Saturday, August 29, 2015
Tonight's picture was taken in August of 2007. We were sitting in the stands of Sea World in San Diego, awaiting to see Shamu, the Killer Whale. Having grown up in Los Angeles as a teenager, I had been to Sea World many times. It was always a special park to me, and it is maintained like no other theme park I know. I am happy that Mattie got to see so many of these amazing creatures and experience the magic of this park. A park that does have magic in its own right and it doesn't need roller coasters and rides to achieve this excitement. Naturally I date myself, because as I went on line to look at Sea World, they too now offer amusement rides. Not many, like other themed parks, but they have introduced them to the Park. Which disappoints me. That was the beauty of going to Sea World in the past. It wasn't about the rides, it was about experiencing the sea life and animals.
Quote of the day: Use what talents you possess, the woods will be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best. ~ Henry van Dyke
We went to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art today and saw two wonderful exhibits. The first one was entitled, Four Allegories by Veronese: A Rediscovery and Reunion. Paolo Caliari, known as Paolo Veronese (1528 – 1588) was an
Italian Renaissance painter based in Venice, most famous for large history
paintings of both religious and mythological subjects. He was also known as a supreme colorist and to have influenced many great artists such as Rubens, Delacroix, and Renoir. Though his last name was really Caliari, he was known as Veronese because he was born in the town of Verona in Italy. It wasn't unusual in the Renaissance to rename artists by the town they were born and came from, so for example Leonardo Da Vinci's last name was NOT really Da Vinci. He was born in Vinci, a region of Florence, so in essence he was nicknamed "Leonardo of Vinci." Similar with Veronese!
In 2014, the two LACMA paintings (pictured in the center) traveled to London to be included in an exhibition at the National Gallery. An exciting discovery was made at the same time: the canvases had a matching set, belonging to the Region of Piedmont in Italy. In need of conservation (a cleaning and restoration), the matching set could not be included in the London exhibition, but they were eventually shown alongside the LACMA paintings, first in Vicenza, and then in Turin. This exhibition presents a unique opportunity to see the four paintings reunited in Los Angeles. THIS IS THE FIRST TIME IN THE US THAT THESE FOUR PAINTINGS HAVE BEEN SEEN TOGETHER!
The four paintings in this installation constitute a major achievement
for artist Paolo Veronese. Three feature allegories of navigation—a subject
particularly relevant to Venice, a city of merchants and traders who depended
on ancient but precise technology to traverse the Mediterranean. The fourth
painting features an allegory of sculpture, which may seem unexpected, but in
fact reflects the rich and complex culture of Veronese’s time, when art and
science, literature, mathematics, architecture, and painting all went hand in
hand.
What may not be evident from these photos was that the paintings are HUGE! They seemed at least 8 to 10 feet tall! When hung overhead, they gave a feeling of prominence. Which was the intention. The viewer had to look up to these allegories and not down. In each painting, Veronese depicted an historical structure from antiquity. Incorporating such thematic content into a painting was NOT a common practice in Venice, but something that was well established in the mainland of Italy. However, Venetian artists were well known for their use of color, which was a skill Veronese developed and integrated into his style. In each of these paintings the sky was actually painted BLUE, but as I learned from my recent trip to the Norton Simon Museum, blue was a very expensive color and therefore during the Renaissance many of the blues did not last and hold up over time. Which is why you only see the sky in all of these paintings to look brown. The only blue that is evident is seen in the bodice of the woman's clothing, and that was because ultramarine paint was used, which was an expensive as gold. Therefore it is very evident that whomever commissioned these paintings was VERY wealthy.
Allegory of Navigation with Astrolabe (left)
Allegory of Navigation with Cross-Staff (right)
Allegory of Navigation with Armillary Sphere
Allegory of Sculpture
The second exhibit we saw was entitled, Islamic Art Now: Contemporary Art of the
Middle East, which is the first major exhibition of LACMA's holdings of
Middle Eastern contemporary art—the largest such institutional collection in
the United States. In recent years, the parameters of Islamic art at LACMA have
expanded to include contemporary works by artists from or with roots in the
Middle East. Drawing inspiration from their own cultural traditions, these
artists use techniques and incorporate imagery and ideas from earlier
periods. As the first of a two-part
exhibition program, Islamic Art Now features 25 works—including photography,
sculpture, video, and installation—by 20 artists from Iran and the Arab world. Most
of the works in Islamic Art Now have never been displayed previously at LACMA. Below are two that were very noteworthy and caught our attention.............................................
Shirin Neshat, Speechless, 1996
Shirin Neshat is perhaps the best-known artist of the Iranian diaspora
following the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Born in Qazvin, she left Iran in 1974 at
the age of 16 to study in the United States. Neshat returned to Iran in 1990,
and much of what she saw and experienced informed her first major body of work,
the photographic series Women of Allah. The series is comprised of black-and-white
images of chador-clad women, often the artist herself, covered with text in black
ink, and frequently focusing on different body parts—face, feet, hands, eyes.
Neshat has noted the recurrence of four symbolic elements in this series: veil,
gun, text, and gaze. She intends these images to contradict a western notion of
Muslim women as diminished and desexualized by the veil and disempowered by
their faith.
Wafaa Bilal, Chair, 2013
Wafaa Bilal is an assistant professor at New York University’s Tisch
School of the Arts, who fled Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 1991. Known
internationally for his provocative performative and interactive works, Bilal came
to the attention of a wider audience in 2010 when he had a camera surgically
implanted in the back of his head. Entitled 3rdi, Bilal transmitted images to
the web 24/7 in part as a statement on surveillance, the mundane, and the things left behind. His latest
series—Ashes—depicts in photographs his handmade miniature reconstructions of
media images that document buildings destroyed in the Iraq war (2003–13); the
models are covered with ashes, including human ashes. These powerful photographs
capture and reflect Bilal’s own reactions to the war as an exiled Iraqi who witnessed
the devastation from the relative safety of America.
