Art Appreciation

Longtime pal Barbara and I spent Saturday in Nashville. When I initially pitched the idea of a Nashville trip it was simply to see an art exhibit at the Frist Center for Visual Arts in Nashville. (We ended up doing lots more...I'll post that stuff later.) I read about the exhibit Monet to Dalí Modern Masters from the Cleveland Museum of Art and suggested a trip. This exhibit includes some works of Cézanne, Dalí, Degas, Gauguin, Matisse, Monet, Picasso, Renoir, Rodin, Seurat and Van Gogh. After only seeing photographs of their work and learning about them in high school Art History, it was quite thrilling to finally see some of their works in person. I was so excited to be able to see some of the work of these artists...in person and up close...the brushstrokes, the textures, the canvas, the cracks in the canvas, the colors, the way that some of the artists so skillfully used light in their paintings.

A photograph will never do any of these paintings justice. Van Gogh's Poplars at St. Remy, for example, is quite vibrant--he used very bold yellows, greens and blues in this painting. And...the paint is slathered on...he layered paint very thickly and it looked like he didn't always use a brush (as occasionally painters don't, of course), but instead frequently used a palette knife. It was disappointing to find reproductions of this painting in the gift shop and see that the poplars were a very pale yellow. Even this photo here doesn't do it justice. It was more bright yellow-orange (heavy on the yellow) than it was this pinky orange that you see here.

It was a bit entertaining for me to read the sign next to each painting. This one, for example, said something about how Van Gogh used bright colors to convey his excitement and enthusiasm for nature or springtime or something like that. A lot of the "insight" for each painting was amusing to me, because I am suspicious of its legitimacy. If I ever paint again (or engage in any type of artistic self-expression), I will also keep a diary so that people can't assume things about what I was thinking or feeling when I composed a particular work. About this one, my mental response was, "How do you know!?!? The man couldn't see!!!" (He suffered from cataracts later in his life.) So, maybe what is "regular" yellow to us needed to be really really really bright yellow for him. In any event, I don't recall the other Van Gogh works at the exhibit (if there were any). I specifically remember this one, because I got a small souvenir of this painting for someone.

After the Frist, we went over to The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. Later, we caught the show at the Grand Ole Opry. Stay tuned for those reports.