Saturday, February 21, 2004
Eurotrip! And lots of links!
Well, Dallas turned out to be the day-trip of a lifetime, at least for Micki.
My roommate has a new job, starting at the end of May.
In Germany.
Exciting, no? I refer you to her blog for more information on her new position and the squee story about yesterday's fun.
We've already started making plans to spend June 2005 hopping around Europe together. I'm already saving for it.
As a foretaste of Europe, and since we were in the neighborhood, we also took in the Turner and Venice exhibit at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth. The Kimbell is a rather small museum, but its collection is impressive -- Cezanne, Courbet, Guardi, Carravaggio, Bernini, Picasso, Braque, Miro, Monet, Rubens. The Turner exhibit was quite large given the size of the museum itself -- it took up about a third of the museum space -- but it was a fantastic show.
I've really grown to love Turner. He's a sort of pre-Impressionist, and his watercolour sketches are always so elegant, yet quick and vibrant. His paintings are beautiful, too -- but it's funny how some of his sketchbook pages have as much presence as his canvases. It was especially fun to view Turner's many impressions of the city, after having seen the modern Venice a several months ago -- and several months before Micki will see the city herself.
The exhibit was titled "Turner and Venice" but a more accurate title would probably have been, "Turner and Light" or "Turner and Reflection" or "Turner and Sky". It's true, the show did limit itself to his Venetian studies, but almost none of them discussed Venice, really. The subject matter was Venice, but the paintings explored much more intricate topics. His paintings are about the merging of earth, sea, and sky, and about the colour of light in and through those areas. They are about making the sky a foreground instead of a background. They are about touch and shadow and reflection. And then they are about Venice, because it is the most perfect place in the world to capture so much in a single view.
After the Turners, we went and checked out the rest of the museum. Downstairs there was a museum office, and inside there were two portraits that reminded me of Sargent paintings. The fact that they included informative wall text made me wonder if it would be possible for us to see them up-close. So when a woman exited a few minutes later, I asked her if we could see them.
She was reluctant at first. "Those are offices, you know." But perhaps I looked suitably innocent and artsy, so she told us she would escort us in for a few minutes just to see them.
The portraits were of Kay and Velma Kimbell, the museum founders, and they weren't Sargents -- but the Sargentian influence was undeniable. I pointed out to the museum woman that the portraits (scroll down to see) reminded me of two of Sargent's most famous paintings: Madame X and the portrait of President Roosevelt (albeit rather softened versions of both). The woman was impressed, and asked about Madame X, and who she was, because evidently a good amount of Madame Pierre Gautreau's belongings have been auctioned off recently. So, I recounted the story of Sargent's Madame X, and impressed the museum lady even more. I walked out feeling all smart and artsy. Hehe.
We drove home after that, with a Turner sunset. Turner makes you notice the sky -- cirrus feathers of pink, purple, and gold set against blue and grey; cirrocumulus brushstrokes and watercolour washes; the vortex of sunset pulling the sky beneath the earth; a whirlpool of clouds reaching Vishnu arms to the endless, darkening heavens.
| 10:14 AM |
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