Our vist to the Met

On a recent trip to New York, my husband and I decided to visit the Met.  It was the final day of the Michelangelo exhibit, and I'd heard it was not-to-be-missed.

We've been to the Met many times, and I've learned you need to pick and choose what you want to see; it's unrealistic to expect to see everything in one day.  I discovered there was also a David Hockney exhibit, and since his 'Nichols Canyon' is maybe my all-time favorite painting, I knew that was on our itinerary.  Plus there was also a Thomas Cole exhibit, which interested my husband.  By the time we finished with those three exhibits, stopped for lunch, and explored several other galleries, our feet and bodies were done!  In the process, we totally missed the Joseph Cornell exhibit. Below is a Hockney painting that really grabbed me.

 Check out the amazing drawing this man is doing in the museum!  Wow!

Here's my overall impression of our day:  First of all, I never cease to be amazed at the scope of the Met.  Whew!! The museum is exhausting!!  If you've never been there, GO!  There's something for everybody. But don't expect to see everything in the museum in one day.  As for our day, I was blown away by the incredible Michelangelo work, but the Hockney paintings made me happy, and I'd love to see them every day. Cole's work is impressive, but not my personal taste.  My husband, as expected, loved it best.  He sat down and took a break for the first half of the Hockney exhibit.  Here's an intriguing early Hockney, and a lush Cole painting of Niagara Falls.

About the Michelangelo show specifically - my biggest takeaway was the realization of how incredibly impatient we are today.  The show was, as always with a popular exhibition, incredibly hard for a rather short person to view properly.  We went first thing in the morning, but it was still crowded, so some pieces were hard to see.  But still, the scope of the work, and what went into creating it, is mind-blowing.  I kept thinking about how much more time he spent on his studies for paintings, than I would ever imagine spending on a whole painting.  And I thought about students, who seem to love copying photos, and how much more info Michelangelo took in by studying the human body structure and doing multiple studies.  Awe-inspiring. I couldn't help but think of my favorite drawing and painting teachers from college, Alex Minewski and Alex Martin, who both gave sketchbook assignments such as to do endless articulated cube drawings of your hands. Practice, practice, practice!!

But still, I was most smitten with the Hockney paintings.  I have a large framed print of Nichols Canyon hanging in my living room, so I was tickled to see the real thing.  I love the print, but the painting... oh my!  Gorgeous!.  And so many of the others!  I'd love to show you them all!  The sense of humor in some older paintings, and the vibrancy in the newer ones - all I can say is WOW to the rich and dynamic color, and the feeling of being drenched in warm sunshine. Indulge me while I share a selection with you, starting with Nichols Canyon.

 

As for the rest of the museum, whenever I'm there I always stop and visit the Tiffany windows, but this time I saw some Tiffany vases and jewelry and such that I'd never spotted before; this place is just too darn big!!  Here's a selection of random pics from the day -

NYC, the Met, and an amazing special exhibit

 

Here I am, finally, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, where I returned a couple of days ago with a friend for just one day, because I wanted to finally see the Matisse exhibit, the one that I missed a month ago due to the big blizzard that send us home early.  Well this time I saw and loved the Matisse exhibit, and also saw another special exhibit that totally blew me away (which I will tell you about later in this post), but unfortunately they wouldn't allow photos in the special exhibitions, and at $50 for one exhibition book and $40 for the other, and a hefty weight and size for a day traveler trying to travel light, I didn't buy and bring home the books, and most of the postcards from the shows were not of the images that I wanted.  But anyhow, I still have a lot to show you, and tell you about.   But if you are in a hurry, scroll to the end of the post, about that special exhibit.

Meanwhile, while I've said it many times before, and probably will again, one more time won't hurt: the Met is simply an astounding museum, unmatched by any other art museum I have been to.  Huge, extensive, impressive, and awe-inspiring, and impossible to get through in one day. But we did what we could, and I will show you a sample of what we saw as we explored the museum.  We spent a bit of time in the galleries for 19th/early 20th century European art, though we didn't get through it all (how did I miss the Picasso rooms?!). Many of these images that follow are from those galleries, but not all.

Dubuffet

encaustic painting

 Even though I have no pictures, I want to tell you about that Matisse exhibit.  It was an unusual, interesting, and effective arrangement.  The paintings were arranged in pairs, side-by-side, representing different treatments of the same subject, the same pose.  It was interesting to see him paint and repaint the same exact pose over and over again, treating it differently each time.  Missing from the exhibit were works from his later years, the cutouts, but otherwise it was a well-represented cross-section of work from a brilliant artist!  Now back to the rest of the musuem...

Painting a Vermeer copy!

digitally altered image, sorry it's sideways!

 

Me in Jackson Pollock camouflage

Bonnard

Gauguin

Lichtenstein

David Hockney - I love this painting!

 Below are snippets from some Tiffany windows.  Gorgeous, so rich and vibrant.  The window posted sideways  here so I deleted it and left the detail images.

Sideways or not, just lovely.  There's an extensive and fabulous collection of sculpture at the Met.

sideways me and painting by Chuck Close

by Vuilliard, one of my favorite impressionists

and another Vuilliard

Georgia O'Keefe

and another - do you see the leg and eyeball that I see?

a bracelet!!

by Stuart Davis

 

I'd like this shelf above in my studio (if I HAD a studio ha ha!)

necklace w/opal, my birthstone.  LOVE!

The Met has an extensive Egyptian collection, including a temple and reflecting pool, and rooms and rooms of mummies and artifacts of all shapes and sizes.  The wig below is from the Egyptian wing.  There's also many other extensive collections - Greek, Roman, African, Asian, Middle Eastern, Medieval; arms and armor, decorative arts; Modern and Contemporary, American, European... what have I left out?

And below, views from the train ride to NYC, as we breezed along the Hudson River.  Views 2 and 3 are what is known as "The Palisades". 

 And, drumroll please... below are paintings from the amazing special exhibition titled Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity, newly on display at the Met.  These three images below are scans from postcards I purchased.  The actual dress from the first and second paintings below were both on display along with the paintings, as well as several other dresses, corsets, top hats, and more fashion items of the era.  I just love the first painting, by an artist unfamiliar to me.

The second painting by James Tissot, who, I swear, I had never heard of before, but who was prominently featured in this exhibition.  I was in love with basically every one of his paintings in the show.  Wonderful, just wonderful.

But the biggest surprise of the of the show was Monet, the same Monet we all know from waterlilies, Japanese bridges, cathedrals, and gardens.  These magnificent paintings of women, especially his wife Camille, in lovely dresses, were unlike anything I'd ever seen by Monet, absolutely spectacular, and showing a talent and skill that just blew us away.  A pair of paintings on one wall were sections from a massive painting.  One of them was so large it must have been painted  from a scaffolding.  The last painting in this post is a Monet, of his wife Camille.  It was the first painting in the exhibit, and the one featured on the exhibit signage, and the satin of her dress looked so real.  Other paintings showed sheer fabrics that you could see through, and textures that it seemed you could touch.  And the colors.  Oh, I was in awe!

In the Conservatory by Albert Bartholome

July: Specimen of a Portrait by James Tissot

Camille by Claude Monet

I believe this is a traveling exhibit, so maybe it could be coming to a museum in your part of the world!  If it does, go see it!  Many of the paintings are from museums in Europe that perhaps have not been seen in the US before.  I certainly had never seen most of them.  I think I may have to order that exhibition book.