A visit to the art museum

By on October 25th, 2006

Owing to Swarthmore’s fall break schedule, the weekend before last was a
three-day one for me. I celebrated the extra day off by
visiting the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which was high on the list of
"things I’m surprised I haven’t done since moving to Philly." I ended up spending most of
my time on the main floor (1850 to the present day); another time I’ll go
back and check out the Asian art wing and the pre-1850 works.

Alas,
the Museum Postcard Rule (as expounded in About Last Night: there will never be a
postcard of the paintings you like the most) held true, and so I have
no postcard of one landscape that I found strangely compelling, I’m not quite sure why. Nor is there an image
of it anywhere to be found on the museum’s website (suggesting a
corollary to the Postcard Rule: you won’t be able to find it online,
either). But I can at least point to a few other highlights of the
trip, even though the images don’t do them justice. I lingered in front of a little Whistler nocturne; Bonnard’s
Homage to Maillol and the Maillol nude that
inspired it; Dorothea
Tanning’s Birthday; Cy Twombly’s scribbly version of the Trojan War; a whole room full of Duchamps; and Miró’s The Hermitage. I confess to zipping past the Impressionists,
because for the most part I can take or leave the Impressionists (I
blame overexposure), and when confronted with a wall of Renoirs,
my first impulse is to head for the next gallery. But I love those Surrealists. It’s a grand thing to live half a mile away from the likes of Duchamp and Tanning and Ernst and Magritte.

Speaking of Tanning, Salon ran an interview with her a few years back, aptly titled "Oldest Living Surrealist Tells All." She’s the kind of person I aspire to be when I’m ninety-odd.

Categorized under: Art, Philly.
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3 Responses to “A visit to the art museum”

  1. Jane Dark says:
    October 26, 2006 at 2:33 am

    Mmm…but what’s the name of the entrancing painting? I could look it up in the library. People getting excited about landscape paintings makes me crazy curious.

  2. Amanda says:
    October 26, 2006 at 9:09 am

    Solitude. The artist’s name is Jean-Charles Cazin — I found him in the Grove Dictionary of Art, but no image of this particular painting there, either. I don’t even know if I can account for why I liked it, but it made me pause and stare.

  3. Leslie says:
    October 26, 2006 at 5:57 pm

    I tried AMICA, ARTstor, and Camio, but no luck. Sorry!