French Painting

This Gericault a painting that has a number of mysteries in it related to Cezanne. The buildings maybe just French but look like Cezanne, but the figures are very much like early Cezanne.

The painting is very Classical I guess Poussin influenced, but also contains a Romantic element in the weather and swirling movement echoed on the Michaelangelo like figures. 

Shocking to me how Cezanne like this detail is.

Rousseau's painting is a much more Romantic painting in the strain leading to an American Ryder or Inness. The Delacroix adds a new color to this Romantic motion. And set it in opposition to Ingres Classical line and what can be seen here in Puvis de Chavannes.

Puvis a very modernized Classicism that later influences Picasso and countless others, again coming from Ingres.

Corot also mixes the Classical  solidity of Claude Lorrain with a realism which comes from his Roman plain air paintings and the Romantic mystery in the foreground figures.

Here the Plain Air light.

The everyday light of the moment is here beginning a trend in content bringing religious content into the everyday.

Corot goes into Courbet in so many differing strands. Influencing this Nude and landscape even the portrait that then also goes into Picasso.

The french painters are looking at nature and in to Art. This portrait has so much in it Hals, Manet later, Picasso, a certain line of Ingres, coming from Poussin and Lorrain.

The characteristics of this head seem to come from Corot and then onto Balzac. (meant to say Balthus)

Courbet takes everything from Corot and makes it Grand.

He takes out the Angel for a religion of the everyday.

A Courbet landscape. Which we now see go into Manet.

Its not so easy to say what happens here. He certainly plays on the green and black, nature and the encroaching urban reality?

More influences opening up like Goya?

The bravura brush of Goya and Hals is transmitted to Sargent and Henri in America.

This Boudin could be an early Monet, Manet is right there also as the reigning artist.

Monet and Impressionism sweep in a new era of painting.

New American Wing

The wonderful new atrium was finished a while ago.

The center piece today of this now newest opening installation, is the George Washington Crossing the Delaware and it's new big gold frame I think remade for this occasion.The refurbished rooms now jam packed with a historical overview hardly allow one to tell it wasn't always as this, with new floors and marble borders.

Sadly, the overcrowded rooms reduce the effect the Church and Bierstadts can have. The recent installation during this renovation in the Lehman Wing was much better, each painting on their own wall.

I feel the cramped quarters spotlights the craft and detail aspect of each painting, and it is conservative as a marching history is. I see paintings such as these all over the US in other Museums that actually look great like one could actually like early American painting.

This installation leaves many paintings out, like an Audubon, and Augustus Tack, two of the more interesting and abstract, I saw in the open storage. I guess somehow footnotes to this more general history?

So when did American painting become American?

This became my theme in this viewing.

I suppose the theme of naval painting is British-- this is a nice painting but recently Ive seen wildly interesting boat paintings and even on Antique Road Show  I saw a better one. Though these paintings at the Met are all in pristine condition.

The landscape is really wonderful and seeming original to my eye. Certainly seems a New World. The Churchs and Beirstadts which I usually like are not well shown-- any way didn't show up here on my notes.

I'd never seen this study or plain air painting by Thomas Cole. Though still looks more like Europe than New World to me. A beginning.

This painting by Thompson begins a strand that to me seems influenced by Goya. The genre carries into the following Mount and Bingham paintings below.  

This painting by Kensett carries the genre theme of the everyday into today in maybe Porter and Katz. I think this Twain like Tom Sawyer feeling American.

I felt Homer very illustrative as Hopper after him. Though obviously both have great paintings they didn't grab me today.

-- then these great examples, more abstract as landscape form for itself.

This  sketch by Church was really the most exciting thing. If this art is not alive today what good is it. It should be hung that way, as if artists today actually looked at it.

                                   

This Twatchman painting I have loved for 40 years.

Though this Ryder is just part of existence for me, the romantic mind along with Melville in America.

I left out the Chases and Hassams as they are just not as good as Monet or the other Impressionists and felt provincial. 

Manet also continued to exert his influence over the Ashcan-- Glackens, Bellows, and Henry but these examples are great American art.

Out of the Met's window.

de Kooning at MOMA

                                                   

These pictures are from the MOMA site and not all the ones I'd pick, though I like the examples.

Here he takes off, finding shapes he will repeat over and over in differing styles through his life. This seeming window at the bottom we also see over and over as what painter's call down space.

I liked these drawings as well as anything, as his painting is so based on drawing which I feel so important and why he lords above everyone and can compete with Picasso.

I think it interesting, the idea that he didnt know exactly what he was looking for as no one had done this as of yet and Meyer Schapiro apparently said something like "Bill I think this is it,  you can stop here..." It's a painting!

I think I like the women without their heads. And approaching the all over design. I had the idea that their heads are in the lower left and right corners. I went to see the Demoiselle de Avignon after, that's interesting and this maybe somewhat also like Charnel House paintings of Picasso.

These are probably the best, then...

These photos better than the actual paintings whose colors  are sadly sinking in. The bad light at the Modern doesn't help. Sad, as the subtlety is what is so wonderful.

Again I don't like the figures from this time as much, the clamdiggers. This more field painting is one of my favorites.

I was a visitor to de Kooning's studio around this time. I think everyone likes the de Koonings of their own time the best.

I feel this period under stated in the exhibition as there are many paintings from this time I love. This one not my favorite. I call these paintings "de Kooning skating in Heaven." 

He was very much the romantic searching, searching his whole life. Now in this viewing he seems very classical having found.