art exhibits

[SqDanceCallingSteve]

My wife and I caught the Turner exhibition at the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco today, spectacular show of the last phase of his career. Lots of striking stuff, amazing use of light; the sky often covers 60-80% of the canvas and is rendered in emotionally charged abstractions. Major similarity with East Asian art in that the human figures are usually small shapes within the vast land- or seascape of the painting.

And Walt, Rita and I were first in line tonight for Burma Superstar, half-hour before opening. Worth it! Soup to die for, curry pork, mango chicken, mango mojito . . . next time.




Regulus is the man with his arms raised in the foreground, but all human life is dwarfed by the setting sun.




One of Turner's own paintings is drawn on the big sail, Turner himself setting off into the setting sun in hopes of catching something.




For the whitest white on his watercolors, the moon in this painting, he used the paper itself. He kept one of his fingernails long so he could use it to scratch out the whiteness if he needed to.

[Wombatz]

Regulus is the man with his arms raised in the foreground, but all human life is dwarfed by the setting sun.

That's totally a Claude Lorrain that needed more lens flare:

[Wombatz]

Delaroche vs Delacroix at the local museum. Delaroche wins by a country mile. But I have a question for our resident Shakespearean (Steve?):



These are the sons of Edward IV after the play Richard III. They're in the tower, light under the door tells us their murderer is near. The elder son sadly gazes out of the picture frame in premonition of looming disaster. The younger one is giving us the most awfully arrogant evil eye. Or is it the distance of the times that makes me misread his features, and he just dreamily stares ahead, as the catalog says. That's hard to imagine (especially since his brother is typecast so well), so I think it must either mean that young Richard was an equally murderous soul and would probably have done away with his brother at some point to become dictator, is there anything in the play to suggest that? or that he wants to place the guilt for what's about to go down firmly with the spectator, who should get some help instead of waiting to be entertained by his death ...

(For anyone desiring proof that Delacroix gets no mileage whatsoever out of an even more tragic family death prison story, here's his Ugolino from the exhibition:

)

[SqDanceCallingSteve]

I have a question for our resident Shakespearean (Steve?):

The elder son sadly gazes out of the picture frame in premonition of looming disaster. The younger one is giving us the most awfully arrogant evil eye. Or is it the distance of the times that makes me misread his features, and he just dreamily stares ahead, as the catalog says. That's hard to imagine (especially since his brother is typecast so well), so I think it must either mean that young Richard was an equally murderous soul and would probably have done away with his brother at some point to become dictator, is there anything in the play to suggest that? or that he wants to place the guilt for what's about to go down firmly with the spectator, who should get some help instead of waiting to be entertained by his death ...

The older brother has trusted Richard III, and believes he and his brother are being sent to the tower for safe-keeping. The younger brother, Richard Duke of York, is on to Richard of Gloucester from the beginning, perhaps tipped off by his mother. He actually taunts his uncle, tells him to bear him on his (hunch)back(!), asks him for his dagger. There is a lively back and forth between the boy and RIII in Act III, Sc 1. (This is the only scene the boys appear in, except for a one-liner by Edward's ghost late in the play.)

I would interpret the painting as Edward V still trusting that he was in a safe place, while his younger and sharper brother, Richard, knows they are not.

[Wombatz]

Thank you! that makes sense. And it looks like the picture empathizes with the trustful brother, and the saucy one with his immoral display of bling taunts us as he taunts his uncle. (I've found a few other descriptions but they're either sentimental or contradictory, some even identifying the princes the other way around.)

[Steve Minkin]

I learned a new word today, anamorphosis, a seemingly distorted representation intended to be seen from a certain angle or in a mirror. Something that you CAN'T see when you're seeing everything else in the painting, but something you CAN see when you can't see anything else in the painting. The weird thing in the middle of Holbein the Younger's The Ambassadors is a skull when viewed from the extreme bottom right corner of the painting.

There is a reference to this style in Richard II, and Marjorie Garber's notes on the play relate it to perspectives on the play itself.

BUSHY:
Like perspectives, which rightly gaz’d upon
Show nothing but confusion; ey’d awry
Distinguish form

II,ii

[j-p]

I learned a new word today, anamorphosis, a seemingly distorted representation intended to be seen from a certain angle or in a mirror. Something that you CAN'T see when you're seeing everything else in the painting, but something you CAN see when you can't see anything else in the painting. The weird thing in the middle of Holbein the Younger's The Ambassadors is a skull when viewed from the extreme bottom right corner of the painting.

There is a reference to this style in Richard II, and Marjorie Garber's notes on the play relate it to perspectives on the play itself.

BUSHY:
Like perspectives, which rightly gaz’d upon
Show nothing but confusion; ey’d awry
Distinguish form

II,ii

there's a pretty interesting Quay Brothers short film which uses animation to explore this called "De Artificiali Perspectiva" from 1991. Recommended.

[Steve Minkin]

there's a pretty interesting Quay Brothers short film which uses animation to explore this called "De Artificiali Perspectiva" from 1991. Recommended.

Thanks! It was interesting to see other notable examples, and the techniques involved!

[Steve Minkin]

Preparing for our group's reading of Measure For Measure, I came across a video of director Gregory Doran likening the Vienna of Shakespeare's day to the Vienna at the beginning of the 20th Century, particularly citing painter Egon Schiele's works as an example of the kind of "forensic analysis of human sexuality" which seems to "accord closely with Shakespeare's obsessions in this play." I'm new to the artist, wonder if Wombatz or anybody familiar with Schiele has any light to shed on the matter.

[Steve Minkin]

Fabulous day at The Prado in Madrid! I wouldn't presume to compare the quality of the collections of the three great European art museums we've visited over the years, but this was by far the most pleasant experience On the days we went, the Ufizi was overcrowded and we felt rushed through the rooms, and the Louvre was both overcrowded and poorly organized. Today's visit was greatly enhanced by a wonderfully knowledgable and insightful guide, and the 'pedestrian only' section surrounding the museum offered a lovely transition back to the city.

We expected to love the Bosch, Raphael and Rubens, and we did; but we were thrilled and amazed at some of the works which were not known by us. These included Goya's "Black Paintings," which were both revelatory and scarier than anything by Bosch.





Tintoretto's "The Washing of The Feet," which provides startlingly different perspectives when view from the right or straight on.




And Velasquez's Las Meninas, a richly complex painting that includes the painter on the left and the king and queen 'reflected' in a mirror in the rear left.




A memorable museum experience! Off tomorrow to Toledo, and then on to Seville, Costa del Sol, Granada and The Alhambra, etc.

[Steve Minkin]

And in Toledo we saw this incredible El Greco



The City of Toledo itself is breathtakingly beautiful, may have overtaken Sienna as the most beautiful city I've visited.