Clouds and Colours

It was a lot of interesting colours today in nature. The water had a beautiful mixture of silver, golden and blue, the horizon blossomed with tender yellow, and the contrast between pristine white of the snow and pitch black of the pebbles were beautiful.

Snowy Days

Today is such a striking contrast with just a few days before. Only on Sunday everything was so bleak and grey. Grey clouds hang in the sky, rain relentlessly drew its strokes, the streets were covered in grey ice, making moving around perilous, and the promenade by the pond took greenish grey tint under the layers of ducks droppings. To add to the to the atmosphere of a quiet gloom there were virtually no people on the streets. It was quite eerie, a perfect picture for nuclear winter.

Then the snow started to fall and little by little grey turned into pristine white, trees dawned fluffy robes, and the clouds made their departure revealing the smiling skies. I think that sunny days should be automatically declared national holidays here, so people can go outside and bask in their glory.

Winter Trip - Art Making

If you think that my art viewing should naturally turn into art making, you are absolutely right. It did come to this in the most unexpected and enjoyable way. I arranged an after work meeting with my friend who promptly led me to the retirement celebration of one of her colleagues, mysteriously saying on the way, "I will tell what we will do in the evening after you have a drink." Here I was sitting in the midst of unfamiliar but friendly faces being introduced around as "a friend from Iceland", which I don't mind much since following questions provide for an easy chat. "Oh, Iceland, it must be very cold there. How big is Iceland? How is financial situation there?" After my glass of wine became half full, my friend asked me point blank, "So, how are you with drawing and painting? We are going to make an art project today. People will come to pick it up tomorrow at ten."

And that is how I found myself in DC creating a prayer mat for Shri Lanka Embassy's New Year Celebration party. Listen to this - Russian born American, whose husband works for American Embassy in Iceland, came to DC and painted the prayer mat for the Shri Lanka Embassy's New Year celebration. It is so deliciously bizarre, no fiction can beat this. So, below are photo series "Making Art in DC" by...you know whom.

Winter Trip - All About Art

As soon as I read about Phillips Collection in DC, I knew I had to go there, I couldn't pass the opportunity to see "the finest collection of Impressionist works". Impressionists and European artists close to their generation always held a special place in my heart. The first book on art I have ever read was about August Renoir, the first show I waited two hours in line to get in featured the works of Eduard Manet. I saw them in Saint Petersburg when the large exhibition of their work were brought to Russia for the first time, visiting Claude Monet's "Giverny" exhibition in Phoenix was the way of celebrating my 3oth birthday. Like with books I feel compelled to return to their work again and again and every time they reveal something new to me.

National Gallery has beautiful selection of impressionist/post impressionist works, and though I paid homage to their halls, the Gallery had too many attractions waiting that prevented me from lingering there. But, I cannot resist to mention two of the works that stood out to me. One is Claude Monet's "The Houses of Parlament", 1903 and the other - Henry Matisse's "Open Window", 1905 . The first one is my old dear acquaintance that never fails to attract my attention, and the later one - besides being "an icon of early modernism", interests me in connection with Phillips collection.

Claude Monet, The Houses of Parlament, Sunset, 1903


Henry Matisse, Open Window, Collioure, 1905

Before talking about things I saw there I want to say that the history of Plillips collection is close to a fairy tale. It is one of the rear cases when the passion and financial means accompanied each other, resulting in a marvelous collection of art works we enjoy today. Duncan Phillips, the founder of it, was interested in art from his early years. While studying in Yale he asked to include the course of the art history in the programme and thus created a whole new subject. He and his wife founded their collection at the dawn of the 20th century and spent their lives travelling and adding to it. They both referred to the experience of seeing art art as "joy-giving," and "life-enhancing" and the resulting collection is certainly reflects their attitude. The gallery gathered together works of established artists and those who were just coming onto the art scene. One of the crowning jewel of the collection is "The Luncheon of the Boating Party" by Renoir which was bought for $ 125.000 in 1923. (It is a pity that the records of the prices and the current values of the paintings are not available to public.) He was extremely proud of this acquisition. "Its fame is tremendous and people will travel thousands of miles to our house to see it...Such a picture creates a sensation wherever it goes."

I will return to my beloved Matisse though. This painting with closed window, below, was done forty three years after the one pictured above. He uses much stronger colours here, more determined brush strokes. If the first painting is luminous this one has an astonishing living force in it. I absolutely love the explosion of colours behind the glass, it reminds me of firework or looking through kaleidoscope. He once said that he felt by colour and this one is a hymn to it.

Henry Mattise, Interior with Egyptian Curtain, 1948

One more opened window, this time from Pierre Bonnard. Isn't it gorgeous? The shades of violet travel from the back of the chair in the lower right corner towards the sky, diagonal position of the window shatter brings a viewer back inside the room. The way the window is positioned towards the left side of the painting creates an interesting angle, as if somebody just entered the room and taking in a sleeping woman,a tiny black cat, a beautiful view. The open window was one of Bonnard's favourite themes, it gave him an opportunity to combine landscape and light with domestic interiors. It would be interesting to put together an exhibition that will show the open window motif done by different artists, it can be something truly fascinating. A room filled with paintings depicting this theme and one real opened window.

Pierre Bonnard, The Open Window,, 1921

The last painting I am mentioning because it was a cause of my greatest surprise there. I haven't expected anything like that from this particular artist. The painting came to the Phillips collection as a gift, so it cannot stand as a testimonial of the founder's uncanny ability to detect brilliance, but it is there and it is the only presentation of this author. And, no, I am not going to tell you who it is.

Winter trip - DC

DC was all about art. Iceland has an interesting art scene but it is dominated by conceptual art and after a year of viewing ready mades, video installations, and such, it is getting monotonous. I was craving variety. Hirshhorn Musuem, National Art Gallery, and Phillips Collection were my cure. I am very fortunate to have several friends in DC who are not only passionate but knowledgeable about art and it was very lucky that they were able to accompany me to those museums. One of them introduced me to the work of Kenneth Snelson, which I would have undoubtedly missed otherwise. It calls "Needle Tower" and besides being a work of art, demonstrates the concept of tensegrity. It gives visible expression to the idea that tension and compression are the complementary elements in any structure, and that great economy of materials may be achieved through strategies which rely on tension primarily, compression secondarily.

Kenneth Snelson "Needle Tower", 1968

Another important work that could have been easily overlooked without my friends simply because of the sheer volume of the art works presented in the National Gallery, was Leonardo da Vinci's " Ginevra de' Benci" . It is remarkable because it it the only portrait by Leonardo in the Western Hemisphere, plus you can actually see the artist's fingerprint on the paint surface. It shows how the artist used his hand as well as a brush to blend colors and create soft, delicate edges.

Leonardo da Vinci " Ginevra de' Benci" c. 1474/1478.

These two works were new to me and piqued my intellectual curiosity, prompted me to read more about them but they didn't speak to my heart and soul. What I wanted to explore were the art works that attracted me without any knowledge of their background, their status in the art history. Writing art reviews I often notice that at times I grew to like some work after speaking with artists, exploring its meaning, but what I wanted was the instant spark, equivalent of being swept off my feet. So, below are the works that I felt connection with and things I learnt about them afterwards:

René Margitte “The Healer”, 1967

It s serenity and whimsy instantly attracted me. I love this bird cage in place of a torso, the absence of the face - it creates very poetic image of peaceful,singing soul. The statue "The Healer" is based on Margitte's painting with the same name. Towards the end of his life the artist worked on a series of sculptures based on eight of his paintings. He oversaw the making of full-scale wax models, but died before they were cast in bronze. The figure of the healer had reappeared in several works of the artist.In 1937, Magritte was photographed in the same pose, with a blanket over his head and a canvas in place of the cage.

I think that the most known painting of this author is "The Treachery of the Images" where he depicted a pipe with the words "This is not a pipe" (Ceci n'est pas une pipe) painted underneath it. Play of visual image and written words creates an interesting paradox, which summarizes Margritte's view on art: "Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see. "

Sol LeWitt Wall Drawing # 65, first installation 1971
Drawn by Hidemi Nomura, Karlisima, Kristen Holder, and Kathlyn Morales.

A lot of LeWitt's works consist of basic shapes, colours and different types of lines that were organized by certain rules. It often took a whole team of assistants (who were always credited at the end) to execute his plans, which transformed a solo work into creative collaboration. LeWitt's titles/instructions are very detailed and the one to the Drawing # 65 said: "Lines not short, not straight, crossing and touching, drawn at random using four colors, uniformly dispensed with maximum density, covering the entire surface of the wall." The photo doesn't do justice to the drawing, you really have to see it in person in order to fully appreciate its intricate design.

Piet Mondrian "Tableau # IV, 1924/1925 (wall) and Constantin Brancusi "Bird in Space"

Those two are my old objects of fascination, they perfected the art of brevity, expressing maximum with minimum means. Brancusi's work , a slender projectiles, one from polished bronze, the other from polished marble, radiates splendid elegance. I had hard time to take my eyes off them. Their surface is so smooth, it glitters and seems to change shape ever so subtly as you move around. Brancusi was in a constant search for universal shape and perfect form and certainly created beautiful pieces on his way.

Piet Mondrian also went on a quest for simplicity, though his quest was a spiritual journey as well. He restricted himself to the most basic elements of painting - straight lines and primary colours and with this arsenal set on a difficult task of expressing the harmony of the universe. You would think that such limited means cannot provide much of variety, but he seemed to have limitless imagination. This was the first time I saw his diamond composition. This 45 degree turn of the painting is very captivating, it forces a viewer to consider how it would look from different angles, to notice cut off lines, and unfinished shapes.

It was brilliant to put those two masters in close proximity to each other, it creates certain dialogue between the pieces.

Bartolome Esteban Murillo "Two Women at a Window", 1665/1660

This is a very different work from a very different time. Bartolomé Esteban Murillo was the most popular Seville's painter in the later seventeenth century. What strikes me here is how modern are the faces of both women. It is the 17th century but they can easily be our contemporaries. It is such a lovely and lively composition - the amused smile of a young girl, who leans on the window ledge, the smile of the older women, hidden behind the shawl but visible in her eyes, you cannot help but smile back at them.

(to be continued)

Winter Trip - New York

The desire to take a solo trip had been growing for several months - I felt pulled into too many directions at once, constantly feeling rushed and needed an escape from darkness of winter. In January Iceland air ran a series of very good offers, timely spotted by my husband, and, off I went - to New York and DC. The trip turned out perfect - I met with my old friends and got acquainted with new people, did a bit of shopping, sightseeing; viewed art and made some myself. The main reward of it was realization that despite of distance, and not seeing my friends as often as I would like to, the connection is still there and we didn’t grow apart. With constant moving around, whirlpool of meeting and parting with people, this reassurance gives me a lot of comfort.

The New York part of the trip was centered around my college friend, whom I haven't seen in seven years. We did all ultimately girly things: Sex and the City tour of New York, which gave an excellent introduction of different areas of the city; lunching (I didn’t realize how much I miss variety in food), shopping, visiting unorthodox Museum of Sex, which proved that the gap between generations is vast and what is entertaining and light for twenty-something who happened to recommend this museum to me, is uncomfortable and explicit for me; more traditional Guggenheim Museum, where a security guard gave us an excellent lecture on its history, building, and present exhibition, in Russian no less.

The best part though was just strolling around with my friend and enjoying each other company. And here are some interesting things found in New York:

• Tree houses at Madison Square Park - their purpose is unknown. There were too big for birds or squirrels, too high to use as living quarters for humans, plus, there weren't any stairs.

• Fearless squirrel at Central Park. This little creature came very close and tried to stare me down, obviously furious that I didn't offer it a snack. Only a flash of the camera made it backed out a bit.
  

• Olafur Eliasson's work of 2006 " You See Me"at Louis Vuitton Fifth Avenue. Admittedly I feel slightly geeky asking to see an art work at the place where everybody admire craftsmanship of LV creations, but a salesman was very helpful and even told me about "Eye See You" pieces which formed the centerpieces of the Christmas windows in all Louis Vuitton stores during winter 2006. "You See Me" does fit naturally in the space of the store. I couldn't resist asking if many people came to see it and was told that it did happen. (I heard that at present moment Louis Vuitton commissioned Sofia Coppola to design some of the bags.)

Both of my visits to New York coincided with cold weather, I really should try to visit it during spring or summer some day.