A delightful Afternoon (Mostly)
A mid afternoon doctor’s appointment at the Medical Center in Houston on a Friday afternoon is not preferable given the propensity of early weekend traffic—and traffic through and around Houston seems to have tripled in past months.
However, I wanted to try another viewing of Monet to Matisse at the MFA. I toured the exhibit several weeks ago—another doctor appointment—but I did not realize I could take photographs as there was no show catalog. I was determined to get some nice photos of some of my favorite paintings in the exhibit.
Happily I spied a Berthe Morisot—a garden painting—maybe during her honeymoon
; and this Renoir of a girl resting her chin on a chair—
and then a Gaugin of a small boy in blue—not the voluptuous mostly naked women usually associated with his name.
A Matisse—with its incredibly flat rendition of a water -harborscene—suggestive of wall-paper–no brushstrokes evident—the Monet also of a water -harbor scene–with the glimmerings of the beginning of expressionism
Then there was a Toulouse-LaTrec–on a special kind of cardboard used in billboards—and he did a lot of those—the head of a supercilious woman looking down at the viewer—and a Degas of two ballerinas head and shoulders in sepia tones.
The final gallery was 30 some paintings by Bonnard—-perhaps his work needs to be seen repeatedly to begin to enjoy—I don’t recall seeing any of his paintings before–they all seemed rather dark and dreary and mostly dark green and dark red landscapes.
I was so enjoying the paintings and taking photos until I was poked by a woman in a blue sweater who hissed ‘no flash photography allowed in here’.
Hmm—those flash cubes in the past had a theoretical potential of sparks—although why that should be a concern with all the water sprinklers everywhere—–and no-one has demonstrated the tiny automated flashes from a camera–not the huge ‘lights-camera-action’ lights faded paintings.
So I switched to my phone–which might have a flash feature but I haven’t figured how to work that yet—or how to transfer those photos to my laptop.
But I did manage to visit one of my favorite sculptures—Matisse’s Backs in the Cullen Sculpture Garden—deserted on that hot Friday afternoon with brilliant blue skies.
I always wondered what his model thought of how she was represented and how did all those really fancy frames get put on those paintings–did the artists choose them—or were they traditional ‘standard’ frames.
Sylvia Weir Art 