Awesome's in the details

Magnet #909 - Albert Bierstadt Mount Corcoran

Yesterday's visit to the Reynolda House was just like visiting the Frick Collection, only in Winston Salem, North Carolina.

Not surprisingly, the Reynolda House, the cornerstone of Reynolda Village in Winston Salem was actually the "bungalow" of tobacco giant R. J. Reynolds. Built in the early 1900s, it gives you a snapshot of how life was for them - their grand reception room that could hold 800 people, their many sleeping porches and bedrooms, the lushly designed furniture and Wanamaker's decor.

And as if that weren't enough, like all the Gilded Age folks, they made they could easily access their pursuits - in this case, the absolutely superawesome basement entirely floored with rubber so they could roller skate all throughout but which also included a supercool shooting gallery, a bowling club, and full-on Art Deco, post-Prohibition bar. Plus a giant, (like, needs a giant room of its own) 2,500-pipe Aeolian organ, one of a handful in existence, and which took 60-something crates to transport via ship and rail.

Their art collection stands out, the house having been converted into a museum celebrating important pieces of American art. So you can walk down the hall seeing great paintings by Albert Bierstadt (not the one on this magnet that I got from DC's Corcoran, but close), Frederic Edwin Church, Grant Wood, Frank Stella, and pieces by Tiffany. And, if you explore enough, it goes beyond our borders with shawls from Chanel, porcelain birds by Royal Worcester, and monogrammed china by Minton.

I loved walking through such an gorgeous house, looking at their rooms and their clothes and toys, and of course, at all of their art. But, it was their small Church exhibition that I really enjoyed - a quiet room at the far end of the house, where they lovingly exhibited Church's The Andes of Ecuador against the back wall, with red velvet drapes on either side, like they used to exhibit large paintings in the old days.

Apparently, back in the day, painters such as Church and Bierstadt, had their their paintings unveiled publicly, the events were like rock concerts, people lining up and gathering round to see them. And they'd have these little opera glasses with them - Mark Twain was a fan of these little opera glasses, because it brought people into the painting, allowing them to see the tiniest of details.

And, it's true, the closer in you go to either of these two masterful artists' work, the more you notice. A tiny dab of animal in the woods or the sky, a tiny brushstroke of a faraway village or church spire.

Quite amazing, that.

From Impressionism with love

Magnet #905 - Monet's Jerusalem Artichoke Flowers

Remember how I love discovering Monets that I've never seen before? With every museum I visit they're getting increasingly hard to come by.

But my visit to the National Gallery in DC a couple of weeks ago yielded a couple of them. Not surprising, given that they have about 2 dozen Monets in their collection.

This one, is a rare still life from Monet, called Jerusalem Artichoke Flowers, done in 1880. It's gorgeous up close, with the tiny details and beautiful yellow color palette. The other one I discovered was Banks of the Seine, Vetheuil. That one quickly jumped to my top three, just because it's superpretty with a green, yellow and blue palette. There was something hopeful about the piece, versus my number one fave Rocks at Pourville, Low Tide.

Right now at the National Gallery, there's an ongoing exhibition of the Chester Dale collection, called From Impressionism to Modernism, and it's just fantastic to explore. The Dales were a wealthy couple in the first half of the 20th century who basically created a large collection of art - he paid for them and his wife Maud picked them out. So, when the National Gallery started up, they turned to the Dales for help. In the end, the Dales bequeathed about 300 paintings to the National Gallery.

When you're wandering through the exhibit, you just think, jeepers, these people owned all these pieces - how much wall space did they have? One thing cracked me up was that both Chester and Maud had their portraits painted by famous artists - much like the wealthy folks and royalty did in Europe. There are two portraits of Chester - one done by Diego Rivera and one by Salvador Dali, and then Maud's two portraits was done by George Bellows and Fernand Léger. I dunno why it made me laugh, probably cuz mentally, I was trying to figure out how Monet or Hopper would paint me.

Jeez, these peeps had soooo much disposable income to patronize the arts, it's crazy! I suppose if I had that much disposable income, I'd buy a painting or two. Of course, I'm fairly sure if I collected real art, I wouldn't be worried about value or context within my collection, I'd totally just end up buying the pretty ones I liked.

And probably the ones in a blue color palette. Heh.

Monsieur Monet

Magnet #788 - Monet's View of Bordighera

Random quickpick for today, this magnet of Bordighera, a city on the Italian Riviera, just over the border from France. Monet spent some time here, along with his pal Renoir, who also painted views from there as well.

This magnet was part of a bigger set of magnets that I bought from the Brooklyn Museum of Art several years ago. Though, I noticed this weekend that I am quickly outgrowing my Monet magnetboard. Mind you, that was after I bought two more to add to the collection.

Anyway, here's something weird that I've been thinking - it's always hard for me to remember that Monet was French. And doubly hard to remember, given that in my head, he's Richard Armitage!

Ease your storm

Magnet #762 - Medusa, by Caravaggio

As the last-minute, looking for the exit, bid to see more art at the Uffizi, we saw the Caravaggios hidden off in one of the more remote galleries.

As with DaVinci and Michelangelo and so many others, it was so very cool to see Caravaggio in Italy. That's probably what most surprised me, how much I was affected by seeing all that art in its native homeland.

Caravaggio painted Medusa around 1597, and it's so very lifelike, it makes you take a step back for fear of turning to stone. Ok, ok, it wasn't as lifelike as all that, but you could certainly make out the gruesome sheen of blood spouting from Medusa's head in that dimly lit gallery. Totally creepy and scary.

Which is fitting, because that's how I remember the classic 1981 Clash of the Titans fight between Harry Hamlin and the Gorgon Medusa. Scary. Sure, it was supposed be cheesy and crazy silly with the animatronics and greenscreen work of the day, but as a kid, I was totally freaked out by Medusa!

So, when I heard they were doing a new Clash, and with my boy Sam "packed only my books when I moved to the States" Worthington, I could not wait. Seriously, having watched the trailer a few times, and had the giant 20-story billboard teasing me from up the street. Totally looking forward to it. It was my first movie in months!

And, especially given how much technology's moved forward on the CGI/SFX front, I really thought the movie was gonna be amazing. And in 3D!

That's why we went to the 11:45am showing at the Ziegfeld - which has, despite the lack of stadium seating, the largest screen in Manhattan. I should have known when the theatre had about a dozen people. Goodness.

I love Sam. And Nicholas Hoult (Tony from Skins). And shoot, I even love Ralph Fiennes and Liam Neeson.

But the movie? I did not love.

It was just silly, and not in the way that classic Clash was silly. That was silly good. This movie was silly bad. So bad that I was entertaining walking out of the theatre, and would have, had I not spent $15.75, and have a thing for Sam's knobby knees, which for some reason, directors seem to focus on.

They updated the story, revising storylines and characters, which was fine by me, and they had a couple of shout-outs to the old - with a great one to the mechanical owl of old. And I suppose the effects were great, too, even though sometimes, I felt like someone on the production side was a huge LOST black smoke fan, with a little dash of Harry Potter.

The rest, though, was just terrible. I can always tell when something's bad, when I'm totally laughing at dialogues and scenes that I'm not supposed to laugh at. Out loud. To a deathly quiet theatre.

But c'mon. With a line like "Ease your storm" in the mix, you can see why I did a fair amount of giggling. I mean, really. Who wrote that and said, yes, that's an awesome line! Who directed that and said, yes, that was a great take! Who acted that and said, hells yes, that's not cheesy at all?

Ugh. Mind you, I'm totally stealing that line for everytime someone I know gets overexcited. I seriously can't wait. Sigh. Just like I couldn't wait for the movie to finally be over.

Oh, not to worry, they're still gonna make money, if the $24mil they made off of Friday's box office has anything to say for it.

No easing of the storm there.

Do you know the way to La-la Land?

Magnet #685 - Hopper's Lighthouse at Two Lights

Another sale magnet from the Met. I think I might singlehandedly be supporting their magnet sales.

As I was looking at my little fridge magnet art gallery, I realized I have a couple of Hoppers, well, in the hopper, so to speak.

So I won't wax poetic about Hopper's work in general, and how meant for Lighthouse at Two Lights (Maine) to stand for the individual's stand against industrialization. One, because I don't totally get it, but also because really? fight against industrialization?

But, a twofold reason why I picked this one today.

One, because I kinda like the idea of the lighthouse sitting as a bastion of hope on this promontory. And, two, because of the amount of sky in the painting.

Why sky? Because it really didn't even take the full first week of 2010 before I remembered my theory about advertising folks, and I suppose, people in general:

There are two people in this world.

The ones who have their head in the clouds, going about their merry little way singing their happy la-la-la's.

And those behind them, who have their noses to the ground, scurrying about, just trying to pick up the pieces.

Which one are you?

Hail, the conquered hero

Magnet #683a & 683b - Thomas Cole's The Departure and The Return

I've been waiting all day to be able to write and magnetblog these! Yes, yes, another art magnet. Even worse, you can't even see this art properly! But, here's a bigger version of the two, side by side.

I made these magnets from stamps I picked up last week at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, a great gallery I hadn't been to before.

They're companion pieces painted by the founder of the Hudson River School, Thomas Cole. Normally, I'm not really one for landscapey scenes, but these two were rather large pieces (indeed, they're three by five feet big!), and I totally got sucked into them.

What caught my eye, before I even read the placard was the majesty of them - the first piece, The Departure, and the second piece, The Return. And then I read the placard. And then I looked at the paintings closer. And then I reread the placard. And then I looked one last time. And then I walked into the next room, where the big museum collection book was strapped to a bench. And then I read the two-page essay on them.

And here's what I remember (and lightly researched):

In the 1830s, one of the wealthy Van Rensselaers of upstate New York commissioned Cole to do two paintings for him - all he stipulated was for them to be morning and night, and it was ready, set, go.

Cole went for a medieval story setting, where in The Departure (bigger version, from alloilpaint.com) the warriors are all leaving for battle, fronted by the knight astride his trusty white steed ready to lead them into hell. Dawn's over the horizon, and you can see his turreted fortress castle in the distance behind them. All's well, and even hopeful, as they ride out to meet their fates.

Then come sunset in The Return, (again, bigger version, from alloilpaint.com) the focus and the tone of the story has changed, somber in the wake of what's taken place that day. The angle of the painting POV has swiveled around to showcase the big foreboding gothic church, instead of the castle. You can tell it's a scenery POV change, because on the right-hand side of both paintings, you see the one common focal point - the tall temple thing (I want to say it was for some goddess).

But, there in the middle, you see just a few men have come home, and almost dead center, a processional, with the knight being carried by his men, mortally wounded, his horse riding alongside behind him.

While each painting is set against a gorgeous landscape with magnificent skies above, my absolute favorite part of these paintings are the little details in each - from the cleric standing in front of them, hailing them in the first piece and then waiting for the men near the church in the second, right down to the little milkmaid and her boyfriend shepherdboy hanging around the well in the first piece, and then quietly standing by the temple in the second.

Ok, ok. Obvi, I got a little invested in these two pieces - probably because I was already susceptible to the subject matter, given my romance editorial side. But, I really do love them.

I love that they tell a story.

I love that it was a story that sprouted from Cole's mind, not based on any one battle or love story or heroic tale, but all of them.

I love that the story doesn't even really begin or end, with so many unanswered questions about what they were fighting for, who was the knight, where's his family, what happens now, will the milkmaid get her man. Awesome.

And once again, I'm seeing that art viewed by oneself is often times the best art of all.

When you're wandering around the museums by yourself, you get to go at your own pace, you can maneuver more easily around the bobbing heads, and most important, you can absorb as much or as little of the art as you want. It was great to look at these paintings with all their tiny little people and details, even though the guard in the corner was wondering why I was loitering.

Mind you, I do kinda wish that these paintings were in the Smithsonian, so that I could visit them for free every time I'm in DC, but the Corcoran's pretty nice, albeit a knight's battle away from the metro.

But that's another magnet, I guess.

Light's nature

Magnet #668 - Monet's Four Poplars

This magnet is one of my many, many, many Monet paintings - this one being an inset of the painting The Four Trees/Four Poplars. About a mile from Monet's house in Giverny is the tree-lined Epte River, where Monet used to sit in a boat in the water to paint these poplars.

Part of Monet's visual vocabulary (if I'm using that term in the right context here, who knows) was light - and how light changed throughout the day and the year. Which is how Monet ending up painting series after series of the same subjects - haystacks, Venice, London, Rouen, water lilies, these poplars - so that he could capture the many shades of light.

I picked this magnet today, because yesterday, I saw two movies that couldn't be more different - the tv movie Thomas Kinkade's Christmas Cottage and the blockbuster Avatar.

Christmas Cottage with Supernatural's Jared Padalecki oddly paired with screen greats Marcia Gay Harden and Peter O'Toole was an unabashedly tearjerky biopic about one particularly formative Christmas that "Painter of Light" Thomas Kinkade spent with his family and friends. I won't lie, the only reason I tuned in because it was cuteboy J-Pad in a dramatic role I've never seen him in. (I think we can agree that you really can't count Gilmore Girls or Supernatural as dramatic fodder.)

But, the movie tried too hard to gain an emotional response from me, and I found myself spending much of the time waiting for Peter or Marcia to show up on screen. But it was the final scenes where Peter O'Toole's character was going on and on about his last painting, and how you muuuuust paaaaaint the liiiiight pretty much reminded me of Monet.

It's the nature theme of these poplars reminds me of James Cameron's Avatar (in 3D at AMC Empire 25's FauxMAX theatre), which I was also pretty meh about.

Oh, don't get me wrong, Sam Worthington was hot, knobby-knees and all. And, in the end, the Smurf people weren't as annoying as I was thinking they would be. And, the movie itself was gorgeous - and if you stop for a second to actually watch all the background plates and the CG work and SFX and the fact that it was a completely made-up world, you'd just be amazed at the sheer magnitude of the effort. There were a few callbacks to Titanic for me - some triumphant King of the World moments, a couple "I'll never let go" moments, oh, and a giant catastrophic event or two as well.

But overall, I kept getting pulled out of the movie by the Cameron soapbox - how society (America) has a way of killing off indigenous peoples and how humankind can't stop itself from destroying Mother Planet. In fact, it felt very much like his directors cut of The Abyss (which of course I loved), where the aliens just wanted us to save ourselves from ourselves.

In the end, I'll admit that as much as I was wary of his "we're all connected" theme, I guess I can't disagree with his soapbox...

...or the $73 million he made during opening weekend.

eta:
I try and put capture my own thoughts on movies/tv shows before I read any reviews or talk to anyone else about their opinions. Having just talked to the guy who peer pressured me into thinking there was no way I could *not* see Avatar opening weekend...

I really cannot believe that I missed that the overall story was just basically the story of Pocahontas. Huh. Right down to the Colors of the Wind and the talking trees!

Modern isn't boring

Magnet #527 - Seurat's A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, 1884

Yay, I finally got to visit the Art Institute of Chicago!!

I loved every minute of it - even when we got lost and had to pass the same little elephant statue in the Asian art gallery four times. There was entirely too much to see in one day, let alone half a day. Though, detours and funny layouts made for a heck of a lot of walking around!

After reading so much about Renzo Piano's new Modern Wing, I was happy for the chance to check it out myself - yes, there's a separate magnet for that.

Dudes - most of what we saw today, I haven't seen in person - from Hockey's Collectors and Ruscha's City to Motley's Nightlife to architectural drawings by Louis H. Sullivan and Louis I. Kahn and Mies van der Rohe, and remants of reliefs and doors and windows saved or scavenged from various buildings around town. Good gravy, I could spend days there.

The AIC had a few Monet magnets that I've blogged on - the Artist's house at Argenteuil, and of course, different versions of his haystacks, and his Japanese footbridge at Giverny. But, they also had an extraordinary number of his paintings that I've never seen - ever. Which is just fantastic, if you've scoured the eastern hemisphere for all the magnets Monets you can possibly see.

The AIC collection also includes the final Sunday on La Grande Jatte that was submitted for the 1886 Impressionists Exhibition. I actually bought this magnet in NYC, because I've been visiting the piece at the Met for years. Of course, now I have to go read the back of the magnet, or pop on by the Met to verify, but, from what I can tell, the Met has one of the 50 studies he did for that final piece. Who knew?

Honestly, while I'm glad to have seen it here in town, I'm slightly annoyed that what we have at the Met is a study. (But then again, I also have issues with all the various Monet haystacks and lillies running around this giant Earth.)

Anyway, I've uploaded the unedited, somewhat haphazard (for now) FB album for the AIC and the supercool Millennium Park, sans any real captions yet.

Enjoy. Then, get your bums to the AIC and have a looksee for yourself. You won't be sorry.

Putting colors together*

Magnet#512 - Matisse's Nuit de Noël, 1952

I bought this magnet from my second favorite magnet vendor here in town. She has a great little stand just down the block from the Met, and I can never resist buying a magnet or two (or three) from here.

When I started writing this post, I couldn't remember who she said painted it, so I started searching the interwebs.

...almost two hours later...

At first, I thought it was Chagall. But, I got distracted by the awesome body of Chagall's work. I honestly couldn't tell you if I've ever seen a Chagall window. Now, I totally want to go see Chagall's 12 Tribes of Israel windows in Jerusalem.

They're absolutely beautiful. And, after this post, I'm totally gonna go look up where his closest windows are here in town.

My next thought was Picasso, but, it really didn't look a thing like his work.

But, as you look at it, you slowly realize whose work it is. Matisse, because the stars and the squiggles do kinda look Matisse-y. In the end, I was right, thanks to this person's Reverse Engineering Matisse blogpost.

And here's where burned most of the last hour...I started to hunt the painting down, to see whose wall it's hanging on and in what country. From what I've pieced together, Nuit de Noël is apparently a design that he did, supposedly a study for a stained-glass window that he designed in the Hotel Regina in Nice-Cimiez, in France, where Matisse lived/worked for a while.

Nice-Cimiez is also home to the Matisse Museum. But, a quick spin through its collection didn't yield this piece. Sigh. And, looks like Hotel Regina is now a residential building, so who knows where this piece (or the window) is now.

No, seriously.

Who knows?

I would love to hear from anyone about this Matisse piece....

*“When I put colors together, they have to join a living chord, like a musical chord or harmony.”

- Matisse

eta, a week later:
So I stumbled upon the nearest Chagall here in town! It's this window at the United Nations, dedicated to Dag Hammarskjold. Random. But, awesome.

Fruity displays of affection, or not, as the case may be

Magnet #499 - Caillebotte's Fruit Displayed on a Stand, 1881-82

Nice little still-life from Gustave Caillebotte, a wealthy Frenchmen who was friends with The Impressionists, but not necessarily a part of it, according to his bio.

So this painting's up in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, which I've been to, but honestly, I can't remember if I've seen this particular piece. I just remember going to the MFA to see their Monet show, and that's it. And yet, here's me with a magnet of it.

I just like it because I discovered something odd yesterday: I like strawberry ice cream better than actual strawberries.

Then I got to thinking about it...

• I don't like blueberries, except in muffins.
• I can't stand raspberries, but don't mind them in raspberry walnut salad dressing.
• I don't like cooked cherries or apples, but don't mind them as raw fruit.
• I can't stand pears, but don't mind it in candy form.
• I'm not a huge fan of peaches (cuz of the fuzz), but love them straight out of a cold can.
• I don't like cranberries, except as juice in my Tom Collinses.

See? I told you it was odd. And people wonder why I zip through the fresh market in Union Square every week. Heh.

Great. And now I'm craving fruit salad. Nooo, not that sad little mixed fruit in a cup that people consider "fruit salad." The real stuff, with a ton of fruit and a decadent cream cheese dressing, straight out of the fridge.

Mmmmmm. That's the stuff of real summer, right there.

The Cycle of life

Magnet#489 - Escher Cycle

This is one of the magnets I bought from the Pomegranate folks at BEA, who licensed it from M.C. Escher estate...it's his lithograph called Cycle.

I know next to nothing about M.C. Escher, and it's kind of a shame, but my earliest memory of his work was seeing them as dorm posters on sale at the stationery store on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill. But from what I gather, he's known for his lithographs and woodcuts and mezzotints - mostly mathematically inspired. Well, that's my problem right there - math does *not* equal joy. Heh.

Apparently, he's also known for his work being impossible constructions, with wonderful architectural explorations in planes and infinity. Supercool - I suppose one could spend hours just looking into one of his works. Oddly, I wondered why I hadn't seen his work in any galleries, so I looked up where his work is, and it seems to be spread around the world - the Escher Museum in The Hague, National Galleries in DC and Ottawa, Israel Museum in Jerusalem, the Huis ten Bosch in Nagasaki, and the Boston Public Library. Looks like he's my next artist exploration in DC. Heh.

I particularly like this Cycle piece because it closely matches my mood of late. When I was young, people used to talk about the rat race, and I had this image in my head of people all over the world (on different time tables), waking up, leaving their houses, getting into their modes of transit, working their jobs, coming home, going to sleep, and starting all over again - en masse, like little drones. And nothing ever got accomplished, really, no real goal except to clock the most mileage on our little human bodies.

I just realized that this image closely resembles my vision - the little guy leaves his house at the top of the stairs, and as he descends, he slowly loses his individuality, and joins the dozens of carbon copies of the 2-dimensional figures at the bottom, with his house behind him, and the real (3-dimensional) world of nature behind his house at the top of the magnet.

Well, that's quite maudlin, no? What can I say - it's hard to live up to my name some days. So, here's a happier thought to end this magnetpost:

This work is called Cycle, I suppose, for a reason. So imagine...this little guy in this painting does get to go back up the stairs every day, back to his home and family and become a 3-dimensional guy again...and I bet, every once in a while, he even leaves his house from the other side, and gets to go frolic and play in the hill and dale behind his house.

Yes. I said frolic and play.

And hill and dale.

That's kinda happy-making, no?

Roses on my table*

Magnet #453 - Speicher Bouquet

This painting from Eugene Edward Speicher isn't on display anywhere, which makes me curious where I picked up this set of flower still life magnets.

Especially because (in total ungirly fashion), I'm not a fan of flowers. Oh, I don't mind flowers in a garden, but it seems sort of sad that the flowers have been pulled up from the earth and shoved into a vase just for the short-lived benefit of some human to enjoy them.

Of course, the flipside of that is seeing people enjoy them. Dimly, I remember that incredibly silly movie called Bed of Roses where Christian Slater plays a flower delivery guy, and people asked him why he was doing that instead of doing something more. And he told them it was because everyone's happy when they see him. That's always stuck in my head - I mean, who isn't happy when they get flowers?

Some people, my mother, really enjoy flowers. A concept that's foreign to me. But, you know how I Eeeeeeee!!!!! over George Clooney or David Tennant? That's my mom with flowers. Doesn't matter if she's at a botanical garden or if she's walking down a random NYC sidewalk passing a bodega lined with their tall buckets of flowers. She. Loves. Flowers.

So happy birthday, Mom!

*From the quote: I'd rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck. ~Emma Goldman (Yes, yes, Mommy, I know there are no roses in this bouquet. Go with it.)

The measure of a chair

Magnet #431 - Van Gogh's Chair and Pipe

Ok, so for as long as I've had this magnet from the London's National Gallery, I thought it was really just an inset/cutaway of the chair in Van Gogh's Bedroom in Arles.

I loved that painting, because it was on the cover of a desk calendar from the Van Gogh Museum that my first boss at this company gave me. I remember, because it was the best desk calendar I've ever had design-wise, and I've spent the last 11 years trying to find that exact calendar layout. No, I'm not even joking.

Turns out, this chair, is actually Van Gogh's Chair and Pipe. (Seriously, there was some major magnifying of both paintings on my part to verify. Heh.) It's kinda cool on its own, I guess - especially now that I know that Van Gogh painted it as a companion piece to a chair that he painted for Gauguin, as a representation of the vast difference between the two men - as artists, and I'd bet, as men.

It's odd thinking about a chair being the measure of a man. I mean, these days people sit in myriad chairs all over the place - at home, at work, commuting, etc.

But, if I were to think about what my favorite chair would be, it'd be a big, soft ploppable number, where you can burrow down into it and stay for hours and hours. And it'd be blue. With blankets. And have a tv with cable, an overflowing DVR, and DVD player in front of it and maybe the remotes, some chips and chocolate beside me.

None of this straight-backed, woven seat crap. Heh, sorry Van Gogh. Nice painting, though.

Here's something else superodd. I just randomly picked this magnet for today. It wasn't until I started to write that line about my first boss here that I realized - today's my 11th anniversary at the same company. Huh. Odd that I should be thinking about that, on today of all days.

Welcome, Little Man Tate

Magnet #424 - Tate Gallery

So, some friends of mine just had a baby! Congratulations! And his name? Tate! How cool is it that I have a magnet just for him!

I bought this pin magnet over at the Tate Britain, surprisingly my favorite over the Tate Modern. Really, because of two paintings:

Ophelia by John Everett Millais - a Pre-Raphaelite painting that's just gorgeous viewed up close. And, The Last Sleep of Arthur in Avalon, the last painting of Edward Burne-Jones that's just gorgeous viewed from afar, as seen in this Telegraph pic.

Oddly, Hamlet's sister, the drowned Ophelia, is the most popular postcard that the Tate sells - and of course, I totally bought one. Even though I can't stand Hamlet, there's just something about this painting that's oddly haunting. Even more odd, since December when I saw the painting, I was convinced that we used it as cover art back in my publishing days a dozen years ago. It's not, but the cover of this Patricia A. McKillip novel is very close. Hello, false memory.

For Arthur, the Tate had the chance to purchase the painting for a steal 40 years ago, but let it go, and now, it's owned by a museum in the Museo de Arte de Ponce in Puerto Rico, and it's worth millions now. And, because the Museo is undergoing renovations, they've loaned it to the Tate and now the Prado, having signed, sealed and delivered it, in a hugely complex and kinda supercool process. I mean, the thing's like 9 feet x 21 feet big, and took Burne-Jones something like 17 years to paint...he was supposedly working on it right up to his death!

Ooof, such somber works for such a happy occasion! Eh, it's all very circle of life-y, I guess.

So, these two paintings were definitely worth the museum drop-by. Also, definitely worth the magnet!

Especially now - welcome, little man Tate!

If wishes were...well, you know

Magnet #382 - Stubbs' Whistlejacket

This magnet is part of my London National Gallery art collection...his name's Whistlejacket, painted around 1762 by George Stubbs.

He's cute! Whistlejacket, I mean. I dunno about Stubbs.

Apparently, Whistlejacket was a fairly successful racehorse in the 1750s/60s, owned by the 2nd Marquess of Rockingham.

I just picked him because with all of us at work closing in on actual Tournament week (gravy, I can't even remember if I've blogged about what I'm actually working on for that event), it feels like we're racing headlong into the wind, toward the finish line.

I also picked him, cuz at this point, I'm wishing like hell to be able to have him waiting outside my front door, and carry me away. Sometimes, you really do wish running away were an option.

Wait, have I mentioned I used to have a pony? I could swear I have, but all attempts at searching on joy magnetism for horse, pony, tatay hitting horse, galloping, falling on head, stepping on hair, and getting back on that horse, haven't yielded anything.

Wait. Maybe I don't need to tell ya'll that story now.

Girl with yellow hair

Magnet #348 - Picasso's Woman with Yellow Hair

I can't figure out if I like Picasso's work or not.

Admittedly, it's because I've never seen a comprehensive collection of his work all in one place to make such a judgment. Usually, I see his famous works, or works from specific periods of his life, but not too many all at once.

Obvi, it's never hard to identify any of his paintings, but there is something neat about how they do tend to stop me in my tracks, forcing me to look twice.

This chick is Marie-Thérèse, one of his mistresses, and from what I gather, most of his paintings romanticize her, with sensual lines and a curviness about her. He painted her a lot, capturing her in many poses.

Though she's supposedly part of the Guggenheim collection, I haven't seen this piece. Not surprising, since I've only recently visited the Gug for the first time. In fact, I've had her sitting on the freezer door art gallery positioned horizontally, not vertically. Heh. Oops.

Anyway, the reason why I picked her today, is because I saw the most hysterical trailer (with Coop, Kevin Connolly and Justin Long) for He's Just Not That Into You with a cast that includes Drew Barrymore.

Which reminded me of Drew in Charlie's Angels.

Which reminded me of the original Charlie's Angels.

Which reminded me of Farrah Fawcett.

Which reminded me of the story my parents love reminding me of.

Apparently, when I was about four or five, I wished for blonde hair, and went around telling everyone to call me Jill Munroe.

Freedom is essential

Magnet #333 - Norman Rockwell's Four Freedoms

Today in Washington, DC, the streets will be lined, the Mall will be packed, and elsewhere, hotels, bars, offices, churches and stadiums will be packed with people - all there to celebrate the inauguration of the 44th president of the United States, Barack Obama. And it won't be just in Washington - it's all over the country, and indeed, all over the world.

But, for as much as change seems to be afoot, there are some things that will never change. And four of them are on this magnet.

In January 1941, Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered his State of the Union Address before congress - discussing four essential human rights that he believed should be protected universally. The excerpted text is below, but it's odd how much of it applies today.

In the future days which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression - everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way - everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants - everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor - anywhere in the world.

That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called "new order" of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.

- Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
from the Annual Message to the Congress,
January 6, 1941

The speech so moved Norman Rockwell, that he wanted to do something to contribute to the War effort. He knew he was too old to serve, so he spent six months and several sleepless nights, painting these four masterpieces, known as the Four Freedoms. Left to right: Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Religion, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear.

The Saturday Evening Post ran them, when the government turned them down. The paintings were a big hit, and of course, the Office of War Information jumped on the bandwagon - issuing them as a series of posters for the War bond effort. They even toured the paintings around the country in 1943, and raised more than $130 million in war bond sales.

The exhibition has traveled various galleries since, and unless they're out again, they should be on display over at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, MA. Well worth the trip. Though, if you head over to their site, they give some great information on each of the paintings.

I'm anxious to see how today goes. Whether you're happy about today or not, it's truly one for the history books. Though, is it weird that there's a part of me that's hoping someone's going to take that quintessential picture of people in front of a storefront full of giant flat-screen televisions watching the inauguration?

In the meantime, happy inauguration day. Stay safe and warm and peaceful and maybe throw in a little hope, if you can.

Someday my spring will come

Magnet #330 - Adolf Dehn's Spring in Central Park

It's weeks like this that make you think spring is never going to come.

This painting is by Adolf Dehn, who was born and raised in Minnesota - so I'm guessing he knows from cold. He'd probably laugh at how the eastern seaboard is suffering from single digit temps, and he was used to worse.

I just read that apparently, Dehn, who spent many years as a lithographer never liked to produce carbon copies of what he saw. According to his long-time dealer, Dehn liked to feel his way into a painting, and let it grow organically. I just think it's a gorgeous watercolor, and I love how romantic it makes New York, and Central Park. Romantic. And warm.

Oh, of course, it'll get here soon enough, and it'll look like this magnet outside. But for now, I'm totally hunkered down in the joycave under a ton of blankets and DVDs, just waiting for spring to get here.

A star is born, or Matt Smith, come on down...

Magnet #323 - Van Gogh's The Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum

Yep, pulling one from the freezer door art gallery today.

This piece isn't Van Gogh's most famous work of art, but it seems to be one of his favorites. In letters, he's almost bemused that he could actually paint this nighttime scene, right on the spot - versus having to wait until the daylight to do it.

It's also apparently the first time he painted a starry background, so it seems fitting to use this painting to talk about another star on the horizon.

Just in case you've been living under a rock, or you missed my Emotional Discourse post, David Tennant is leaving Doctor Who at the end of the year, and the new Doctor, Matt Smith, will be taking over the role after that.

While a smallish number of folks knew Matt Smith's resume, the vast majority around the world had never heard of this kid. And, they all ran to imdb to look him up - check out his Starmeter chart, which basically tracks his popularity (by imdb searches). Ups and downs for most of his pre-Doctor career, and upon the announcement, he shot way the hell up there. They literally had to create a whole new chart for him.

Even more astounding - his Starmeter ranking (in as much as anyone cares about these things). Within a week, the guy went from #24,418 all the way up to #47. He's rated higher than Tom Hanks and Seth Rogen, and he's the only actor in the top 50 without a movie gross next to his name. Shoot, even Robert Downey, Jr. is only at like #42.

Whoa. A star is born, indeed.

eta:
FYI, incidentally, I just compared the Starmeter chart for David Tennant. It's interesting, I don't think he's ever ranked above 100.

Rank the week before the Apr 16, 2005, BBC announcement for when he was taking over for CE: 574

Rank the week after: 650

Rank the week after that (morning shows): 191

This week: 273

Tatay = Daddy

Magnet #312 - Winslow Homer's The Blue Boat

Every year around this time, my sisters and I go to the card shop and look for birthday cards for our dad. And every year, we have to eliminate a good 75% of the great cards, cuz they use the word "Dad" or "Daddy" on them, instead of what we call our dad - Tatay. That's Filipino for Dad or Daddy.

That's just who he is - Tatay. It's weird to even think of calling him anything else.

Actually, this article is fairly interesting - all about how this Filipino reporter's sons are pronouncing Tatay in Obama's America. (They speak Tagalog, while my parents speak, and are, Visayan, but the Tatay concept remains the same.)

And no, I can't think of any word that will help you pronounce it correctly. It won't matter - for some reason, no non-Filipino can pronounce Tatay correctly. I'm serious. I've had friends whom I've known for 20 years now and they still can't pronounce it. They say, TatAye, or Daday, or even TayTay. Weirdos. That's my Tatay!

It's Tatay's birthday today, so a very happy birthday to you! Mind you, the first umpteen years of our lives we all thought you were a New Year's Eve baby, until you finally clarified that you're actually a New Year's Eve, Eve baby. Anyway, hopefully you're enjoying your TVs and your new DirectTV today. Sorry we're not down in NC to help...watch tv.

I picked today's magnet, because it looks like my dad might have a new fishing boat buddy down the line. (Aside from Mom, that is. No, we just call her Mommy, or Mom. I dunno why, but she never wanted us to call her Nanay, the counterpart to Tatay.)

That fishing buddy might be my sister's fiance, Gordon, whose birthday is today as well. Happy birthday, Gordon!

And, don't worry Mommy, I'm trying to find just the right magnet for your birthday in May!