At the end of a whirlwind day in Cambridge and Framingham (client visit), Karen and I barely made it to an opening for a show of black and white photographs by Frank Tadley of the Community Garden at Edgerton Park (New Haven CT) (more here about the park) and color drawings of flowers and plants by his sister Betty. The art was great and we caught up with a number of friends. Frank has the whole series on display at his website.
G. Caillebotte's "Oarsmen Rowing on the Yerres" - Brooklyn Museum
Last weekend we spent one very busy Saturday in New York City museuming. We started in Brooklyn at the Brooklyn Museum. This time we took the 2 train from 125th St in Harlem. After 45 minutes and a bit of subway back and forth caused by track work, we emerged from the subway walking up to look straight at the new glass entrance hall of the Brooklyn Museum of Art.
We visited a number of galleries. I found the exhibition, “Gustave Caillebotte: Impressionist Paintings From Paris to the Sea” very interesting. Unlike the New York Time’s reviewer Holland Cotter,1 I am not too bothered with issues of exactly where any particular artist fits into the taxonomy that art critics and historians use.
G. Caillebotte-"Factories in Argenteuil"
Unlike most taxonomies of the physical world, art taxonomy seems to obscure more than enlighten. At any rate I really enjoyed the industrial and street scenes. His perspectives are frequently novel.((pictures of Caillebotte’s work shown here borrowed without permission from the Brooklyn Museum website))
Judy Chicago’s “The Dinner Party” is now on permanent display. I must admit that very few of the 1038 women honored in this piece were familiar to me. The “Heritage Panels” that are part of this work offer a timeline and some hints about why the women included at the dinner are there. The Brooklyn Museum has wonderful web pages on the Dinner Party, including a 3600 virtual tour here. Continue reading
For many years I have been taking pictures of these ubiquitous features of our urban environment. I remain unsure about what this little mania is about???
1/15/02
October 2, 2001 – January 21, 2002 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
Karen and I saw a few of Ms. Ristelhueber’s photographs a couple of years ago at the Museum of Modern Art (New York). They were part of MOMA’s annual New Photography selections. We were struck then by the power of her work.
The current exhibit, Sophie Ristelhueber: Details of the World, at the MFA includes “Fait”, 71 approximately 4 ft x 4 ft photographs taken in the deserts of Kuwait shortly after the end of the “Desert Storm” war. Some are taken from a helicopter and others are at ground level. All are intensely detailed but in some strange way quite abstract in their impact. This is accentuated in the exhibition by the juxtaposition of aerial and close-ups so that at first glance one can not be sure which is which. This is the scene of modern warfare.
Another series of photographs entitled” Beirut” are 31 small black and white photographs of a streetscape in war torn Beirut. Another confrontation with the results of war.
There is more here in this extensive exhibit. We highly recommend it.
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Every One, #3, 1994 Black and white photograph mounted on fiberboard 106 x 71 inches, unique installation at the Centraal Museum, Utrecht.
(Picture to left and text description above borrowed from MFA web site 01/15/02) |
Written 10/12/2003
During one of our whirlwind weekends in New York, Karen and I went to the New York Historical Society (2 West 77th Street New York, NY 10024 http://www.nyhistory.org) to catch the last day of the exhibit, REMEMBERING THE FORGOTTEN ONES: THE PHOTOGRAPHS OF MILTON ROGOVIN.
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This proved to be the best photography, most engaging exhibit I have seen in years.
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Anne and Milton Rogovin (June 2003) |
At the heart of the experience was a roomful of triptychs, photos taken of the same family, if not always the same family members spanning three decades. Rogovin combined brief texts by one or more of those pictured and some included audio versions with the authors of the text speaking.
Here are a few images:
Eva and Daughter 1972, 1985, and 1992 (image borrowed without permission from The Getty Museum (http://www.getty.edu/art/collections/objects/o112420.html)
Grandparents and Baptism Boy 1974, 1985, 1992 (image borrowed without permission from The Getty Museum http://www.getty.edu/art/collections/objects/oz112421.html)
And an updated “quartet” extending the one above:
Here are a couple of other pictures gleaned from various web sites:
(from the Working People series)
There is a Milton Rogovin website.
