04-17-13 The Getty Center, Los Angeles

Prairie Art?

On the western outskirts of Clark, SD, (pop. 3,436) you will find 9 red and white automobiles that appear to have been abandoned in careful formation. If you ask me, this is art and I'd like to know more about the artist. Years ago, my son Jon, while working for our local newspaper, went looking for a story about the person who was responsible but ran in to a dead end.What does this installation mean? Well, like many works of art, there is the unknown intent of the artist and then there is the meaning the viewer gives it. For me, it is all about alienation, conformity and belonging. . . .

03-26-10 Cool Cat

This is my third post in six days from the Norton Simon Museum of Art in Pasadena. The museum was great but the sculpture garden was beautiful - espcially on a spring day in California. The bronze cat is a sculpture but the white trees also are a strong sculptural element in the garden.

Canon 5DII 1/100s f/4.5 ISO200 65mm

03-22-10 The Art Lesson

Oddly, I was reminded of the famous Rembrandt painting, "The Anatomy Lesson," when I was processing this photo. It was taken at the Norton Simon Museum of Art in Pasadena, California and it shows an art class pondering a work by Picasso.

03-18-10 Still Life

Here's another art gallery interior that is relaxing for me to look at. This photo is calm, quiet and suggests introspection. And yet there is a naked figure "looking'" my way. And are these "real" people sitting on the bench? Or are they reproductions of people sitting on a bench?

incidentally, the three paintings on the wall facing the camera are by Gaugin, Van Gogh and Cezanne. Paul Gaugin lived my current fantasy: he packed up his paints and moved to Tahiti to paint the native women. But I can't paint and I'm quite happy married to my native (Dutch/German/South Dakotan) woman.

Finally, if you've never been to the Minneapolis Institute of Art, where this photo was taken, you need to go.

02-04-10 He Has Horns!

This is Michelangelo's "Moses," and it is housed in one of the most unassuming places any great work art resides - the Church of St. Peter in Chains in Rome. Michelangelo was commissioned to do Pope Julius II's tomb and Moses was to be one of 50 sculptures to decorate the tomb. Humility? I don't think so.

The Pope ran out of money and the tomb was scaled back. But we got "Moses" out of the deal. Why the horns? Well, one account I've read says that the horns come from a mistranslation of the Old Testament. The Hebrew should have read "rays of light," not "horns."

Whenever I see a Michelangelo sculpture, I am struck first by how amazingly life-like the cold stone is. But I am also in awe of the physical feat it must have been for Michelangelo to wrest the figures from the stubborn Carerra marble.

07-18-09 Looking Through Art

Here's another one from Denver, Colorado. I was visiting the art museum and was captured by the construction of a new wing of the museum. The red structure that frames the two workers is itself a work of art. Check out this photo (which isn't mine) for the context and to see what the finished building looks like.

1/500s f/13.0 ISO400 56mm