Art and Museums

Val Castronovowrites: The O’Keeffe show at the Whitney is the first to study, and celebrate, her abstract works: Viewing images at close range enhances abstraction, and it also, for her, was used to suggest the sheer enormity of nature. It is this sheer enormity that led O’Keeffe into, and back to, abstraction. Where words would not suffice, color, line and shapes — abstraction — would. Read More...

We paid another visit to Washington's National Building Museum and found that the online shop is well stocked.

There's a new 'green' section with a water clock that it's possible to add water to and a dash of table salt to the clock's tank to make it work. Want to conserve a little water? Add a squeeze of lemon juice and you'll have to refill less often. A Rubik's Pepper mill is a new twist (sorry about that) on the familiar cube, a Frank Lloyd Wright Fallingwater Lego set and a Q-BA-MAZE that consist of interlocking transluscent structures for rolling balls through. Stack the cubes in many different configurations and watch the balls make their way through the maze. Other items are twirling spaghetti forks and Eiffel Tower and Pyramid erasers.

Cleveland Museum of Art's store has some items we haven't seen before, based on exhibits and works of art: Rousseau's Fight Between a Tiger and a Buffalo becomes a night light as does Redon's Vase of Flowers which is also shown in the same pattern as an umbrella or tote.

There's a salt and pepper in the shape of a turquoise Faberge shoe and an Art of Africa address book.

We've found that our grandson is intrigued with art cubes and the Museum has one with six images from the exhibition Arms and Armor from Imperial Austria as well as another from Impressionist Landscapes.

In addition, consider a 500 piece puzzle, The Red Kerchief: Portrait of Madame Monet, to be enjoyed as well another 500 piece, Monet's The Cliff, Entretat, Sunset.

At the Brooklyn Museum of Art, living in the borough helps but isn't necessary to love the Brooklyn-in-a-Box board game: "It includes only authentic landmarks, among them the Brooklyn Museum. Other featured tokens include the Brooklyn Bridge, the Coney Island-Wonder Wheel, an egg cream, and a hot dog." A whole page is devoted to items Brooklynites would love. Another page devoted to a more distant locale, Egypt, highlights a gold fertility figure, perhaps unneeded by most senior women, but nowadays ... We're personally fond of the William Morris honeysuckle card case.

A personal aside, your shopping correspondent lived in a mob-protected section of Brooklyn for a couple of years, one of four of the five boroughs we've been born, lived and worked in.

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"This web site focuses on the history, interpretation, and restoration of John Singer Sargent’s monumental mural cycle, Triumph of Religion, in the McKim building of the Boston Public Library. The murals, which Sargent executed over the course of nearly thirty years (1890-1919), have deteriorated considerably, and their restoration is part of a larger renovation of the McKim building. Partially funded by the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the restoration is being carried out by conservators from the Straus Center for Conservation, Harvard University Art Museums."

So reads the introduction to this website from the Trustees of the Public Library and Harvard College Fellows. And the view of the Sargent Hall should not be missed on the site.

Restoration challenges

Sargent combined traditional and new materials and techniques in creating his Triumph of Religion murals. He attached elaborate relief elements to painted canvas, a highly innovative process at the time. The materials he used have since deteriorated and now require different types of conservation and restoration treatment. Conservators face considerable challenges when dealing with the composite nature of his work. The unfortunate effects of previous restorations and years of neglect further complicate conservation efforts.

To view the murals, click on the mural titles at the left of the screen.

The Boston Globe published a 2006 article headlined: Borrowed Images: John Singer Sargent's murals for the Boston Public Library were to be his 'American Sistine Chapel.' Instead the paintings touched off a nationwide controversy over their depiction of religious figures.

"The painting that sparked the outrage was Sargent's 1919 work 'Synagogue,' in which the subject is depicted as a blindfolded old woman fallen to the floor, her crown toppled, the structure around her in ruins."

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The Museum of Arts Decoratifs in Paris has published a Visitor's Guide for the exhibit. The Museum possesses one hundred and twenty-two Vionnet dresses, copyright albums, hundreds of patterns made out of cloth, and all the documentation relative to her fashion house. The following are paragraphs from the Guide:

"Madeleine Vionnet drew inspiration from certain dancers favouring the use of flowing fabrics, such as Loïe Fuller who inspired many objects belonging to the Art Nouveau Department of the Musée des Arts décoratifs, or Isadora Duncan who accustomed her public to a free and supple figure. No more vehemently than her colleague Paul Poiret, known for having altogether discarded corsets, Vionnet criticised these undergarments dismissing them as orthopaedic devices."

"Even though Paul Poiret espoused many avant-garde ideas often derived from Oriental dreamlike imagery, his designs were ill-suited to the lifestyle of modern women. Nevertheless, the new lines developed within all the decorative art domains of the 1910s, echoed Madeleine Vionnet’s artistic vision. A less rigid, less ornate, and gradually less constricted figure emerged."

"Dress architecture was at the core of Vionnet’s experimentation. A famous photo shows Madeleine Vionnet striving to create a certain shape for a smallscale wooden mannequin with articulated joints. Given its scale, the fabric was less cumbersome allowing for easier manipulation. In the blink of an eye, the designer achieved an overall vision."

"Dispensing with preliminary sketches, she envisioned a three-dimensional malleable sculpture shaped out of fabric."

"Madeleine Vionnet pursued draping variations, yet abandoned the use offlowing fabric panels in favour of a pared-down approach. Two-meter wide textiles enabled her to eliminate side seams. The fabric was twisted, coiled up, and draped), while cowl collars softly emphasized the chest or the shoulder blades. By the mid 1930s, despite retaining a penchant for graphic interplay), fashion took on a romantic look distancing itself from the rectangular dress shape of the Roaring Twenties, and adopting rounder contours in keeping with contemporary jewellery designs. Skirts cut in the round, puff or balloon sleeves, and wide capelike collars bordering low necklines - known as berthes in French - challenged the antiquity vogue, while stiff fabrics conveyed a historicizing effect."

The 6th and 7th pages within the guide contain photographs from the exhibit to enjoy. English Vogue has 13 articles on the House of Vionnet.

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