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Vincent Van Gogh,   Green Wheat Fields, Auvers, 1890 at the National Gallery of Art, a recent gift from the Collection of Mr & Mrs Paul Mellon Vincent Van Gogh's Green Wheat Fields, Auvers came into Washington's National Gallery of Art on December 20, 2013.  It's a windswept scene that sucks us in with intensity and urgency.     Green Wheat Fields, Auvers is among the 70 or so paintings he did during the two months of 1890 when he lived in Auvers-sur-Oise.  Experts believe he painted it in June, 1890, the month before he died. Fortunately the new painting entered the museum at the same time Washington's Phillips Collection is hosting an exhibition, Van Gogh Repetitions, until February 2, 2014. The exhibition of 14 paintings examines why the artist repeated compositions in the same format with different colors and very minor design changes. It features several portraits, The Bedroom at Arles and two magnificent Van Goghs owned by the Phillips Coll...

The Phillips Collection has an intimate Rothko Room which creates a meditative space to view his color field paintings. The museum's founder designed the room specifically for this purpose. Mark Rothko's last years are chronicled in a play currently showing at the Arena Stage in Washington,DC. Washington holds a special place for this artist, with the National Gallery holding the largest collection of his work in the world and the Phillips Collection having a special Rothko Room designed for his work by the museum's founder. "Red," an award-winning Broadway play by John Logan, will continue its run until March 9. The entire play takes place in Rothko's studio with a dialogue between Rothko and a young assistant named Ken. In 100 minutes without interruption, there are no lulls in this play. Of Rothko, Duncan Phillips described "mysterious layers of paint...suggest depth in spite of their flat mat quality. " Or ange and Red on Red, 1957, is part of t...

Two Dancers at the Barre , early 1880s−c. 1900, Oil on canvas, 51 1/4 x 38 1/2 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. Acquired 1944. This painting is the centerpiece of the current exhibition. Point....Flex.....Relevé-----these themes of ballet dancing were the obsession of Edgar Degas, an artist associated with Impressionism but known for his paintings and pastels of dancers. Washington's Phillips Collection recently put their large painting, Dancers at the Barre , under their conservator's care. In the process, they discovered wonderful color and took a deeper look into the process of this artist. The exhibition Degas' Dancers at the Barre: Point and Counterpoint transports the viewer into Degas' mind and back into the opulent Garnier Opera House which opened in Paris in 1875. Most of the paintings, drawings and studies in the exhibition feature women, mainly ballerinas. After viewing the show, I once again get the feeling that Degas is the foremost among a...

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 ...

Series 1, No. 3, 1918, is from the Milwaukee Art Museum Once again the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, has put on a splendid exhibition of an early modern master, Georgia O'Keeffe: Abstraction. Although I've seen O'Keeffe exhibitions in the past, there is always something new to be seen in her work. Several compelling images that I had not seen before , especially from the Whitney Museum, a co-organizer of the exhibition, and the Milwaukee Art Museum, are in this show. O'Keeffe's abstract imagery is inspired by diverse subjects, more often natural than manmade--flowers, bones, mountains, aerial views, and the diverse places she lived, Wisconsin, Lake George, NY and New Mexico. Less well known is the fact that she lived in Charlottesville, Va., and some of her colors could easily be reflections of sunsets over the Blue Ridge Mountains. Even though a group of abstractions is inspired by music, one of the curators pointed out that Music, Pink and Blue, No. 2 , r...