Last art exhibition you visited?

[Jim Alfredson]

My wife and I just saw The Faces of Jesus at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, an exhibition on Rembrandt. It was very cool. The thing that impressed me the most was a short, 5 minute movie about etching and printing, displaying how Rembrandt made things like The Hundred Guilder Print. Amazing.

[Free For All]

speaking of visiting art museums, here's Trane at the Guggenheim.

[Chuck Nessa]

Is he pointing to his bomb in the briefcase?

[7/4]

Agent Greensleeves.

[ejp626]

I've seen quite a few. I saw the interlocking exhibits of the Summer of China up at Milwaukee Art Museum. My absolute favorite was the contemporary Chinese print exhibit (Emerald Mountains: Modern Chinese Ink Paintings from the Chu-tsing Li Collection). I took my son up on Amtrak for the day and we had a really nice time.

The I saw Joseph Cornell at the MCA:Cornell. This runs through mid Oct., so a few more weeks. While the Cornell boxes they have on display area generally not as impressive as those over at the Art Institute, they were drawn from private collections, mostly in Chicago. So there is definitely something to be said for seeing pieces that will never be more widely displayed (and in fact I think it's a shame that there isn't a show catalog). They then alternate the Cornell boxes with other art from the MCA collection. This works best in the southern half of the exhibit. Certainly worth checking out if one is in the area. (One of my favorites was William Copley's Blue Mood, which is part of the MCA collection, but not available on line. I'll have to double check if it is in their big collection guide, but I doubt it is.)

Also, worth checking out is the newly reopened DePaul Art Museum. Unlike the old one, hidden away a few blocks away, this one is literally next door to the Fullerton Red Line stop. It's still not an enormous space, but they can put on more substantial shows, like their re:Chicago show, focusing on Chicago artists in their collection. Anyway, they have two of the really great Art Shay prints on view, as well as a stunning (to me) photo of part of Cabrini-Green midway through demolition, looking like a doll house (because the outer wall has been removed and you can look right in) with the Hancock Building in the background.

Finally, yesterday I went to the new exhibit at Intuit (the center for Intuitive and Outside Art here in Chicago): Intuit This was not a happy experience. It started off really badly when two vagrants were sitting on the stoop outside the gallery, completely blocking the entrance. One was smoking and really quite belligerent, so I just had to wait a few minutes until he picked himself up and left. They were sort of concerned when I told them this inside, but seemed to also think I just wasn't being tolerant enough of the locals. I thought the art was pretty sucky and left after 5 minutes. So a huge thumbs down for Intuit and I would strongly avoid going there under any circumstances. Kind of a sour note for my last Chicago art exhibit, though I'll be back in town frequently through Jan. at least and will probably catch something else (maybe Scott Reeder at MCA).

[BillF]

speaking of visiting art museums, here's Trane at the Guggenheim.

Here's Trane with a Franz Kline - presumably the same photo session:

[7/4]

A good friend had an opening at a gallery in Newark on 9/10.

I'm planning on going back and taking another look before it closes.

[Stefan Wood]

Warhol: Deadlines opens today. We just completed work on it last week. Check out the groovy staircase, where music from Velvet Underground, Marion Brown and Allen Ginsberg chants can be heard!

[brownie]

Warhol: Deadlines opens today. We just completed work on it last week. Check out the groovy staircase, where music from Velvet Underground, Marion Brown and Allen Ginsberg chants can be heard!

Surprised (happily surprised...) that Marion Brown is featured at a Warhol exhibition. Was there more to the two of them than their common participation in the ESP 'East Village Other' recording?

Too bad that the exhibition does not travel to Paris! Looks very interesting.

[BruceH]

Dutch and Flemish Masterworks of the Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection, at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco. Been to it twice, actually. A good one.

[Dave Garrett]

Finally made it to this yesterday before it closed today:

Helmut Newton: White Women - Sleepless Nights - Big Nudes

Very impressive to see some of these photos in large-scale prints after being familiar with them in books.

Also read a comment in the visitors' guestbook that made me laugh: "These photos smell like cocaine!"

[ghost of miles]

"Shot By Warhol" at the IU Art Museum.

[Stefan Wood]

Warhol: Deadlines opens today. We just completed work on it last week. Check out the groovy staircase, where music from Velvet Underground, Marion Brown and Allen Ginsberg chants can be heard!

Surprised (happily surprised...) that Marion Brown is featured at a Warhol exhibition. Was there more to the two of them than their common participation in the ESP 'East Village Other' recording?

Too bad that the exhibition does not travel to Paris! Looks very interesting.

Sorry, no. Just that East Village Other lp.

[cih]

Went to the 'Miro: Sculptor' show at the West Yorkshire Sculpture Park yesterday. This is a really great exhibition... loads of things never seen over here before, amazing gallery setting (also there are a lot of his large format graphics there) - though I'm kind of biased cos I love Miro anyway I recommend it HIGHLY (plus it's free entry - a fiver to park the car)

My link

[sidewinder]

I love Miro anyway I recommend it HIGHLY (plus it's free entry - a fiver to park the car)

Good stuff. Much more preferable than that excuse of an exhibition of pointless bling by Damien Hirst in Tate Modern. Only £36k in the gift shop for a spun painted skull. Struth !

[robertoart]

speaking of visiting art museums, here's Trane at the Guggenheim.

Its a briefcase full of money, for curators to buy the works of young radical black artists.

[cih]

Went last week to the Picasso & modern British painters show at Tate Britain - great stuff though so much to see I could have done with more time. Some of the most interesting things weren't there(?) - Wyndham Lewis' vorticist paintings which didn't make it out of the vortex - and Francis Bacon's pre-crucifixion work which he set out to destroy - what survives in both cases makes it frustrating.

There was a drawing by Picasso of a ballerina which was so perfect it was unbelievable - simple lines, but not quickly drawn (you could see a slight tremor) but incredibly confident and correct - he knew exactly where to take the line on the blank white sheet - apparently the girl requested that his wife be present when he visited her.

On the same day went to the Barbican to see the Bauhaus show which was equally great

[ejp626]

... apparently the girl requested that his wife be present when he visited her.

Smart girl.

Anyway, I saw some mini-blockbuster shows. One on Mark Rothko at the Portland Museum of Art (kind of disappointing to be honest since it was so focused on his early career) and Gauguin at the Seattle Art Museum (well laid out but a little light on the most famous paintings).

There is a nice exhibit at the moment at the Vancouver Art Gallery called Collecting Matisse, which is about the collection put together by the Cone Sisters (and apparently mostly donated to the Baltimore Museum of Art). These two women had been able to buy up quite a number of works from Parisian painters, and in particular struck up a relationship with Matisse and bought 500 or so of his works. They are even immortalized by Gertrude Stein in a piece called "Two Women." Obviously, part of the interest is the fact that (esp. at that time) so few women were art collectors.

I thought that some of the Matisse paintings they picked up were quite good (thought they didn't anything like 500 Matisse items on display), and I particularly liked a photo display of 20 or so versions of this painting of a reclining woman (unfortunately this sequence isn't in the catalogue or I would have snatched it up (I might get the catalogue anyway).

Edit: I just found a webpage that covers this, though it doesn't look like I can link to the images themselves: Matisse in progress

Of course, everyone is entitled to their opinion. This (unbelievably long) screed comes from someone who apparently thinks the VAG can do no right (ever): counter-point

Edited June 29, 2012 by ejp626

[cih]

that's a great series of photos - if only there were more sets like that. I've seen an abridged version before, I think in this book published by Skira -

which is a nice book but only shows a small sample from that set iirc

[ejp626]

that's a great series of photos - if only there were more sets like that. I've seen an abridged version before, I think in this book published by Skira -

which is a nice book but only shows a small sample from that set iirc

Agreed -- personally I think Matisse should have stopped about midway through (don't care for the final face), but it is cool to see the progression. There is a somewhat shorter set of images of one of his early Bathers paintings (I think this is held by the Art Institute of Chicago) where it is absolutely clear that he completely reworks the painting in response to what Picasso has been up to. And of course, Picasso often documented the stages of his work, and it is pretty easy to find the stages of Guernica for instance.

[BFrank]

Hit up some galleries last weekend.

Saw a very nice Thiebaud retrospective at the Berggruen Gallery followed a Friedlander show at Fraenkel that was so-so (although I'm a big Friedlander fan).

[ValerieB]

Herb Ritts exhibit at the Getty a few weeks ago. must get back there soon. there is so much to see, not even counting the Gardens!

[ejp626]

A few weeks back I was in Austin, TX and while I couldn't quite synch up with some exhibit opening at the Blanton (the U Texas-Austin museum), I saw a fair bit of the core collection of 20th Century American art. I didn't realize an awful lot of it was donated by James Michener (yes, the writer). It's a fairly impressive collection for a university museum, and I liked most of what was on display. That would really be something if some day Michener is know more for his art philanthropy than for his writing. You certainly used to see his books everywhere in the 70s and 80s. I don't even see them that much at thrift shops nowadays.

[BruceH]

Went to a photography exhibit at the De Young last week.

[ejp626]

I thought that some of the Matisse paintings they picked up were quite good (thought they didn't anything like 500 Matisse items on display), and I particularly liked a photo display of 20 or so versions of this painting of a reclining woman (unfortunately this sequence isn't in the catalogue or I would have snatched it up (I might get the catalogue anyway).

I took another look at the catalogue and they do have 4 of the 20 or so photos after all. Don't know how that compares with the other book, but it is definitely moving me in the direction of buying this new catalogue. I still think that given the Cone sisters had 500 or so Matisse paintings and drawings they could have been a bit more generous in the reproductions, even if some of the art then wasn't part of the traveling exhibit, but so be it.