Conservation

Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts: ‘Planes, Trains & Automobiles’

Life sped up during the middle of the 20th Century. It also gained a sense of style. This appealing exhibition of collectors Fred and Jean Sharf’s wonderful collection of a variety of transportation art and objects proves that acceleration and aesthetics make an exhilarating combo.

From an early age, most of us treasure model cars, airplanes and trains. It may have something to do with fantasy, a sense of imagined Lilliputian power or just a love of beautifully made scale models that we can hold in our hands. These may be outmoded generalizations, but most boys adore model trains, cars, trucks and airplanes, while a large majority of girls start out liking doll houses and everything that goes into and outside of them. There is a certain magic to miniaturization.

Above: Deutsche Lufthansa Ju 52 model. Photo: Mark Wallison, courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.xxxxxxMore

By Design: A Transformed Cooper-Hewitt New York Museum Reopens

At their best, the exhibitions at the restored, renovated, and expanded Cooper-Hewitt Museum explore the history and culture of design and decorative arts with transcendent panache.

We go to a design museum to see the best of form and function. Because design is the intersection of art and function, aesthetics and technology, its physical grace is underscored by its utility. In the last half-century, objects of design (in some cases objects of desire) have been showcased with care and scholarly intensity in design museums throughout Europe, Asia, and North America. Over the years, the enthusiasm for design has spread. Now corporations see the notion of good — even great design — as a goal. Design is not only fashionable and chic, but it has become mainstream.

Above: Installation view, “Controller of the Universe” and Solar Wall, in “Tools: Extending Our Reach.” Photo: Matt Flynn, courtesy of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design. xxxxxxMore

Philadelphia’s Penn Museum Cooking with ‘Culinary Expeditions: A Celebration of Food & Culture’

Food and—more specifically—its consumption are intimately linked to our identity as social beings, anchoring us together as families, communities and nations. Wolves consume calories the same way each time, hurriedly to avoid losing their kill to another. For creatures of the wild, swallowing trumps savoring every time. Not so with the human species. We suspend food on our tongues, rolling our eyes with delight with each bite. Chewing releases vital flavors as taste buds and the brain’s sensory and memory centers revel in the experience.

Left: Tarentine Red Figure, Bull’s Head Rython, Apulia, Italy (ca. 350-320 BCE)

Only our most primitive Paleolithic ancestors likely consumed their food without cooking it. Once fire was discovered as a means of enhancing mastication and digestion, it was a short step to specialty meal preparation. The regionalization of herb and spice enhancements, grain and vegetation cultivation soon demarcated one tribe from another, one culture’s culinary traditions from that of their neighbors. Given our rapidly-evolving omnivorous propensity, gourmet kitchens became a Darwinian evolutionary inevitability! xxxxxxMore

Harvard Art Museums Reborn: A New Architectural Frame for Art, Education, Conservation

Harvard Art Museums mark favermann artes fine arts magazine — A Renzo Piano-designed steel and glass ‘lantern’ and one-story addition sit atop the original 1925 Fogg Museum. Photo: Harvard Univerity

When a visitor enters the new Harvard Art Museums, there is a feeling of great institutional arrival, a sense of an art historical place and an overall atmosphere of beauty of light and materials envelops the space.

However, with that said, the newly renovated and expanded Harvard Art Museums tries to put too much great art and great educational resources into just a good, not great structure. xxxxxxMore

Editor’s Letter: July, 2014

“Modern art…is an attempt to deal with the chaotic formlessness and swift flux of the modern city.” ~Robert A. Bone, literary scholar

Left: Salvador Dali, ‘Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea which at Twenty Meters Becomes the Portrait of Abraham Lincoln – Homage to Rothko’ (Second Version), 1976. Dali Museum, St Petersburg, FL.

Bullets in the Name of Art

www.artesmagazine.com — Big 5: Jones says her first kill was a rare African white rhino, part of her quest to bag the Big 5 African game animals (rhino, elephant, Cape buffalo, leopard and lion.

What do the names Kendall Jones and Satao have in common? For those interested in the plight of endangered species, the answer is that they are, respectively, perpetrator and victim in a vicious cycle of harvesting endangered species for personal ambition. Jones is the 19-year old,Texas Tech cheerleader who set a personal quest to bag the Big Five African game animals (lion, elephant, Cape buffalo, leopard, and White/Black rhinoceros) on a recent expedition. She gleefully announce on her Facebook page, “The first animal I ever shot was a White Rhino with a .416 Remington!!” The White rhino, which number around 20,000, are among the rarest in the world. Jones’s ultimate goal—to garner her own 15-minutes of fame with a reality TV show in 2015, where she hopes to espouse her interest in hunting and animal conservation. The death toll continued until she reached her objective, giving each photo-op her best cheerleader smile, posing with the trophy animals as though in a prom date portrait—except her companion is not the star quarterback, but a creature of the wild, very hairy…and very dead. xxxxxxMore

Metropolitan Museum of Art’s, The Cloisters: Radiant Light: Canterbury Cathedral Stained Glass

A rare exhibition of stained glass from England’s historic Canterbury Cathedral on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s, The Cloisters, through May 18, 2014. It features six Romanesque-period windows that have not left the cathedral precincts since their creation, over 900 years ago, in 1178–80. A special installation was constructed within the museum, elevating and backlighting the windows to approximate their usual position, above eye level. Rarely do examples of artisanship of this complexity and age move from their original location, much less travel thousands of miles, before eventually returning to be reinstalled, high above the transept floor of the cathedral.

Above: This border panel surrounded one of the Ancestors of Christ figures in a clerestory window at Canterbury Cathedral. Weathering on the reverse of the glass from exposure to the elements over the centuries, now being repaired, caused corrosion and deep pitting.artes fine arts magazineMore

Trinity College, Dublin, and a National Treasure—The Book of Kells

The exhibition, Treasures of Early Irish Art traveled to American museums for two years. Comprising works from the National Museum of Ireland, the Royal Irish Academy, and Trinity College, Dublin. It was curated by David DuBon. When the exhibition opened in 1979, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, I was fortunate to attend the press opening. Even compared to the crush of later visitors one managed but a few moments to view each of the medieval manuscripts including the greatest national treasure of Ireland, The Book of Kells. The exhibition was installed in such a manner that the final gallery, with the books, was all but pitch dark. There was a queue inching past the vitrines which were illuminated at one candle power. One was pressed on by those behind eager for a glimpse of the legendary treasures. artes fine arts magazineMore

Antoni Gaudi’s Architectural Vision: Aesthetic Born of Devout Religious Mysticism

Editor’s Note: In this, Part I of a two-part series on a sampling of architect, Antoni Gaudi’s best known creations, architecture critic, Mark Favermann takes the reader on a virtual tour of Barcelona’s elaborate cathedral, La Sagrada Familia. We also visit two Gaudi-designed resident properties, Casa Batllo and the apartment building Casa Mila, also known as La Pedrera (The Quarry), gracing the wide boulevards of this Catalonian city on the Mediterranean. For Part II, appearing in ARTES in the near future, the municipal gardens of Park Guell will be highlighted. Gaudi’s vision and eccentricities, examined by the author, are an essential part of our understanding of the man and his design sensibility.

Antoni Gaudi (1852-1926) was not only an eccentric architect but, as he aged, he became more and more devoutly Catholic. His religion and architecture became increasingly intertwined. The overtly mystical nature of his beliefs informed the design of his building projects and their details. Gaudi’s approach translated into an often colorful joy for much of his work, a fantastic organic arrangement of shapes and forms that tended to suggest structure and space as a visual musical harmony, sometimes a bit cacophonic, but most often smooth, quite sensual, and rather symphonic. artes fine arts amgazineMore

Red Head Gallery, Toronto, with Gillian Iles: ‘You can only get there from here.’

The title itself, “You can only get there from here,” immediately poses a number of questions for the gallery visitor: Where is here, and where is there? Why does anyone want to get from here to there? Iles’ installation is a compelling interactive hybrid of figurative paintings, sculptures and video/projected images, juxtaposing the layers of her narrative in a visual essay aimed at getting to some of those questions. artes fine arts magazineMore

The Cloisters’ “Forty Part Motet” a Must-experience Installation

Editor’s Note: You may want to go to the end of this story and click on the choral work, to listen while reading…

Our pilgrimage begins near the banks of New York’s Hudson, as that river flows swiftly past late autumn foliage, burnished a toasty golden brown in a warming sun. From the vantage point of the parkway, the briefest glimpse of a stalwart Romanesque-style tower rising high above the tree line offers a tantalizing hint as to our ultimate destination. The ascent on the narrow road leading to the hilltop retreat helps set the stage for the experience that awaits, as city sights and sounds fall away, replaced by the dense, old growth forest of Fort Tryon Park and the strident call of a mockingbird from high atop a spiring oak. artes fine arts magazineMore

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