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The Harvard Art Museums

5/20/2018

I recently had the pleasure of visiting the Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge, MA. I highly recommend you check it out as they have a wonderful and varied collection of artwork from earliest times to the present.

The Harvard Art Museums are actually comprised of three art collections; The Fogg, the Busch-Reisinger, and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum. The three were combined in a beautiful space designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop. The Museum's literature stated that it is their hope that their collections and unique spaces inspire new ways of looking and thinking about art for all visitors.

I started out off the main atrium to explore the European Art of the 19th and 20th Century and the Modern and Contemporary Art galleries.

I came across this painting to the right by Paul Cezanne called, "Study of Trees." It is oil on canvas and is from the early 20th Century. When I think of Cezanne, I often think of impressionism, delightful landscapes, or beautiful bowls of fruit! This painting demonstrated Cezanne's role in connecting 19th Century Impressionism to 20th Century Cubism. I love how the trees are represented here because he was able to depict depth using diagonal shapes and brushstrokes that hint at movement and depth. There are dashed lines that define the tree trunks on both sides of a country road. It's no wonder why Harvard has this painting as part of its collection; Although it's not as well-known as Van Gogh's "Starry Night" or Monet's "Waterlilies," it's one of the most important paintings from this time period and the history of abstract painting.

Pablo Picasso's "Still Life with Inkwell" Oil on Canvas, c. 1911-1912. Picasso applied cubism to the traditional still life.

Pablo Picasso's "The Pomegranate" Oil on Canvas, 1911-1912.

Here is Willem de Kooning's 1937-1938 Oil on Masonite painting titled, "Untitled (The Cow Jumps Over The Moon). I learned that de Kooning was trained as a commercial artist and his artistic styles move back and forth between abstract and figurative methods. This painting below is one of his earlier works, which reminds me of Joan Miro's work to some degree. His later artwork, for which he is more well-known, is more gestural and epitomizes the abstract expressionism movement.

Georgia O'Keefe, "Red and Pink" Oil on Canvas, 1925. Perhaps an abstraction of flower petals.

Vincent Van Gogh's "The Blind Man" Watercolor on paper mounted on canvas, 1903.

Joan Miro in his painting to the right titled, "Mural" made in 1935 plays with the idea of surrealism. Animal-like figures are seen here on an oddly shaped background with areas of pure, flat color.

If you haven't seen my blog on Barcelona Art, there is a ton I included on my visit to the Joan Miro Museum. Click Here to read my blog on Barcelona Art!

You wouldn't know it based on the type of artwork he became famous for, but the painting below is by the artist, Roy Lichtenstein. "The Capture of Roanoke Island" was painted in 1953, well before he developed his pop art comic-book style of art.

I came across several sculptures by the artist David Smith. For those of you who read my blog about the Downtown Art Scene in Los Angeles, I included a David Smith sculpture. You can read it HERE!

I learned that due to a generous donor, the Harvard Art Museums have the largest and most complete collection of David Smith's artwork than any other museum in the world. David Smith lived in Indiana and Vermont and although he began his career as a painter, he created many many sculptures. In the photo to the right, Smith's sculpture, "Flight" that was created in 1951 and depicts birds in flight. What's interesting is his use of both welding steel and casting bronze, and his process to paint the former and patina-ting the latter.

David Smith's "Detroit Queen" Bronze, 1957.

David Smith's "Doorway on Wheels" Steel with Paint, 1960.

Three Untitled works of art by David Smith created in 1959.

David Smith's "Birthday" 1954, "Books and Apple" 1957, and "Bird" 1957. All Sterling Silver.

I stared at this painting below "Grazing Horses IV (The Red Horses), painted in 1911 by Franz Marc for quite a long time. Not because I love horses, but rather it struck me as fascinating. Franz Marc painted horses a lot, and was known for his preoccupation with animals. I learned that this particular painting was actually his first work of art to enter a museum's collection, the same year it was made. What struck me was his use of unnatural colors in a very natural scene. It's hard to see in the photo, but I was intrigued with the use of bright red in only one or two spots on the horses.

Here to the right is one of my favorites... Piet Mondrian's "Composition with Blue, Black, Yellow, and Red," painted in 1922. Many people have commented that much of my own artwork reminds them of Mondrian's artwork. In this blog article from the Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, I discuss this in greater length. CLICK HERE to read that blog article!

Claude Monet's "Red Boats, Argenteuil" Oil on Canvas, 1875. This painting is notable because x-rays of this painting show that Monet reworked this painting a few times.

Georges Pierre Seurat, "Seated Figures, Study for A Sunday Afternoon On The Island of La Grande Jatte" Oil on Panel. 1884-1885. This is one of about 30 oil studies made in preparation for his masterpiece.

Henri Matisse, "Geraniums" Oil on Canvas, 1910.

Max Beckman's self-portrait in 1927, "Self-Portrait in Tuxedo" Oil on Canvas.

Gustav Klimt's "Pear Tree, 1903, later reworked by the artist. Interesting to note that Klimt chose to use a square canvas, which at the time was not typically used for landscapes.

In the Foreground, Alexander Calder's "Little Blue Under Red" c. 1950 Painted Steel.

Three Sculptures: "Head of a Woman" by Aristide Maillol; Degas' "Grande Arabesque, Third Time, modeled c 1885-90, cast after 1920; and Charles Despiau's "Seated Man, Statue for the Monument to Emile Mayrisch" c. 1930.

To the Right:
Jackson Pollock's "No. 2" mixed Media on Canvas, 1950.

No 2 is an example of Pollock's fully developed paint-pouring/splatter-painting/dripping techniques.

He put raw, un-stretched canvas on the floor and worked from above, pouring, dripping, flicking, and spraying paint onto the surface of the canvas. The movement shown here is a record of his bodily movements as he produced the painting.

Franz Kline's "High Street" Oil on Canvas, 1950. It's made with House-painters' brushes and inexpensive enamel house-paint.

Mark Rothko's "Untitled" Oil on Canvas, 1947. A precursor to his well-known, iconic style, of two or three tiers of brightly colored rectangles.

Below is Jasper johns' "The Dutch Wives", encaustic on canvas, created in 1975. If you haven't read my blog article on the Jasper johns retrospective exhibition at The Broad Museum in Los Angeles, you can find it HERE.

Josef Albers' work here below shows his thought process of how art is a type of research. With the same format of squares within squares, he tested a vast array of color combinations; He took all this research and theoretical findings to publish his book in 1963, "Interaction of Color," which is an essential resource for art and design students to this day.

Josef Albers: "Homage to the Square: Against Deep Blue" 1955 and "Homage to the Square: Four Greens" 1964. Both Oil on Masonite.

Auguste Rodin's "the Walking Man" Bronze, created around 1899-1900.

Above is Richard Serra's "Untitled (Corner Prop Piece) created in 1969. It's a sculpture comprised of a lead plate and pole and an example of minimalism and the use of industrial materials in fine art. Serra makes use of the room's architecture including the walls and floor, essential to the sculpture.

Claude Monet's "Red Mullets" Oil on Canvas, painted around 1870. I love this painting as it's so different from a typical Monet landscape, or waterlilies painting.

Here are three painting studies by John Singleton Copley, all painted in 1787. I learned that the city of London commissioned the artist to create a large painting commemorating Britain's victory over the Spanish and French at the Siege of Gibraltar in 1782. These portraits are character studies and experiments of his in composition. Looking at this from a contemporary art perspective, I love how the portraits are "unfinished."

Below is a wonderful painting from a German artist that I was unfamiliar with named Corinne Wasmuht. It is titled, "50 U Heinrich-Heine-Str." oil on wood and created in 2009. The painting is a portrayal of Berlin's Heinrich Heine Street subway station and its surrounding neighborhood. It's hard to tell scale from photographs, but this is a huge painting and it's scale immerses the viewer, but the paintings various perspective points and different scales of objects also disorient the viewer. It's really a magnificent painting and I can see why it was gifted to Harvard's Busch-Reisinger Museum.

Ai Weiwei's "258 Fake" created in 2011 features 12 monitors that show 7,677 photographs taken between 2003 and 2011

Below are some fascinating samples taken from the Forbes Pigment Collection. Edward Forbes was the director of the Harvard Art Museums from 1909 to 1944. During his tenure, he traveled the world, collecting a large number of pigments for the library. Today, the Pigment Collection contains more than 2,500 samples that are beautifully displayed in cabinets on the 4th floor and are used to this day to help identify pigments used in historical artworks.

I came across this wonderful, short video on the Forbes Pigment Collection that was created about 2 years ago. Check it out!

Inventur--Art in Germany, 1943-55

The special exhibition at the Harvard Art Museums was titled, "Inventur--Art in Germany, 1943-55" and focuses on modern-period artists who remained in Germany during World War II and the Holocaust. The exhibit runs through June 3, 2018 on the 3rd Floor of the Museum.

The artwork in the exhibition is in some way, a representation of the individual artist's response to Nazi censure, which prevented artists from exhibiting and/or selling their artwork. I found it fascinating that the exhibition was called Inventur, meaning inventory, because it is a collection of the artist experience for over 50 artists.

With Hitler's rise to power, there was a major government-driven effort to align individuals and organizations with the doctrine of the Nazi State. Many teaching artists lost their jobs. The well-known art school, The Bauhaus School of Art and Design, was closed under Nazi Rule. Artwork that was not approved of by the Nazi State was coined "Degenerate Artwork." If artists chose not to leave Germany or were not permitted to leave Germany, they had no choice but to create art privately.

Hans Uhlmann's "Male Head" Steel sheet, 1942.

Ernst Wilhelm Nay's "Embers" Oil on Canvas, 1951.

Thomas Grochowiak's "Technical District I, Blue" Oil on Canvas, 1951.

Jeanne Mammen's "Falling Facades (Berlin Ruins), oil on cardboard, 1945-1946.

Konrad Klapheck's "Typewriter" Oil on Canvas, 1955.

Fritz Winter's, "Figuration in Front of Blue" Oil on Canvas, 1953.

Willi Baumeister's "Large Montaru" Oil with synthetic resin on board, 1953.

Willi Baumeister's "Growth of the Crystals II" Oil with resin and putty on board, 1947/1952.

For more information about The Harvard Art Museums, please visit their website: www.harvardartmuseums.org. I definitely recommend visiting the Museum as you're in for a wonderful experience!

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