Several More Gouache Paintings

Continuing my exploration with gouache, I recently made these paintings below.


À la russe, III 

À la russe, mini series continued as the crisis between the Russia and Ukraine deepened.  I hope the Russian menace will abate soon.


Male Torso 

I also want to explore making life drawings with gouache and this "Male Torso" above was one of such efforts.


Floating 

Finally, I focused on the coloration in this "Floating", which also examined spatial relationship.


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My Favorite Sculptures in le Jardin des Tuileries

Le Jardin des Tuileries, the former royal garden dated back to Catherine de Medicis in the 16th century, situates between the Louvre and Place de la Concorde, is a wonderful place for Parisians to promenade, meet, and display.

It also hosts a wonderful museum, Musée de l'Orangerie, built to host the amazing series of Claude Monet's Les Nymphéas (Water Lilies).  Besides major works by Monet, it also collected many important late 19th - early 20th century modern works (Paul Guillaume collection).

In 2000, when I visited Paris for the first time, Musée de l'Orangerie was closed for renovation and only during my second trip to Paris in 2008, was I able to see Les Nymphéas and other amazing works inside the oval-shaped museum.

Artworks in Paris were not confined inside museums, therefore we saw many sculptures in the ground of Jardin des Tuileries.

The most amazing one was a gigantic modern work, by American artist Richard Serra, Clara-Clara, which consisted of two giant curved steel plates, forming an opened doorway, echoing the carriage driveway behind it.  The sculpture sat in the center of the elongated Jardin and from the opening of the "arms", seen from the side of the reflection pond, one could see the distant obelisk in the Place de la Concorde.  Seen across the pond, one could see a tall jet of water fountain competing with the obelisk.







The fun part was walking around it, examining the changing shapes from various vantage points, and walking through the opening and to admire the "strategically placed" obelisk in the middle of the opening of the outstretching sensuous arms of Clara-Clara.


Photo courtesy: Tybo


Photo courtesy: Tybo


Photo courtesy: Tybo

The second favorite sculpture of mine in le Jardin des Tuileries was Le Baiser (The Kiss) (1934 cast of the marble original), by omnipresent Auguste Rodin. It was a typical Rodin, monumental, sensual, life-like and larger than life.  Despite the metal material, and the though marvelous but unnatural green patina, the lovers were every inch the flesh and blood beings.


Photo courtesy: Sarah Stierch

My Favorite Museum Collection Series
>> My Favorite Museum Collection Series 76: My Favorite Drawing and Painting in Musée Cognacq-Jay, Paris
<< My Favorite Museum Collection Series 74: My Favorite Artwork at Musée de Cluny - Musée national du Moyen Âge, Paris

List of My Favorite Artworks in the Museums I've Visited  


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My Favorite Artwork at Musée de Cluny - Musée national du Moyen Âge, Paris

Not far from Jardin du Luxembourg in Paris, lies Musée de Cluny, officially known as Musée National du Moyen Âge, which boasts many magnificent ancient artifacts.  Even for people who are not usually interested in the Medieval era, if they are open-minded enough, they might be pleasantly surprised by many surprisingly vital things they'll encounter there, and might even re-assess their own notions of stilted Middle-Age.

My favorite collection in this museum was a group of six tapestries, under the name of La Dame à la licorne - The Lady and the Unicorn: My only desire and five senses. In the dark room, the pale pink tapestries glowed with unbridled sensuality and it was the culmination of the chivalry culture of the romantic era.


Photo courtesy of Atlant


La Dame à la licorne: A mon seul désir, Musée National du Moyen Âge, Paris, 2008

My second favorite object was harder to pick amongst numerous wonderful things and finally I decided on an ancient tile with a bird dominating the center of the square, painted light on maroon colored background. Evocative pose, rich coloration, fluid lines, economical yet rich in detail, it was startlingly modern and authentically ancient. 

My Favorite Museum Collection Series
>> My Favorite Museum Collection Series 75: My Favorite Sculptures in le Jardin des Tuileries
<< My Favorite Museum Collection Series 73: My Favorite Artworks at Musée National Eugène Delacroix, Paris

List of My Favorite Artworks in the Museums I've Visited  

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Recent Installation and Gouache Paintings

Recently, I make another installation - an origami white dress, trussed up by strings leading to different directions, and nailed to the back of a frame.

It was a found frame, with the original artwork removed, though I kept the battered backing material, which was flaked and a bit tainted in a very interesting way, as an evocative backdrop.  The pose of the dress was simple and serene, yet the splash of red ink all over the dress and on the backdrop, hinted at some dark undertone:


Constraints
Paper, Gouache, and Threads on Paper, with Wooden Frames  
21.25" x 17.25" x 2"

The recent gouache paintings I made in last several weeks include some still life, landscape, figurative and some semi-abstract paintings:


White Rose                                      Iceberg


Dressing                                         Sketch of a young man


Reeds


À la russe, I


À la russe, II

The last two pieces were inspired by Vladimir Putin's Russia.


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My Favorite Artworks at Musée National Eugène Delacroix, Paris

Musée National Eugène Delacroix (Musée Delacroix) in Paris is a modest museum which though contains works from nearly every phase of Delacroix’s career, covering many of his themes, along with some of his memorabilia.

According to the museum, "Magdalene in the Desert, exhibited at the 1845 Salon and one of the museum’s major paintings, is a most unusual religious composition, as compared to Education of the Virgin, painted in Nohant in 1842. The museum also boasts the artist’s only three attempts at fresco, which were done in Valmont (1834)."

These paintings, sketches and other works were intimate and quite personal, comparing to his more monumental works often encountered in more exalted institutions, such as Musée du Louvre. Incidentally, one of my two favorite artworks in Musée Delacroix was a preparation work for his gigantic La Mort de Sardanapale (Death of Sardanapalus), collected by Louvre. 



Though concentrating on a small slice of the huge final composition, this study conveyed the same strange mix of terror and abandon.  With its exceptionally delicate coloration, its figures looking like exotic birds in strange poses, this study was eerily beautiful and even evoked the calm world of Albrecht Dürer's meticulous watercolor still life.  Being a romanticist, Delacroix's work though was naturally more sweeping in execution; being a study, it also carried impressionistic traits.

My second favorite work there was another study for another historical moment - Study for Mirabeau Confronts the Marquis de Dreux-Brézé, during the French Revolution, over the procedure therefore substance of the congress of three estates.



This study was both energetic and economic.  The eloquence of the painting lay in the restrained bod languages of the grandees, whose multiplying dark frocks and gray wigs foreshadowed the mob scenes soon to come, and the gilded panels and roof of the interior clashed violently with the somber and unsmiling figures of the confronting parties.  Despite being a sketch, it was a masterpiece, similar to many very revealing and satisfying study sketches by Pieter Paul Rubens. 

The final composition of this work is in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen.  One day I'd love to see it there, and to see whether it would be one of my two favorites there or not.

My Favorite Museum Collection Series
>> My Favorite Museum Collection Series 74: My Favorite Artwork at Musée de Cluny - Musée national du Moyen Âge, Paris

<< My Favorite Museum Collection Series 72: My Favorite Artworks at Maison de Victor Hugo, Paris 

List of My Favorite Artworks in the Museums I've Visited  

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George W. Bush, the Artist and the Apocalypse

Former US president George W. Bush (2001-2009) is immersing himself in the art world and has created some rather surprisingly interesting portraits of world leaders, most of them he encountered during his presidency, arguably the worst one ever in the US history.

Image source: George W. Bush Center

During his horrible and incompetent presidency, George W. Bush (GWB) was often criticized as an imbecile ninny occupying a high office due to his fabulous family connection - his father Georg Bush was the president of the US from 1989 to 1993.  To me, that argument was incorrect and way too benevolent.  GWB did many horrible things not due to his stupidity, but his fundamental believe in those horrible things.

To me, this painting of mine below, The Triumph of Saint George, created during the time he was drumming up the invasion of Iraq in 2003, reflects what he was; the painting also jump-started my ongoing Apocalypse Series, to commemorate the miseries of humankind.


Triumph of Saint George, Oil on Canvas, 48" x 30", 2003

GWB was surely not stupid, and to his credit that he started to learn to appreciate art in his retirement.  Too bad, nobody had convinced him before his political ascendency that his spending more time in his own studio and many museums, rather than in Oval Office, would have benefit the humanity more, much, much more.

It was just as tragic and regrettable as the Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien's refusal to admit the artistically frustrated young Adolf Hitler.

C'est la vie.


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My Favorite Artworks at Maison de Victor Hugo, Paris

After visiting Balzac's former residence, a trip to Maison de Victor Hugo, Paris was in order and there, in the crazily decorated old flat in a fashionable building with a lovely courtyard in Le Marais district, I was amused by some quite idiosyncratic decorations and odd collections. 

Amongst such clutters, several sculptures, paintings and prints stood out and my two favorites there were a bust of Hugo and a painting depicting the battle between classists and romanticists during the performance of his play, Hernani.

The Victor Hugo, buste héroïque was once again by the great French sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840-1917).  This bronze sculpture presented the triangle-shaped bust of a lean and brawny Hugo, without clothes and stripped of his arms, precariously perched on a small marble stand.  Head bent down, he was lost in his own thoughts, not dissimilar to Le Penseur, the most celebrated work by Rodin.


Victor Hugo, buste héroïque, Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), 83 x 56 x 65 cm, 1902 (2), 1908, Bronze (fonte Alexis Rudier)

The painting, Performance of 'Hernani' by Victor Hugo in 1830, aka, The Battle of Hernani, by Paul Albert Besnard was quite virtuosic in depicting an animated crowd scene; if its artistic value was not the most accomplished, it did command viewers' attention and was hard to forget, and that made it a wonderful work. 

Hernani was Hugo's romantic play, during its premiere, in anticipating attacked from the classists, Hugo enlisted the support of fellow romanticists to combat the opposition and indeed the play had caused fights amongst the audience.  It was one of the watershed moment of the course of artistic development.  The painting captured the maniac atmosphere of that significant moment wonderfully. 


Performance of 'Hernani' by Victor Hugo in 1830, Paul Albert Besnard

My Favorite Museum Collection Series
>> My Favorite Museum Collection Series 73: My Favorite Artworks at Musée National Eugène Delacroix, Paris

<< My Favorite Museum Collection Series 71: My Favorite Artworks in La maison de Balzac, Paris

List of My Favorite Artworks in the Museums I've Visited

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