My Favorite Paintings at Art Institute of Chicago

One of the largest art museums in the US, the Art Institute of Chicago dazzled visitors with its vast arrays of treasures.

My favorite was Saint Martin and the Beggar by El Greco, dating back to the beginning of the 17th century. The first impression of the painting was the freshness and cleanness — the rain-washed blue sky, the gleaming white pelt of the horse, the polished face, drape and armor of the well-groomed saint, and even the taut and well-scrubbed skin of the beggar — all these gave the painting an other-worldly purity, which was also heightened by the contrast to small muddy patches, such as the brown hill under their feet, and the shadowy distant hills and forest, seen only from underneath the stallion's belly. The viewpoint was very low, thus both figures, particularly that the mounted saint, hovered large almost like a super human, yet his humble and sweet face endeared him to the viewer and managed to bring  him back towards viewers. The narrow vertical format of the painting, which was almost filled completely with these two persons and the horse, was also noteworthy and memorable.


El Greco [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Saint Martin and the Beggar, 1597/1600, El Greco (Domenikos Theotokopoulos) (1541-1614)

The Art Institute was rightful to be proud of its Impressionism collections. One of the best of those was Arrival of the Normandy Train, Gare Saint-Lazare (1877) by French master Claude Monet. This painting, a bit unusual from others, was its industrial subjects and indoor setting. The steam permeated train station was awash in chilly blue light, and almost everything was off-focus due to the simmer of the heated air. Monet perfectly captured the chaos, excitement, and anxiety with the advent of modern technology and cold machinery.


Arrival of the Normandy Train, Gare Saint-Lazare, 1877, Claude Monet (1840-1926) 
Claude Monet [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons


My Favorite Museum Collection Series
>> My Favorite Museum Collection Series 144: My Favorite Paintings at Berkeley Art Museum / Pacific Film Archive
<< My Favorite Museum Collection Series 142: My Favorite Drawing and Artefact at Morgan Library & Museum in New York City

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

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My Favorite Drawing and Artefact at Morgan Library & Museum in New York City

Morgan Library & Museum in New York City is one of many jewels in that grand city.

I was great touched by a drawing study of Peter Paul Rubens, Seated Male Youth (Study for Daniel), done in lack chalk, heightened with white chalk, on light gray paper. This drawing, a preparatory work for painting Daniel in the Lions' Den, depicted the agonized youth in supplication. The heightened facial emotion and the tensed torso of the muscular sitter, the bold outlines, the effective shading, and the detailed and accurate facial and hand features, left a great impression on viewers. As usual, one could see Ruben's genuine touches and craftsmanship on his drawings and oil sketches, versus his monumental finished works, which often were completed by his assistants under his supervision.


Seated Nude Youth Seated Male Youth (Study for Daniel), Peter Paul Rubens
Black chalk, heightened with white chalk, on light gray paper
19 11/16 x 11 3/4 inches (500 x 299 mm)

Another marvelous thing I admired at Morgan Library & Museum was a cylinder seal and its impression, A Winged Hero Contesting with a Lion for a Bull, dating to Neo-Babylonian period (ca.1000–539 B.C.). From the rectangular impression, one could see the fine details of the proud hero, the roaring lion, and the hapless bull between the powerful rivals. The fine details of numerous curly formations of the hair,  the beard, the mane, the wings, and the claws, were all rendered with amazing control. The enigmatic cuneiform writing, helped to balance the composition, also added depth to the wonderful tableau.


A Winged Hero Contesting with a Lion for a Bull, Cylinder seal and impression
Mesopotamia, Neo-Babylonian period ca.1000–539 B.C.
Carnelian 38.5 x 18 mm

My Favorite Museum Collection Series
>> My Favorite Museum Collection Series 143: My Favorite Paintings at Art Institute of Chicago
<< My Favorite Museum Collection Series 141: My Favorite Paintings at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City

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

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- Morgan Library and Museum in New York City

My Favorite Paintings at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City was an iconic modern building, and I was a bit surprised to see some paintings from somewhat older era - early 20th century, which in current art market has almost become "classical".



My favorite painting was Saint-Séverin No. 3 (1909-10) by French painter Robert Delaunay (1885-1941). This monochromatic painting depicted the tall nave of the cathedral and the interlocking buttresses, elongated, soaring, resembling a giant pipe organ, or a glimpse of the hollow of abdominal cavity — vast, cavernous, seductive yet foreboding.


Saint-Séverin No. 3, 1909-10, Robert Delaunay [CC0 or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The other favorite of mine was a Cubism-influenced Paris par la fenêtre (Paris Through the Window) (1913) by Marc Chagall, who in his typical fashion, fancifully mixed together various motifs and elements — people, cat, village, window, city, his native Russia and Paris, folk art elements and cosmopolitan sophistication, and the sense of joy, freedom, anxiety and perhaps, malfeasance or even evil. Also very striking was the interplay of his vivid colors, though in a more muted way to his standards.


Marc Chagall, 1913, Paris par la fenêtre (Paris Through the Window), oil on canvas, 136 x 141.9 cm, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Source:  Guggenheim Collection Online [public domain]


My Favorite Museum Collection Series
>> My Favorite Museum Collection Series 142: My Favorite Drawing and Artefact at Morgan Library & Museum in New York City
<< My Favorite Museum Collection Series 140: My Favorite Paintings at Neue Galerie, New York City

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

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Featured Painting - One Fine Day

My 2007 oil painting One Fine Day soon will conclude its five-month long exhibition at at McGuire Real Estate Gallery in Elmwood District, Berkeley. This painting, in somewhat sickly moon light tone (pale Prussian blue), depicted a school of agitated and thrashing fish, tightly packed in confining space, bulging eyes telegraphing anguish, straining to escape of a deadly trap they had unfortunately fallen into.

The ironic title I chose, perhaps ought to be ascribed to some lucky fishermen. And that spoke the volume of the relationship of mankind and the unfortunate nature.

One Fine Day
Oil on Canvas
22" x 28"
Completed in 2007 

Originally posted on matthewfelixsun.com

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My Favorite Paintings at Neue Galerie, New York City

Practically a next door neighbor to the mammoth Metropolitan Museum, Neue Galerie in New York City was a modest and exquisite museum, which specializes in early twentieth-century German and Austrian art and design, and has become much wider known due to its addition of Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I by Gustav Klimt, after a landmark judgement over its ownership, claimed by Österreichische Galerie Belvedere in Vienna, and the original owner's heir, resided then in the US.

That Klimt was indeed amazing and mesmerizing; however, to me, the most engaging painting was a self-portrait by German painter Max Beckmann, Self-Portrait with Horn. This painting had all the hallmarks of this remarkable artist in his artistic maturity: bold black outlines, amazing interplay of light and shadow, clashing yet harmonious palette, economically abstracted forms and shades, somewhat stylized stiff arms and hands, and above all, an unflinching inspection of the sitter and primal emotions emitted from the painting. The artist as the subject was somber, severe, yet fearfully curious, gazing tentatively and intently into the mouthpiece of the gleaming white horn his stiff hand barely held, with his head boldly framed by the golden frames behind him on the wall, and compressed by the narrow space defined by a red partition at the right edge of the canvas — a picture of a man being challenged and confronted by unknown destiny and conditions. Though severe and slightly menacing, the painting did not depress or repel, rather embracing, due to its beautiful and warm coloration and wonderful tonal contrasts, and the rather confident and bold gaze of the sitter.

Max_Beckmann's_'Self-portrait_with_Horn',_1938-1940
Image courtesy of DASHBot [fair use]

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's Berlin Street Scene (1913) was an exercise of urban sophistication and wry irony. The painting was almost decorative, yet the seemingly elegant and harmonious existence could hardly conceal the inner angst, apathy, discontent or even contempt the people exhibited. Those stylized figures, with their fanciful dresses, particularly the head gears of those city women, telegraphed that the society Kirchner observed was perhaps both a decadent and depressing one, as however pleasant they looked, there were traces of ludicrousness and meaninglessness in them, which were equally manifested in the more broadly sketched and burdened people scurrying about in the background, and the composed, sure, and searching women in the center of the scene, and some men in the foreground who averted gazes from those glamorous women.  A wry commentary on the lack of human connection, or fluidity of genders in then Berlin?


Berlin Street Scene (1913), Ernst Ludwig Kirchner [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons


My Favorite Museum Collection Series
>> My Favorite Museum Collection Series 141: My Favorite Paintings at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City
<< My Favorite Museum Collection Series 139: My Favorite Paintings at The Frick Collection, New York City

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

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My Favorite Paintings at The Frick Collection, New York City

The Frick Collection in New York City excelled with its Old Master paintings, particularly some "official" portraits.

The most striking one was a startling portrait Lodovico Capponi by Agnolo Bronzino (1503-1572) – standing in front of a vast sensuous green velvet cloth, a fashionable and almost foppish youth, costumed in brilliant black silk tunic with white satin sleeves, with the handle of his sward provocative protruded from between his legs, gazed at viewers almost insolently.  This portrait perfectly captured the grace, insouciance, vitality and weakness of a well-to-do youth.


Bronzino [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Lodovico Capponi, 1550–55 by Agnolo Bronzino (1503–1572)
Oil on poplar panel
45 7/8 x 33 3/4 in. (116.5 x 85.7 cm)

Another interesting portrait featured a less ingratiating but much more fascinating subject - Thomas Cromwell of England, a supremely powerful, feared and even detested personality in Henry VIII's Tudor court.  The portrait, by the great Hans Holbein the Younger, caught the sitter at the apex of his ascension, before his ultimate downfall. Still, no matter how richly attired with fir-lined robe, and adorned with a huge ring inherited from his mentor, Cardinal Wolsey, the shrewd looking sitter still struck viewers as a cunning and formidable merchant, and content to be seen as such.  That ring was also a poignant reminder of the frivolity of royal favors, as Cromwell would follow precisely the trajectory of Wolsey, once ascended to the summit, he would had nowhere to go but down, and hard at that. This amazing painting was not only a great portraiture, but a cautionary story of the futility of pursuit of power and wealth.


Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/1498–1543) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Thomas Cromwell, 1532–33 Oil on oak panel (cradled) 30 7/8 x 25 3/8 in. (78.4 x 64.5 cm)

My Favorite Museum Collection Series
>> My Favorite Museum Collection Series 140: My Favorite Paintings at Neue Galerie, New York City
<< My Favorite Museum Collection Series 138: My Favorite Paintings at New York Museum of Modern Art (MOMA)

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

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My Favorite Paintings at New York Museum of Modern Art (MOMA)

One of my favorite museums is the New York Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), of whose early 20th century European painting collections I am particularly partial.

My most favorite was a triptych by the German painter Max Beckmann, the mystical and political Departure (1933-35). These beautifully rendered hallucinatory, menacing, foreboding, and just slightly hopeful and redemptive panels, aptly and sadly captured one of the most horrifying moments of human history. These paintings were the answers to the art's existential question.



Less tense, yet no less disquieting, an early Picasso, Boy Leading a Horse (1905-06) from his Rose Period, also registered with me highly. Without any covering and protection, a slender youth and a lean and graceful horse, both economically outlined and modeled, wandered in an abstract landscape — a pale pink expanse of a barren field under a grave and leaden sky.  The high horizon enabled the pink boy fully merged with the pink field thus a harmony, and that also contributed to make the atmosphere less menacing; rather, a prevalent melancholy and a tinge of sadness permeated the canvas. The subtle and subdued beauty, the quietly riveting drama generated by the contrasting colors and moods, made one's heart ache.




My Favorite Museum Collection Series
>> My Favorite Museum Collection Series 139: My Favorite Paintings at The Frick Collection, New York City
<< My Favorite Museum Collection Series 137: My Favorite Sculptures at Han Yangling (Han Dynasty Yang Tomb) in Xianyang, Shaanxi, China

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

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My Favorite Sculptures at Han Yangling (Han Dynasty Yang Tomb) in Xianyang, Shaanxi, China

The most famous burial ground in China, must be that of the First Emperor of Qin Dynasty, who employed a gigantic terracotta army to guard him in the afterlife.







In the ensuing Han Dynasty, one of the emperors employed an army of smaller scale and smaller statue. Instead of human-sized terracotta warriors, this so-called Jing Emperor could only afford to have earthen ware torso armies, with wooden arms, which by now have completely rotten away, thus this army of cripples of one-third of human size.  A pitiful and creepy looking army.









The most memorable figures are those riders sans horses, whose arched bow-shaped legs and the perpendicular torso formed a strange looking arrow, and the "arrow-point", the round head with a grinning face, completed this strange spectacle, small in stature, but large in impact.





The second amazing artifact was a hollow brick with a white tiger relief.  The fluid and delicate beauty of the noble beast was incredible and the accomplishment of the artist/artisan was of the highest order.




My Favorite Museum Collection Series
>> My Favorite Museum Collection Series 138: My Favorite Paintings at New York Museum of Modern Art (MOMA)
<< My Favorite Museum Collection Series 136: My Favorite Calligraphy and Monument at Great Mosque of Xi'an, China

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

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My Favorite Calligraphy and Monument at Great Mosque of Xi'an, China

There is a Great Mosque in Xi'an, China, though the main buildings had distinctive flavor of Chinese architecture, amidst Arab characteristics.

I loved a group of wooden scrolls hanging by the entrances to the main hall - gold-filled calligraphy carvings on blackened wood had a pleasing contrast and each character looked like a finely composed picture, perfectly balanced and centered, and full of flowing beauty.  Even the chipping of the black paints became well-integrated elements of the larger canvas.

I also liked very much a pavilion protecting a stele. The basic structure of the pavilion was Chinese, but the decorative abstract motifs were Arab; yet there were figures in the relief, and they looked typical Chinese!







My Favorite Museum Collection Series
>> My Favorite Museum Collection Series 137:  My Favorite Sculptures at Han Yangling (Han Dynasty Yang Tomb) in Xianyang, Shaanxi, China
<< My Favorite Museum Collection Series 135: My Favoritate Bronze Artifacts at Shaanxi History Museum, Xi'an, China

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

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