paul

One of the first 'pastoral ' paintings(not in the exhibition) was The Pastoral Concert, 1509, by Titian and/or  Giorgione, originator of  the pastoral, where landscape is on par with figures. Shepherds and musicians are frequent in this theme. Good things always end, including summer and a chance to see how the greatest modern artists painted themes of leisure as Arcadian Visions: Gauguin, Cezanne, Matisse , ends Labor Day. The exhibition highlights 3 large paintings:  Gauguin's frieze-like Where do We Come From?...,  1898, Cézanne's  Large Bathers , 1898-1905 and Matisse's  Bathers by a River , 1907-17. Each painting was crucial to the goals of the artists, and crucial to the transitioning from the art and life of the past into the 20th century. These  modernist visions actually are part of a much older theme descended from Greece and written about in Virgil's  Eclogues.  Nineteenth-century masters were very familiar with this tradition from...

T he Phillips' Kandinsky exhibition centers around this painting from the Guggenheim, Painting with White Border, 1913. It appears primarily abstract, but has two specifically Russian iconographic references: a troika (three horses) and St. George and the Dragon. The Phillips Collection's current exhibition on Kandinsky not only provides insight into the thought process of this giant of early 20th century abstraction, but it also gives us a chance to compare the artists with whom he worked and influenced. The Kandinsky exhibition is juxtaposed next to an exhibition of contemporary artist Frank Stella, whose sculptures are influenced by music of Domenico Scarlatti, called Stella Sounds . The metal and plastic sculptures point, poke off the walls and into space curving vigorously with color. They become 3-dimensional expressions of abstraction comparable to Kandinsky. Frank Stella's K43 comes out of the wall and into space. His sculptures on view at the Phillips are based on ...