Under Construction!

I'll be posting a paper about the Wadsworth and Frederic Church's fabulous painting, "Vale of St. Thomas, Jamaica", very soon. Do my schedule, I had to arrange my trip to NY for this past weekend and had a museum filled Valentine's Day in the City! All told, my fiance and I visited the Frick Collection, the Guggenheim, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Cloisters. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were spent simply soaking in the hundreds of art pieces that NY holds within it's city limits. It was an amazing weekend. Pictures, posts and papers to come soon!!

The Yale Art Gallery Experience

Hello everyone!

I went to the Yale Art Gallery yesterday and had a great time. This first pic is of the back of my car and my new Gallery sticker that I just got from work. I am ready to go!

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Ah! The New Haven Arts Area at Yale University, home of the Art Gallery, The Center for British Art, The Yale Repertory Theater, the School of Architecture and the History of Art and School of Art departments. I have arrived!

This pic shows the entrance to the Gallery’s Kahn building. The Yale Art Gallery is actually made up of three buildings: the Louis Kahn building, the Swartwout building, and Street Hall. The original Gallery was actually a small tenement-like structure in the center of campus that housed the famous Trumbull collection (go back to the Gallery in late summer/early fall to see the reinstallation of that collection) and only a few other art pieces. The full renovation of the Gallery should finish in 2012 and will open up the three buildings to allow the Gallery more flow and better environmental conditions for the vast collection.

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The pic above is of a wall drawing by the famous Sol LeWitt located in the lobby of the Yale Art Gallery. All of Sol's wall drawings are drawn individually using a simple set of instructions making each rendering different from any other. This is an example of conceptual art as the instructions for the drawing is the concept and the resulting art is, well, the art. I was lucky enough to assist the Director of the Gallery organize the Sol LeWitt Retrospective currently on view at MASS MoCA in North Adams, MA. The funniest thing that I find about this piece is that it simply blended into the background before I learned about Sol's art and it wasn't until I knew about all of his wall drawings that I finally realized that this was not just design on a wall or funky wall paper, it was actually a work of art! Sneaky!

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I am NOT happy with my digital camera when it can’t use its flash! This shot does not even remotely do this painting justice, but it will have to do! This painting by the famous Edwin Austin Abbey is called “The Play Scene in Hamlet (Act III, Scene 2). Painted in 1897, this painting is an example of “the golden age” of illustration. Abbey is known for illustrating images from Shakespearean plays and various other Victorian themes. I really love Abbey’s work. As a big fan of Shakespeare, the subject matter of his painting’s are near and dear to my heart and the romantic nature of the subject lends to the richness of his paintings.

This is a detailed shot of the jester who is painted on the left-hand side of the piece. I just love the evil look on his face – he’s supposed to be happy!

Above is the detail pic of Hamlet and Ophelia as they are seated on the floor in front of the king and queen. You can see how Hamlet is staring back at his step-father waiting for his response and how Ophelia sits next to him staring blankly at the play be performed in front of her. Just amazing!

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This is by far my favorite piece at the Gallery! Vincent van Gogh’s “The Night Café” (Le café de nuit) was painted by the Dutch artist in 1888 and is one of his most famous works. I have always liked impressionist paintings, but “The Night Café” is an amazing painting to see up close. The lights in the painting are actually three-dimensional with the layers of oil paint that are raised off of the canvas – I can only imagine how long that took to dry and how patient Vincent had to be before he could return to working on the piece.

Below is (surprise, surprise!) another van Gogh! This one is called “Corner in Voyer-d’Argenson Park at Asniéres” and was painted by Vincent in 1887, one year before “The Night Café”. I had never seen this van Gogh before and when I saw it in the Gallery today I actually thought it was a painting done by Georges Seurat.

You can see that this painting is made up of little dots of paint, a style that Seurat was so know for that he has the nickname, Seurat the Dot! To illustrate my point, I have included a pic (below) of a painting by Seurat entitled “The Riverman” that was hanging on the same wall. You can see the large dots of paint that make up the image as a whole – I’m just lucky that I was taking pictures of the info cards or else I would have just assumed that the van Gogh above was another piece by Seurat – Phew!

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This concludes my tour of the Yale University Art Gallery. Sadly, I was unable to take any pictures of the Picasso and Tea Culture exhibitions as they contain art pieces not owned by the Gallery, but you will have to check out the “Jester” sculpture in the Picasso exhibition, it is fantastic!

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