neck in place, but an extended neck–the skin is so vulnerably stretched across his adam’s apple.

And the hair and stubble, how it lightly starts to disappear as it moves down the neck.

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Johannes Vermeer. Girl With a Pearl Earring, c. 1665. Oil on canvas, 44.5 cm × 39 cm (17.5 in × 15.4 in); The Hauge, Mauritshuis.

Johannes Vermeer. Girl With a Pearl Earring, c. 1665. Oil on canvas, 44.5 cm × 39 cm (17.5 in × 15.4 in); The Hauge, Mauritshuis.

I love Jan Vermeer, but I wasn’t really interested in this painting. And I have to admit that I am putting this painting up because I want to talk about the 2003 film. However, I do want to say a few things about this painting. It is interesting how one thing–this pearl–completely changes the painting. The pearl becomes the focal point and makes it unique. If it were not there, would this painting be as “special”? I am inclined to believe “yes,” because I think there is something very pretty about the blue head wrap that is so bright and the slight, awkward parting of the young woman’s lips.

The 2003 film of the same name is based on the the fictitious novel of the same name, that tells of how Jan Vermeer came to create the painting. I have not yet read the novel, but just recently saw the film. In it, Vermeer, played by Colin Firth, is married with a family and hires a second house maid, Griet, played by Scarlett Johansson, who really does look like the girl in the painting. Griet and Vermeer become very close as she becomes his muse for a few paintings. She then sits for him, wearing his wife’s pearl earring, therefore creating Girl With a Pearl Earring.

The movie was a quiet one–there wasn’t much talking between Vermeer and Griet. I have seen self-portraits of Vermeer, but I had forgotten that he had long hair, so it kind of a shock to see Firth with long hair. I enjoyed the historical accuracy, like Vermeer showing Griet his camera obscura or Vermeer manually mixing his colors.

I know this story is fake, but I feel that the girl inside me just really, really want to believe it.

J

Joseph William Turner. The Slave Ship, 1840. Oil on canvas, 35 3/4 x 48 1/4 in; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Joseph William Turner. The Slave Ship, 1840. Oil on canvas, 35 3/4 x 48 1/4 in; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Joseph Turner was a Romantic landscape painter obsessed with depicting the sea/ocean in times of violence or destruction. And in this painting, he was showing slaves being thrown overboard when crossing the Atlantic Ocean during the 18th century. It is said that Turner was inspired by two things–the Zong Massacre and James Thomson’s poem, The Seasons.

I remember seeing this painting at the Museum of Fine Arts and being so completely struck by the rough brushstrokes. It’s so easy to simply “get lost” in this painting with all the colors and figures of bodies. The light of the sun emerging from the background is so serene and beautiful that it starkly contrasts with the dead bodies in the foreground.

A few weeks later, after I had already forgot about this painting, I read about it in Gombrich’s The Story of Art for my art history class. The painting, printed in a book, had no effect on me. I had no recollection of seeing it in person and I actually thought the painting was bland. I just read through the text quickly and moved on to the next page.

So, when going through my iPhoto, and seeing a photo of this painting, I was kind of embarrassed. Mostly because I had “liked” this painting so much in person and then dismissed it in print. But then it just reminded me the great difference between seeing a work in person versus in print. The museum, the other paintings surrounding it, and being able to see it up close, to see the textures, the size, the real colors, makes such an impact.

J

Carrot

Carrot by Greg Young, 2004, Oil on canvas

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