In Philadelphia, I went to two museums: the Rodin Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The Rodin Museum is pretty small, but they have several famous Rodin sculptures. One of the things that I am starting to realize is that there are castings of the same Rodin sculptures all over the place. I know that I have seen several of the pieces that they have in this museum in other places.
I particularly enjoyed this sculpture. It is very expressive.
"The Left Hand"- This is what my left hand looks like after playing The Cyclone!
I did not have much time at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. So I decided to just breeze through the special exhibits, and then so see the regular collection. Well as it turns out I was really taken with the special exhibits, and ended up with about 15 minutes to try to find my favorite artists in the rest of the museum.
I was particularly taken with the James Castle retrospective. I was fascinated by his story. He was born deaf and did not respond to teachers at the Idaho School of the Deaf. So he essentially never learned to communicate except through his art. His work is pretty simplistic, but really fascinating. I ordered the exhibit catalogue through Amazon, and I cannot wait to get back to Indiana so that I can read more about his life and work.
At some point during my time in Philadelphia, Mom told me about the Gee's Bend Quilt exhibit at the museum. She had seen pieces about it on TV and recommended that I go see it. Well having just spent ten years in Amish country, I felt like I had had enough of quilts. Well these are no Amish quilts. They are bright, bold and rather irregular, and they truly felt like works of art worthy of a museum. I was expecting to just look at a couple and ended up walking through the entire exhibit. Sadly I think that this was the last stop for this exhibit, but hopefully there will be another one. I pretty sure that Mom would love it.
I guess that I did not realize Picasso did a couple different musician paintings. Perhaps I should read an art history book.
Most everyone knows that my cousin Heather is an artist. Her exhibit that I saw in Riverside is one of the coolest exhibits of art that I will probably ever see. (And not just because we are related!) Well years ago she said something about art that has stuck with me through the years. In referring to Monet's paintings she likened them to, "vomit of a canvas". Well I like some of Monet's London paintings, but I have to say that she was pretty spot on with this one!
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