Visit to the Cantor Museum

I'd say the best thing that came out of my trip to the Cantor museum is my new love for Wayne Thiebaud. The food, the colors... his pieces are SO much fun! I browsed through his book in the gift shop and I loved his city scenes too... I am looking forward to reading more about him in the coming months.



The Pop to Present exhibit was great. Some of my favorite pieces were Elmer Nelson Bischoff's "Interior with Cityscape" and Lichtenstein's "La Sortie"(below). I was thrilled to see some of Lichtenstein's work, having heard his name throughout the years, but never fully realizing that that bold, colorful, geometric style is attributed to him.



I also fell in love with Peter Milton's etchings/prints.
I thought of him after reading about Piranesi.



As I mentioned in the "Still Life with Crab" post, I may have been a bit more excited about the Baroque pieces had I done the reading prior to the visit. It was great to see some of their really old pieces though, like Circle of Agnolo Gaddi's "Madonna and Child with Saints and Angels." (Not sure if I cited that correctly... my notes are a little fuzzy...)



In addition to getting a copy of Thiebaud's book, I am also looking forward to going to the DeYoung this summer. I wish it had not been so rainy and cloudy the day my roommate and I visited the Cantor...!

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[Me standing at the not-so-pearly gates... ha ha]

Still Life with Crab

I could have sworn I read some mention of this piece in our reading... or possibly in the other art book I have-- Gardner's Art Through the Ages-- but upon second look, I've come up with nothing. Several internet searches proclaim Abraham van Beyeren (van Beijeren?) to be one of the greatest still life painters of the Baroque... with that, I find it strange to not have found any information on him (or his work) in these texts.

With the title being familiar to me from somwhere, I was excited to see the piece in person at the Cantor museum. The beatifully polished black jug (vase?) and the white cloth... again, I really like this contrast (think de Zurbaran's Saint Serapion). I think I just generally find sea crabs to be very interesting too.

It seems there were alot of pieces at the Cantor from the Netherland/Dutch region. To be honest, I hadn't done that reading yet (before I visited the museum), and boy I wish I had!

Random thoughts on the Baroque

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I'm at a loss for relating the Baroque to my everyday world right now, so I thought I'd share some thoughts about the reading.

First, I'm having a tough time understanding when exactly Rome wasn't so (seemingly) obsessed with "the church" to need this "counter-reformation"... is the idea that they were trying to make people think that they weren't corrupt or something? I find the beginning of the chapter interesting, where Stokstad writes: "A major goal of the Counter-Reformation was to properly embellish the Church and its mother city... Unchallengeable power and vast financial resources were required to carry out such an extensive plan of urban renewal and to materially fashion Rome... The Counter-Reformation popes had great wealth, although eventually they nearly bankrupted the Church with their building plans."

Looking back to Chapter 20, Stokstad writes of the popes of the 16th century: "The popes' incessant demands for money, to finance the rebuilding of Saint Peter's as well as their self-aggrandizing art projects and luxurious lifestyles, aggraveated the relighous dissent that had long been developing." Seems to me that this "counter-reformormation" just brought more of the same... so is it just that the people weren't as upset by it all this time around? I am a bit confused.

I was also a bit confused when Stokstad wrote that Caravaggio's "important innovation was the decision to paint directly on the canvas." If everyone else wasn't painting directly on the canvas, what were they painting on?

I found Francisco de Zurbaran's Saint Serapoion quite interesting. I like the sharp contrast of the black and white and Stokstad's observation of it being "like a tragic still life." I am curious about the tag on the wall to the right of the figure... it is not addressed in the book... is it just a tag identifying him?