Picasso horse sketch. free#

The artists’ expressions have enhanced our lives and our environment. If the artist has made a connection, no matter how and with what, that is art.Įver since man made a handprint on a cave wall, the need to express ourselves has been a driving force in the development of civilizations. But why should they? Here is where Claudia and I have found common ground. Maybe that is why the curators were uncomfortable as they could not control the dialogue between artist and viewer. There have been times, and last weekend was one where an artist via the work, conversed with me about something important, subsequently initiating a mental conversation. Mediums for creativity seem to be boundless and I am constantly amazed and entertained by how our fellow sapiens express themselves, as well as by what method and objects they chose to use. I don’t believe that just because someone made it therefore it is art, nor do I think all expressions must be pleasing or based on historical technique.

I have smiled and laughed at Joan Miro’s fanciful images that float and dance in seemingly 3D and have scratched my head at a pile of found objects placed randomly on the gallery floor. I have been stupefied by Kandinsky and his incomprehensible canvases, then read the long meanderings of an art historian who offers unseen meanings to his bizarre shapes and colors as if I was from Mars. I have stood in front of Edward Hopper’s painting NIGHTHAWKS for long minutes wondering who those people were and creating different life scenarios for each one. We have not as yet come to any definitive answers, but we stop when the bottle of wine is empty. Is it to please the viewer? Is it only for the artist to please themselves, viewer be damned? Must it be pretty? Must it make the viewer think and react? So why not remove or sequester Caravaggio’s John the Baptist or Picasso’s Guernica? A severed head on a platter or the indiscriminate slaughter of a population is not for the squeamish.Ĭlaudia and I have had a few dinner discussions since our return and they circle around the definition of art. Scenes in movies and novels, rap lyrics, cable news for that matter all make people upset so why sequester Gaston’s pictures? The power of the images found a place in the viewer that made the curators uncomfortable, which I come to believe after seeing them, was the artist’s intention. His depictions of fascist and racist violence in reverse and counterintuitive images forced the MFA as well as the National Gallery to sequester some of his work in a separate space with advisories posted that read “some may find these images upsetting.” What I found upsetting were those notices. It is politically charged and he makes the viewer uncomfortable. Guston’s work is not aesthetically pleasing, and I don’t believe it was meant to be. Since returning I have been informed that Boston’s MFA was embroiled in controversy over the work which delayed the opening of the show before it traveled to D.C. I live with an artist and my life experience and travels have exposed me to a wide variety of art forms so, subsequently, I have developed definite tastes, but this show gave me pause. I am far from an art critic but a total luddite, I am not.

I was not familiar with his work prior to our visit so I entered unsuspecting.

The National Gallery featured a retrospective on Philip Guston.

Picasso horse sketch. free#

The food scene is great and the neighborhoods unique, but the main attraction for us is the free Smithsonian galleries, which brings me to the point of this missive: art. Say what you wish about the creatures that do business at the end of Pennsylvania Avenue, but the city itself is amazing. Claudia and I just returned from another long weekend in D.C.