I recently returned from a very rewarding visit with family and friends in New Jersey, the first time in three years that I have been back
home (yes the term still applies, more than 25 years after leaving for Spain). One of the highlights was a trip with my mother to the
Philadelphia Museum of Art, a first for me. My great pleasure in strolling through the magnificent "European Art 1850-1900" section of their permanent collection was very much enhanced by being able to take photographs there. You see, in Spain, and in most of Europe as far as I have been able to find, taking photos inside museums is strictly
prohibido. While I agree that flash photography of works of art should be prohibited, the only reason I can see for not allowing non-flash non-professional photographs of anything, even the text signs that accompany and describe paintings and exhibits, is commercial, namely, to boost the museum's sales of catalogues and reproductions of the art works.
So on this visit to the museum, my usual slow dawdling amble through the galleries and rooms was reduced to a snail-paced crawl with camera in hand. But I was one happy snail. More than head-on individual photos of the paintings, what particularly captured my optic fancy was being able to snap the paintings and sculptures in context, from different angles to frame them in the company of their illustrious art siblings and
neighbours.
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| Despite her fame for fearlessness, Marcello's bronze Pythian Sibyl seems frightened of the larkspurs in Henri Fantin-Latour's 1891 oil panting. Here's a question for you: what might dolphins have to do with both of these works of art? For a fascinating essay on this work and the sculptress who produced it, Marcello (Duchesse de Castiglione-Colonna, born Adele d'Affry), see this article in the journal Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide. |
This room featured a curious triptych composed of Adriano Cecioni's 1868 bronze Boy With a Rooster and Auguste Rodin's The Thinker framing Thomas Eakins' Crucifixion ...
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| Startled and afraid, the crying child closes his eyes and holds on for dear life to his crowing dawns. No one had yet told him that paradise had been lost, that the true paradises are the paradises we have lost (Proust). |
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| Meanwhile, naked with his thoughts, the thinker is pondering what the difference might be, if any, between Christ dying on the cross to save humanity and humanity crucifying Christ to save itself (in the words of Antonio Machado). |
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Rodin, Renoir, mom.
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I love this photograph, although I may be opening myself to the critique that I have harnessed here the classic female triumvirate of the male imagination: voluptuous nude, washerwoman, mother. Oh well, so be it...
