May 13, 2013
Our museum walking for today is to visit some of the famous art museums in London.
We started off at the Courtauld Gallery, admiring the large collection of famous impressionists. Samuel Courtauld was a very wealthy industrialist of the late 1800s and first half of the 20th century. He had a remarkable collection of art, which he donated, along with donations from some of his rich buds, to create this museum.
Included in the holdings here are a rendition of the very famous Le Dejeunner sur l'Herbe with the naked lady having lunch in the park with the besuited gentlemen, a version of the famous
VanGogh sans ear and also sans pipe, Manets, Reubens, Cezannes and Gaugins.
One of my favorites was a painting of Adam and Eve by Lucas Cranach the Elder. In this painting the famous Tree of Knowledge stands tall and dark in the center of the picture with the sneaky serpent slyly slithering along the trunk and be.autiful Eve just handing the apple to Adam who is looking at it, puzzled and scratching his head. In another 30 seconds their lives will change forever and so will the lives of everyone who comes after them. A world-altering moment captured in oil.
We spent the morning enjoying the work which is presented in a way that shows how the impressionist movement progressed, from religious paintings through the less precise styles of Monet, Renoir and Degas, and on to the Fauvist style of very thick paint and obvious brush strokes of Van Gogh and Gaugin, and on Pointilism and the Cubist movement. The descriptions of the works helped me understand what the artists were trying to achieve with their different styles.
There was also a lovely display of silver chalices and salvers, urns and other objects which were owned by Samuel Courtauld.
We headed back to the tube, stopping at the Blackfriar's Station to admire the old black friar, before going home for lunch. After lunch it was time for more art and we struck out for the Tate Modern for the afternoon.
So what can I say about modern art??? I hate most of it. I have never visited a Modern Art Museum that I thought was worth an hour of my time, and yet, silly me, I keep going.
At the Tate, which is located in a famous building that used to be a power plant, we saw uglier versions of Monet's Water Lilies and several works by Matisse and Cezanne, and those were the better things. We also viewed "art" of flourescent lighting tubes (they had a sale at Mr. Bricolage), heating ducts, bundles of sticks and four walls of giant canvases which looked like the wall scribbles of a two year old with huge red color crayons. There were the standard compositions of empty canvases painted plain white or all black, chunks of dowel glued to a board, and dripping paint. One sees these at every exhibit of modern art. There was a nice selection of Picasso works, but you all know what those look like.
The exhibit that really got our goat, and we have seen similar exhibits at every modern art museum we have ever visited, was the grainy, choppy video photography on display. Don did better work with his clunky old first video recorder. The subject matter is not interesting, the filmography is poor and the quality is horrible. Who pays thousands of dollars, euros or pounds for this stuff????
The gallery exhibits a number of works by 20th century artists too. Among them was a work by Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, who I think must be a relative, since the spelling is consistent with ours and we also have the da Silva line in our genealogy. Her work was ok, certainly with more merit that most of the rest.
We also enjoyed the Mondrians, but mainly because they are reminiscent of our beloved Eichler style. After all, they are just white canvases criss-crossed by black horizontal and vertical lines with a few of the resultant squares and rectangles filled in with red, yellow or blue paint.
Well, we had had enough of that, so home again for dinner and rest before we tackle the Victoria dn Albert tomorrow.
Our museum walking for today is to visit some of the famous art museums in London.
We started off at the Courtauld Gallery, admiring the large collection of famous impressionists. Samuel Courtauld was a very wealthy industrialist of the late 1800s and first half of the 20th century. He had a remarkable collection of art, which he donated, along with donations from some of his rich buds, to create this museum.
Included in the holdings here are a rendition of the very famous Le Dejeunner sur l'Herbe with the naked lady having lunch in the park with the besuited gentlemen, a version of the famous
We spent the morning enjoying the work which is presented in a way that shows how the impressionist movement progressed, from religious paintings through the less precise styles of Monet, Renoir and Degas, and on to the Fauvist style of very thick paint and obvious brush strokes of Van Gogh and Gaugin, and on Pointilism and the Cubist movement. The descriptions of the works helped me understand what the artists were trying to achieve with their different styles.
We headed back to the tube, stopping at the Blackfriar's Station to admire the old black friar, before going home for lunch. After lunch it was time for more art and we struck out for the Tate Modern for the afternoon.So what can I say about modern art??? I hate most of it. I have never visited a Modern Art Museum that I thought was worth an hour of my time, and yet, silly me, I keep going.
At the Tate, which is located in a famous building that used to be a power plant, we saw uglier versions of Monet's Water Lilies and several works by Matisse and Cezanne, and those were the better things. We also viewed "art" of flourescent lighting tubes (they had a sale at Mr. Bricolage), heating ducts, bundles of sticks and four walls of giant canvases which looked like the wall scribbles of a two year old with huge red color crayons. There were the standard compositions of empty canvases painted plain white or all black, chunks of dowel glued to a board, and dripping paint. One sees these at every exhibit of modern art. There was a nice selection of Picasso works, but you all know what those look like.
The gallery exhibits a number of works by 20th century artists too. Among them was a work by Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, who I think must be a relative, since the spelling is consistent with ours and we also have the da Silva line in our genealogy. Her work was ok, certainly with more merit that most of the rest.
We also enjoyed the Mondrians, but mainly because they are reminiscent of our beloved Eichler style. After all, they are just white canvases criss-crossed by black horizontal and vertical lines with a few of the resultant squares and rectangles filled in with red, yellow or blue paint.
Well, we had had enough of that, so home again for dinner and rest before we tackle the Victoria dn Albert tomorrow.
I love the bubbles, Ally and Zach would love them too.
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