paul

Isamu Noguchi, Trinity, 1945, Gregory , 1948, Strange Bird (To the Sunflower) Photo taken from the Hirshhorn's Facebook page Biomorphic and anthropomorphic themes run through quite a few exhibitions of modern artists in Washington at the moment.  The Hirshhorn's Marvelous Objects: Surrealist Sculpture from Paris to New York has several of the abstract, biomorphic Surrealists such as Miro and Calder.  The wonderful exhibition will come to a close after this weekend. Isamu Noguchi's many sculptures that are part of  Marvelous Objects  deal with an unexpected part of the artist's life and work. Noguchi was interned in a prison camp in Arizona for Japanese-Americans during World War II. Whatever the horrors of his experience, he dealt with it as an artist does -- making art and using creativity to express the experience by transforming it.  Isamu Noguchi, Lunar Landscape, 1944 Lunar landscape comes from immediately after this difficult time period. The ar...

"Contemporary and ancient art are like oil and water, seemingly opposite poles....now I have found the two melding ineffably into one, more like water and air."  Hiroshi Sugimoto, Japanese artist Louise Bourgeois, Untitled , 1952, Spring , 1949 and Mortise , 1950 National Gallery of Art Two separate exhibitions in Washington at the moment illustrate the commonality of modern art and prehistoric -- especially in sculpture.  The me, that theme resonates with two sculptors who lived through most of the 20th century, Louise bourgeois and Isamu Noguchi.  The National Gallery has a two-room exhibition Louise Bourgeois:No Exit , and Noguchi (hopefully in another blog) 's works are part of the Hirshhorn's exhibition, Marvelous Objects: Surrealist Sculpture from Paris to New York . Constantin Brancusi, Endless Column, 1937 Three sculptures by Bourgeois in the National Gallery are what she called personages.  As a whole they're not unlike the archetypal images of Henry Moo...

Since going to the Miró exhibition recently, I've been reminded of Remedios Varo.  In 2000, I discovered this marvelous Surrealist in an exhibition devoted to her at Chicago's Mexican Fine Arts Museum. Called The Magic or Remedios Varo , the exhibition had been organized by Washington's National Museum of Women in the Arts and shown there. At the moment of this writing there is an exhibition at Mexico City's Museo de Arte Moderne de Mexico, entitled Remedios Varo: 50 Keys.   It includes 50 works of art and a single sculpture. Certainly Frida Kahlo is much better known, but I find Varo, who knew both Kahlo and Diego Rivera, more evocative and interesting as an artist. Varo also uses a female subject as her chief descriptive vehicle, but she is less self-absorbed than Kahlo and more concerned with the larger world. Varo was a Surrealist born in Spain in 1908, but exiled to Mexico after 1941. Like Gaudi , Miró and Dalí, she was Catalan, originally from Angles, near Girona...

Joan Miró, Nocturne , 1935, is a small oil on copper from the Cleveland Museum of Art.  A jumping man, crescent moon and spiral suggest the artist ability to leap above problems of life. "We Catalans believe you must always plant your feet firmly on the ground if you want to be able to jump into the air" In 1948, Joan Miró used these words to describe the Catalan mentality.  Like Salvador Dali and Antoni Gaudí , giants of modern art and architecture, Miro came from Catalonia, the area of Spain on the Mediterranean Sea near the French border.  Catalans had a language and cultural identify different from the rest of Spain. Washington's National Gallery, which hosts a Miro exhibition until August 12, completes the quote on a wall label:   "The that I came down to earth from time to time makes it possible for me to jump higher." Joan Miró: Ladders of Escape is the appropriate name for this exhibition which captures the flying spirit of this Surrealist artist.  From...

I have often thought the Mannerist style of late Renaissance art had a lot in common with the Surrealism of the 20th century. After viewing the National Gallery's Arcimboldo exhibition, this analogy seems stronger. Arcimboldo was a Mannerist from Milan who worked for the Court of Maximilian II in Vienna, and for his son, Rudolf II, in Vienna and in Prague. It is interesting that his reputation went down for a number of years until the Surrealists of the 20th Century revived the interest in his art. "Librarian," 1566, could easily be mistaken for an early 20th century Surrealist painting, at first glance. Arcimboldo painted various professions. "The Jurist," also on display at the National Gallery, is a scathing portrayal of the legal profession. Mannerism came after the High Renaissance style of Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael, which had lasted only about 20 years. The idealism of their style seemed to perish as Europe descended into the wars and devastat...