Monday

The Met's closed Mondays, so I get to take a day to catch up and rest after a busy weekend. I would like to take Mondays to display something interesting about the Metropolitan Museum of Art. For today, here is a slideshow from previous visits to the Koons on the Roof exhibition on the roof this summer:



The whimsical sculptures captured my deep admiration the first time I laid eyes on them. That first day, happened to be a Sunday, and Jeff Koons himself was speaking about his work in the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium as part of the Sundays at the Met program. Those sculptures mesmerized me with their huge scale, their bright colors and their distorting reflectiveness. I must have visited them a half dozen times over the summer, and was sad to see them go in October. I guess I'll just have to wait for Koons' next project: A life-size train dangling from a crane, set to welcome visitors at the entrance of LACMA (near my hometown of Pasadena, CA).

Note: I actually got to see Koons painting in person at a kid's event to benefit the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric Aids Foundation when I was volunteering! (I also walked Nigel Barker around the event, but I don't want to gloat)

No Met Today, Just Brunch

I wasn't able to get to the Met today, since I was working a double shift at my restaurant today — and I was actually sad not to go, especially with the museum being closed tomorrow... but a girl's gotta take a day or two off!

I can't just post nothing, so here is the wikipedia entry on the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It's HUGE.

More Uncharted Territory, Giorgio Morandi, and a Pleasant Moment

Another short visit has me looking forward to devoting at least a couple hours sometime next week! But this morning I arrived just as the museum opened, so that I could get in and out by 10:30am to go to work. Walking through the European Decorative Arts wing today, I came across some unexpected treasures: little figurines in one room, ornately decorated wallpapered period rooms, a recreation of a medieval courtyard...

Then it was on to the Giorgio Morandi exhibition and the Robert Lehman Collection. I wasn't particularly taken with Morandi's work, save for a few jewels that stood out against his mostly earth-toned, muted still-lifes. His limited palette and geometric subject matter show his meticulous attention to composition and form. I can appreciate his experimentation with impressionism and cubism — sometimes emulating his contemporary, Paul Cézanne, sometimes breaking convention and further abstracting his geometric subjects, and always playing with the interplay between objects, foreground and background.

For every ten still-life paintings, there was a landscape, or a self-portrait that drew me in — and there was one painting: Roses, 1917, which won my favoritism. It was a study of positive/negative contrast between the pink roses and the gray background in the upper half and the gray vase and pink table in the lower half. I enjoyed the limited palette of this painting, and its departure from Morandi's browns, beiges and greens that filled his other canvases.

Next, I ascended the staircase to the main level of the Lehman wing and stopped opposite the entrance by the railing overlooking the atrium below. I noticed that the facing wall, on the East end of the wing, was the same original brick exterior façade I saw in Petrie Court earlier this week... Standing there, taking in the building itself, I experienced a pleasant moment: I looked up and listened to the rain tip-tap the glass ceiling above, while the fountain in the atrium trickled and gurgled below. I turned around and absorbed the colorful Impressionist works of Gaughin, Van Gogh and Chagall, among others — a nice contrast to the grays and beiges of Morandi's work below. Though I was running out of time, I had to at least walk through the wing, since I hadn't been before.

The small spaces made the gallery seem like rooms in a home (as was the architect's purpose I'm sure). The second room was illuminated from above, and there I discovered a beautiful Tiffany dome, which had originally been installed at the Lehman mansion above the sixth floor landing (oh, just imagine living such a luxurious life!) So it was with every intention of returning that I left the Lehman wing and headed off to work.

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Preview of Art and Love in Renaissance Italy

Today's was a short visit — I just popped in to see a members-only preview of Art and Love in Renaissance Italy. Forgot the camera today, but it didn't really matter since I don't think photography is allowed in special exhibitions.

Because I didn't have much time, I focused mostly on appreciating the exhibit design. I will surely revisit this gallery to examine the work its meaning, but for now I will write about my sensory experience.

I was immediately drawn in by the rich red color of the walls as I entered the exhibition. No doubt that love was the subject matter, and if I lacked reassurance, I needed only to look up at the quotation centered above the works in the first room:

"Amor Vole Fe" — Love Needs Faith.

The next room was the color of blue slate, and the next a buttery beige, and the next an olive green, ending with the same rich red as the first room. The following are the rest of the Italian quotations painted on the walls of each room:

"Quista te dono per amore bella" — I give you this, beautiful one, as a token of my love

"Non te posso lassare" — I cannot leave you

"Io te do la mane/Dame la fede" — I give you my hand/give me the ring

One of the last rooms held beautiful, richly colored textiles, which immediately drew me in. With my focus already on the written word as today's entry, I was prompted to copy a poem from A Belt or Girdle with a Woven Love Poem in this room:

"I will burn ever as a phoenix
With the fire of your kisses,
And I will die
Life will return with
The breath of your sighs.
Even as the net woven
With the cords of love,
Do you tie me to your heart
As long as you will be faithful to me."

Sigh... why hasn't this kind of Romance continued into today's society?

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Museum Highlights

On my second day at the Met, a solo visit, I decided to take a "Museum Highlights" tour — to better acquaint myself with the museum as a whole, and because I haven't been on one of the tours before. We started off in the Greek and Roman Sculpture galleries and then covered the Arts of Africa, Oceania and Australia, followed by Modern Art, European Decorative Arts, and finally European Painting. The tour provided new information about works I had seen but didn't know much about and also pointed out several I hadn't previously focused on.

The most interesting objects were Slit Drums from Melanesia (pictured far left, below). These are some of the largest musical instruments in the world, 10-15 feet tall by my estimate. They are traditionally used to communicate between tribes across miles of land and sometimes sea. I had seen them before, but didn't take the time to read about them and discover their remarkable purpose!

I even came across places in the museum I hadn't been to before. Our tour guide pointed out that the south wall of Petrie Court was actually the original exterior of the building before the museum's first expansion shortly after it opened. The facing wall was intended to complement the arches and brick façade and to serve as a background for European sculpture. Its simpler but elegant style is modeled after the Palace at Versailles, according to the tour guide. I look forward to the day that I have become familiar with every square foot of the museum — this will take a while, I know, especially with new exhibitions and renovations in progress — but for now, it is always exciting to see more works and a new corner of the museum.

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A lovely visit with my friend, Megan, and a Focus on the Futurists

This first entry marks the beginning of my daily pilgrimage to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Today's visit to the Met was a comprehensive one - as is always the case when in the company of another person. My fellow Met member, Megan, and I started in the Egyptian wing, then ascended the main staircase in the center of the museum and paused at the "Rhythms of Modern Life: British Prints 1914-1939" exhibition, which I have chosen as the subject of today's entry.

The lithographs displayed in this exhibit really illustrate rhythm and motion with the repetition of shape and color. The simplicity and abstraction of form that this medium demands gives these pieces a progressive modern aesthetic for their time. It is easy to see the relation to cubism, which arose concurrently with the futurist movement.

Through further research, I confirmed that these artists were, indeed, working during roughly the same time period as Kandinsky, Léger, Mondrian, and Malevich - the predecessors and original founders of the cubist movement in Art History. My favorite works were done by Cyril E. Powers and Sybil Andrews, because of their vibrant colors and warped spatial composition. It is no wonder these artists are known as vorticists - their work looks like it is being sucked into a vortex, which gives it the rhythmic motion for which it is known.

I also enjoyed seeing the proofs, plates, and process work that were displayed as part of the exhibit, which illustrated the skill that these artists used to both conceptualize their works as layers of shape and color and to create separations for each plate.

We continued our visit through "The Philippe de Montebello Years" (which I am sure I will revisit more than once); took a rest in the Monet room of the 19th- and Early 20th- Century European Paintings and sculpture gallery; continued through Cypriot, Ancient Near Eastern, Central Asian, South Asian Art; before ending up in Astor Court in the Chinese Art gallery and finishing in Japanese Art.

It was a great visit. I can't wait until tomorrow...

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