My Favorite Paintings at Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena

What I enjoyed most at Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena near Los Angeles were paintings by masters old and relatively new.

My favorite painting was The Black Shawl (Lorette VII) (1918) by Henri Matisse. This Matisse was striking with his surprising color harmony, his usual motifs of exaggerated flowery patterns, and the strange sensuality he achieved. The lying figure, Lorette, we assumed, in her provocative yet pensive pose, looked like mermaid or a siren, thanks to her form-fitting sheen black gown laced with bold floral patterns resembling large scales, and an extra length of fabric around her bare feet, like a tumbling tail. The figure in black really stood out on the pale red bedding, covered with large pale green leafy patterns, whose color reflected on the slightly more yellow tinged walls wrapping around her bed and thrusting the sitter to the viewer. The siren, looking directly into the viewer, had a sad expression on her face, slightly accusative, for neglect, or boredom, perchance? One could easily imagine this Lorette as being in a harem. A strange work of understated and seductive beauty, and enigmatic sentiment.


The Black Shawl (Lorette VII), 1918, Henri Matisse (1869-1954)

My second favorite was a portrait by Rembrandt van Rijn of his son Titus as a little boy, titled as Portrait of a Boy (1655-60). This unnamed boy, in his brown tunic, big black velvet hat with red feathery or flowery decoration, small band of white laced collar, with his soft blond hair, pink cheeks, gentle smile, was most angelic, adorable, and somewhat worrisomely vulnerable. The love, adoration, and worry from the doting father was most evident and touching.




Portrait of a Boy, 1655-60, Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669)


My Favorite Museum Collection Series
>> My Favorite Museum Collection Series 158: Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin
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List of My Favorite Artworks in the Museums I've Visited

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My Featured Painting "Apprehend"

As if I had anticipated a gloomy election season to conclude this year, back in late January, I worked on and finished a painting titled Apprehend, featuring a lonely bird, enclosed in a disorienting and confused space, sketchily defined by indistinct horizontal and vertical stripes of various thickness and shades of blue, black and yellow.


Apprehend
Oil on Canvas
20”x24”
Completed in 2016
© Matthew Felix Sun
www.matthewfelixsun.com

The bird, in cautions pose, peers into the uncertain distance, seemingly full of expectation and comprehension, an apt metaphor of people in this traumatic post-election time.

Originally posted on matthewfelixsun.com

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My Favorite Paintings at the Broad Museum, Los Angeles

I was lucky enough to be able to visit the Broad Museum in Los Angeles shortly after it opened its doors. It was the manifestation of the mind-boggling concentration of wealth in this country; it also argued for the continuation of patronage system even in our era, and more favorably, the vital importance of educating supremely wealthy patrons, the eventually arbiters of fine art.

The Broad Museum truly impressed visitors with its glittering contemporary art collections. My favorite was Untitled [New York City] (1953) by Cy Twombly. This 1953 piece, in contrast to Twombly's usual repetitive cursive inscriptions, mimicking chalk on green blackboard, was more painterly, but was just as hypnotic, largely due to the numerous thin black lines crisscrossing over three three "pillars", which dominated the pale gray/white canvas. Those heavily outlined pillars were encircled with horizontal rings of various sizes, angles and heights, and those rings enmeshed with aforementioned thin wires, thus added texture and even mystery to the painting, so as some drippings over those pillars. Despite the limitation of colors and the similarity of shapes, those pillars and rings were not monotonous, due to some obvious variations — the first pillar was encircled by an additional ring plus an additional heavy vertical line drawn down from the lower ring, the middle one had a blunter tip, while and last one had a sharply angled tip. These pillars were also unevenly spaced and angled, and such unevenness helped to create some sense of movement, imbalances, and dynamics. Finally, those pillars did resemble some wounded and bleeding fingers, and this was just my own perception.


Untitled [New York City], 1953, Cy Twombly

My second favorite was Falle (Trap) (2001) by Neo Rauch, a German artist hailed from Leipzig. This painting was also somewhat an departure — instead of the artist's typical combusting array of saturated colors, Falle was essentially a bi-tonal piece, dominated by pale yellow background and some large patches in deep navy blue, modulated by a few small thin stretches of bright green over some pipes and hoses, and a cartoon callout. The objects of this painting was a seemingly daily routine — a well dressed and groomed man holding something like a deformed trampoline, with two or thee small dogs or cats either pulling the trampoline or feeding off it; a woman leaning over away from the viewer, at the point of tipping over metal rail, towards a casually dressed man, who was holding a pole as if rowing, though he was on solid ground, or it seemed. A heart-shaped deep blue object hovered in the sky, with a long green tube attached to it, like an aircraft readying to suck up more petroleum. Everything we saw was ambiguous in situation or intention, and was to pin down. Perhaps, that comfortable suburbian life was the trap. In the subject matter, this painting was consistent with his oeuvres —  some seemingly mundane setting and activities in nondescript suburbia, actually fostered something alienating, disturbing and even sinister.


Falle (Trap), 2001, Neo Rauch


My Favorite Museum Collection Series
>> My Favorite Museum Collection Series 157: My Favorite Paintings at Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena
<< My Favorite Museum Collection Series 155: My Favorite Paintings at Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles

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

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My Favorite Paintings at Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles

The relatively modest Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles didn't overwhelm people with blockbuster pieces, as other Museums in Los Angele often did, yet it invited conversation and thoughts with some austere pieces.

My favorite was a mixed media on paper titled Dêpouille (Skin or Human Remains) (1945) by French artist Jean Fautrier (1898-1964). The strongest impression of this abstract piece was the understated, appealing palette, which consisted of pale brownish yellow and red, underneath some intermittent light blue wash. The main object, occupying almost the entire paper, shaped like a giant pearl upon its irregular shaped mother shell. Yet, once the title sank in, this amorphous object took on a sinister meaning and darker tone, and the imagined sheen of a piece of jewel morphed into rough and cracked mass, symbol of the degeneration of bodies.


Dêpouille (Skin or Human Remains), 1945, Mixed media on paper mounted on linen, Jean Fautrier (1898-1964)

At first glance, Franz Kline (1910-1962)'s 1956 oil painting, Monitor, was a pure abstract piece, consisted only white and black paints. The wet over wet effect of the merge and interplay of these sharply contrasted colors was both dramatic and subtle. The boldness of the gigantic central black "beam" also contrasted wonderfully to a very thin dark stroke, fading into far distance, and aided by a small pole at the end of that disappearing stroke, thus added more focal interest to these ever entangled and extending objects, instantly a broad space was opened up for the viewer. After the dramatic impact of the high contrast had dissipated, I realized that one of those protruding object in the center of the canvas was actually indeed a traffic or security monitor, atop of a huge horizontal beam, pointing to unseen and perhaps unaware people, beyond the edge of the canvas. Beautiful and disturbing. 


Monitor, 1956, Oil on Canvas, Franz Kline (1910-1962)

My Favorite Museum Collection Series
>> My Favorite Museum Collection Series 156: My Favorite Paintings at the Broad Museum, Los Angeles
<< My Favorite Museum Collection Series 154: My Favorite Paintings at Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)

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

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My Favorite Paintings at Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)

What I enjoyed most at Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) were paintings from modern German masters.  My favorite was Bridge and Wharf (1945) by Max Beckman. This was a typical mature Beckmann in his most probing mold. This landscape confronted us with a section of a massive industrial bridge, bold and strong chrome colored beams imprisoned by thick black outlines, chilly looking, partially blocking the view of a narrow wharf, in which haphazardly moored ships of various sizes, shapes and placements. Behind this chaotic yet impressive tableau, there was an almost angry leaden sky, whose pale purple color, together with muted earth brownish green over the static water in the central strip of the canvas, heightened the brightness of the colors in the wharf, predominantly rich red on the bodies of some ships, and on an edge of a boat a small patch of thalo green, which also lent its special chilling allure to some celestial elements in the sky.  All those bright colors were also boldly outlined, similar to those beams of the bridge, with massive black strokes, which bound together the diverse elements and colors with its inexhaustible reaches like slithering arms of a giant octopus. A beautiful rendition of a disrupted world.


Bridge and Wharf, 1945, Max Beckmann (1884-1950)

Cows in the Lowland (1909) by Emil Nolde was an apparently idyllic pastoral world, with several cows gazing in a lovely meadow; yet, nothing was as apparent as it was — dark grass, unnaturally colored noble beasts, scattered flowers, a wall of light pink and blue sky, all in heavy impasto and painted with determined palette knife, verging toward disintegration, and formed a world in the shadow of hallucination and madness. A prophetic work.


Cows in the Lowland, 1909, Emil Nolde (1867-1956)

My Favorite Museum Collection Series
>> My Favorite Museum Collection Series 155: My Favorite Paintings at Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles
<< My Favorite Museum Collection Series 153: My Favorite Sculptures at J. Paul Getty Museum - Getty Villa, Los Angeles (Malibu)

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

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My Favorite Sculptures at J. Paul Getty Museum - Getty Villa, Los Angeles (Malibu)

Getty Villa by the sea was a heaven for lover of antiquities.  Among many Egyptian giants and Greek gods, I found most memorable a group of sculpture of a seated man and the flanking sirens, creatures of part bird and part woman. The real focal points were those ladies, whose careful postures belied their nature, as if they were in break from their fatal performance, and their nature was just a goodie goodie matron, or some prim figures from Victorian era, though they were from ancient Greece, dating to 350 - 300 B.C. The seating figure was a very plain and passive figure, therefore, my attention was fully on those two standing sirens, who on two legs, and large claws, instead of feet, looked very upright, though became a bit comical, when viewed on profile, with their stiff little tail stuck out below their hips, resembling ill-fitting coats, as if they were campaigning politicians in tails, during one of their eloquent and disingenuous speeches. Perhaps, that was what being sirens meant.




A Seated Poet and Sirens, Greek (Tarantine), Tarentum (Taras), South Italy (Place created), 350 - 300 B.C.

My second favorite was an even more ancient sculpture, titled Harp Player, from Early Cycladic, around 2700-2300 B.C. What so remarkable about this lucid rendition was how wonderfully proportioned and abstracted the little sculpture was and how poetic his or her postures were. There were a few wonderful dialogues, such as the contrasts between smooth and rounded curves and straight and abrupt angles, and between elements of thin and delicate, and that of thick and sturdy. The most memorable aspect, perhaps due to the ravage of time, was the small and ill-shaped head and the player's face, which was like a piece of cloud, with barely discernible features, as if the player had disappeared into an aural world of his/her own creation.


Harp Player, Early Cycladic, 2700-2300 B.C.


My Favorite Museum Collection Series
>> My Favorite Museum Collection Series 154: My Favorite Paintings at Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)
<< My Favorite Museum Collection Series 152: My Favorite Paintings at J. Paul Getty Museum - Getty Center, Los Angeles

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My Favorite Paintings at J. Paul Getty Museum - Getty Center, Los Angeles

What I found most interesting at J. Paul Getty Museum - Getty Center in Los Angels were European paintings, and my top choice was Portrait of the Marquesa de Santiago (1804) by Spanish painter Goya — a formal portrait of an aristocratic lady in dramatically contrasting black dress with golden braids, pink shoes, and white lacy mantilla, with provocatively exaggerated makeup, standing atop a hill, a closed fan in hand, and holding herself like a seasoned stage trooper.

Goya employed broad and quick brushstrokes to establish her black dress and rustic cottages in the low lying village at distance, seen behind tilting ground, which, along with stormy sky, contributed to establish a personality prone to self-dramatization. Despite Goya's loose brushstrokes, this full length portrait was still very realistic, though the sitter's face was curiously plastic and devoid of personality. Maybe Goya did capture his sitter rather too well.


Francisco Goya [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons
Portrait of the Marquesa de Santiago, 1804, Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (Francisco de Goya) (Spanish, 1746 - 1828)

I was also very impressed by Edvard Munch's Starry Night (1893), whose sweeping atmospheric sky, mysteriously-shaped mound and other objects on the shore, and the mirror-like glinty sea, often basked in a blue wash, gave us a sense what the beginning of everything might have looked like, and we were in the presence of some celestial phenomenon recorded with quick brushstrokes and varying thickness of paints of blue, green, maroon, and brilliant white, interlaced with some eloquent patches of almost naked canvas, where the paints thinned out. Altogether, those loosely applied pigments and vaguely suggested elements not only generated a shimmering atmosphere, but gyrating slow movements as well, and the viewers were dazzled by that.


Edvard Munch [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Starry Night, 1893, Edvard Munch (Norwegian, 1863 - 1944)


My Favorite Museum Collection Series
>> My Favorite Museum Collection Series 153: My Favorite Sculptures at J. Paul Getty Museum - Getty Villa, Los Angeles (Malibu)
<< My Favorite Museum Collection Series 151: My Favorite Paintings at Yale University Art Gallery

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

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