Detail of some of the pieces I saw at Detroit Institute of Arts Thursday.
Seen
Category Archives: art
Sunday at the museum
After lunch at 5 Rabanitos, we revisited the National Museum of Mexican Art. My images capture detail from the following works:
✤ “Vocabulario (Vocabulary)” by Cecilia Beaven (2024)
✤ “October (Octubre)” by Patssi Valdez (1995)
✤ “The Ancient Memories of Mayahuel’s People Still Breathe” by Mario Castillo (1996)
✤ “When the Opportunist Is King, Women Are a Commodity” by Cecilia Concepción Álvarez (2009)
Ways of seeing
Above are some of my photos from Friday’s Art Institute visit.
Seen
On Friday, we headed to the Milwaukee Art Museum to see Robert Longo: The Acceleration of History and Currents 39: LaToya M. Hobbs, Carving Out Time, as well as some old favorites. Above are my images of detail from the following works:
✤ “Untitled (After Pollock, Convergence)” by Robert Longo (2020)
✤ “Red and Brown Leaves” by Georgia O’Keefe (1925)
✤ “Carving Out Time” by LaToya M. Hobbs (2020-21)
✤ “Still Life with Flowers” by Joan Miró (1918)
✤ “Pillar” by Aaron Bohrod (1954)
“[A]lmost more calculating, and far more imperturbable”
Continuing yesterday’s celebration of the delightful and often serendipitous intersections of interests and pursuits, consider the frog in “Home Sweet Home” by Thomas Dial, Jr. (1990) and Mr. Rigg Featherstone of Middlemarch. From Chapter XLI:
The copy in this case bore more of outside resemblance to the mother, in whose sex frog-features, accompanied with fresh-colored cheeks and a well-rounded figure, are compatible with much charm for a certain order of admirers. The result is sometimes a frog-faced male, desirable, surely, to no order of intelligent beings. Especially when he is suddenly brought into evidence to frustrate other people’s expectations—the very lowest aspect in which a social superfluity can present himself.
But Mr. Rigg Featherstone’s low characteristics were all of the sober, water-drinking kind. From the earliest to the latest hour of the day he was always as sleek, neat, and cool as the frog he resembled, and old Peter had secretly chuckled over an offshoot almost more calculating, and far more imperturbable, than himself.
By the waters
My image of detail from “Another Chance” by Jack Butler Yeats (1944).
While preparing Louis Aubert’s Lied for flute and piano in September, I stumbled onto a recording of Robert Beaser’s “The Old Men Admiring Themselves in the Water.” Based on the William Butler Yeats poem of the same name, it is a haunting, lovely piece. I presented it at a lesson last month.
“Another Chance,” which demanded my attention this Saturday, is painted by Yeats’ brother. The places at which my interests and pursuits intersect delight me.
“‘All that’s beautiful drifts away / Like the waters.’”
Of course, what drew my eye initially was the figure — to me, Ishmael atop Queequeg’s casket. Speaking of the intersections of interests and pursuits, my younger daughter and I are scheduled to read at the 2025 Moby-Dick Marathon. (I was a reader for the virtual program in 2021.)
Seen on Saturday
My images of detail from the following works at the Toledo Museum of Art:
✤ “Gay Above All” by Roberto Matta (1959)
✤ “Harvester” by Grace Hartigan (1966)
✤ “Nancy and the Rubber Plant” by Alice Neel (1975)
✤ Figure of a Man by an artist in Yemen (4th-3rd Century BCE)
✤ “The End of the Beginning” by Alexander “Skunder” Boghossian (1972-73)
✤ “Man in a Fur-Lined Coat” by Rembrandt (about 1655-1660)
“The 50th”
My images of detail from the following works (seen at the Smart Museum of Art):
✤ “Doors (3 Demolition)” by Gertrude Abercrombie (1957)
✤ “The City” by Alice Neel (undated)
✤ “Title unknown” by Norman Lewis (1947)
✤ “The Snowflower Quilting Bee at Arles” by Faith Ringgold (1996)
✤ “Harbor in Light” by Arthur Dove (1929)
Seen at the museum
My images of detail from the following works (seen at the Detroit Institute of Arts):
✤ “The Wedding Dance” by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1566)
✤ “The Last Judgment” by Jan Provost (about 1525)
✤ ”Merrymakers” by Carolus-Duran (1870)
✤ “Study for Painting with White Form” by Wassily Kandinsky (1913)
✤ ”Animals in a Landscape” by Franz Marc (1914)
✤ “Self-Portrait in Olive and Brown” by Max Beckmann (about 1945)
✤ ”Shadow Country” by Yves Tanguy (1927)
✤ ”Peggy Sanderson Hughes and Her Daughter” by Charles Wilson Peale (1789)
✤ ”The Card Players” by Richard Canton Woodville (1846)
✤ ”Floral Still Life” by Charles Ethan Porter (1880-90)
Art-full
My images of detail from the following works (seen at the Art Institute of Chicago):
✤ “Haunted House” by Morris Kantor (1930)
✤ “Untitled” by Jackson Pollock (about 1938-41)
✤ ”Desert Forms” by Hughie Lee-Smith (1957)
✤ “The Rock” by Peter Blume (1944-48)
✤ ”Movements” by Marsden Hartley (1913)
✤ “Portrait of Marevna” by Diego Rivera (about 1915)
✤ ”Herself” by Robert Henri (1913)
Nerdishly 