Art Weekend
We got away to Portland for a few days to wind up our summer before school begins again on Tuesday for Melissa and, well, I guess another week begins for me. I still haven't gotten to the Bullseye Connection Gallery over near the Brewery Blocks, which is silly considering how close it is to Powell's. But we did visit the Portland Art Museum.
[Why do I always type in ".com" when searching for museum web sites? When is a museum ever a .com?]
PAM had an exhibit of Joan Miró's sculpture and cocktail napkin scratchings which left me rather cold. Sure, it is surrealism and all, but a little too simplistic when you get right down to it. Especially when you consider the scribbled "idea" in connection with the final result. They remind me too much of Picasso's bike handles twisted into the vague shape of bull's head and, at that point, it stops being art and is just a glorified lawn ornament.
Unlike Thomas Moran's picture of the Grand Canal in Venice. Moran, to me, has always been an American landscape painter and I never even knew he'd been to Venice (much less done paintings of the city) until I saw this one in the Portland Art Museum.
Reminds me so much of Turner's watercolors from Venice. No, actually, reminds me so much of the city itself.
And, speaking of Venice, yesterday we went to the Tacoma Art Museum and dutifully admired the prodigal son's latest glass creation. I have to admit a certain ambivalence to Chihuly's work, a "feh" which rises from the fact that, at this point, most of it is done by the hands of others. It tweaks my sensibility of what an artist should do before calling work his own. But there is a certain grandeur and majesty to it all that commands a bit of admiration and respect. Not to mention just some simple appreciation for the beauty of the colors.
