New Britain Museum of American Art

Kiya Clark

The Lost Files.

For my second museum visit, I chose to venture out and visit the New Britain Museum of American Art. It was rainy, and my six year and I both had the day of so why not?

 It was a little bit of a drive for me and the museum did cost $10, which I had no problem paying. The cost of the museum’s don’t upset me, seeing as we didn’t have to purchase a book but combined with the travel it can be a lot to manage but I’m enjoying the challenge. But back to the day, the front desk clerk was polite and efficient, seeing I had a little one she quick to tell what couldn’t be touched and what areas were most kid-friendly, which I greatly appreciated. Right away she asked us not to get too close to the sculpture near the door, my son and I were so confused. I asked what sculpture and she pointed it. It looked so real I thought it was a guard!

            The New Britain Museum of American Art’s “founding in 1903 entitles the institution to be designated the first museum of strictly American art in the country.”(NEW BRITAIN MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART) The museum pride itself on buying pieces not too costly, keeping the museum afloat. The original directors took advice from some fellow directors, like Bryson Burroughs from the met, who initially suggested the museum focus solely on American Art in order to be as cost effective as possible.

            The museum overall was clean, appeasing to the eye, and pretty well-rounded off first impression. I really enjoyed the diversity in art pieces. Often I’ve been to museums and most of the painting specifically showcase Caucasians. The fact that right away one of the pieces my son saw was of two African American girls and he said “oh look mommy, it’s like you and annah” (what he calls my sister), was really important to me. It’s important to offer pieces that can relate to multiple people, ethnicities, and cultures, especially if it’s American Art.

Another strength of the museum was the collection of similar pieces in a designated area, going from room made it feel like leaving one artist’s vision to visit another. There was a few pieces by Neil Jenny in one room (I was later told by a bystander I wasn’t supposed to take pictures of the work in this area *oops*).

Neil Jenney(1945)

North American Vegetae (2006-07), Oil on wood in artist’s painted wood frame Courtesy of Artist.

            

Neil Jenney(1945)

Study(Dog)(1970),  Acrylic and graphite on canvas in artist’s painted wood frame Hall Collection.

Neil Jenney(1945)

Felis Catus(1970), Acrylic and graphite on canvas in artist’s painted wood frame Hall Collection.

The artist I chose to focus on is Dennis Hopper and the lost album. Hopper used a Nikon camera, specifically a 28 mm lens with black and white film to capture some amazing images. The images are showcasing hoppers experiences and encounters around the 1960’s. The images were taken and printed in black and white. The images are on the smaller size, looked like a range of 4x6-8x10’s varying in content. The exhibition of this famous selection of images was showcased in 1970 at the4 Fort Worth Art Center Museum with voiceovers of himself and colleagues. Hopper was an actor, and painter, along with being a photographer so he had many artistic ventures.

Most of his photography seemed to be portraits of people and places, the everyday encounters. The images are so simple at first glance, but offer such an experience into what life was like in the 1960’s. What women, men, kids, both ordinary, and extraordinary were doing on a day to day basis. Dennis was inspired by a fellow actor who encouraged him to take up photography to better prepare for becoming a director. He was said to be interested in the simplistic an basic-ness of walls and structures, which makes sense as to why his phonographs were so beautifully simple. His work can be categorizes as realism, leaving people and things just the way they are in his pictures.  I think Hopper’s style of portraits influenced some of the future black and white style photographers. His work ended up on some album covers, so I’m sure it offered some encouragement or inspiration to some of the music it accompanied.

            Hopper was also known to be a heavy drug user, and a majority of his photos show others using drugs recreational. This was even more popular in the 70’s, and his work could have been said to influence the showing of such activities. His acting career often suffered from his drug use, and the behaviors that were a result of it. Hopper’s work is beautiful nonetheless and conjures raw emotions because the images themselves are so raw.

References

NEW BRITAIN MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.nbmaa.org/museum-of-american-art/about

H. (n.d.). DENNIS HOPPER | OFFICIAL WEBSITE OF HOPPER ART TRUST. Retrieved from http://dennishopper.com/

Yale Center for British Art

  After an exhausting couple of days of food and family, going into the city seemed less and less likely. Instead I opted for a visit to the Yale Center for British Art. This museum is nearly as impressive as it across the street neighbor, the Yale Art Gallery. The collection is remarkable in its scope and the quality of the work. There are paintings, of course, but also sculptures, drawings and rare books, although the latter was closed to visitors on this day.

   The Center was established in 1966 when Yale alum and philanthropist Paul Mellon gifted his art collection, as well as the funds needed to build the Center. It was designed by renowned architect Louis I. Khan, with the interior constructed of marble and white oak and the outside made of steel and reflective glass.    The sky lit rooms allow for a lot of natural light with artificial light only used in the evenings. Below is a photo of the skylight that floods the museum with natural lighting as designed by Kahn.

   I went in, having been before, thinking myself not overly fond of British art. I found the portraiture rather staid, thinking primarily about the many painting of the royalty and aristocracy of old England. That stance however, likely said more about my views on social structures than that of the art itself.

  Being a British art museum, there are several periods of the country’s history that is represented. Here are a few examples Becoming Great Britain 1530-1688. 1530s were a period of sweeping transformations along the British Isles beginning with religious reformation that also change the way art was represented. Below are some examples.

An oil painting by an unknown artist of Sir Percival Hart, who served as Knight Harbinger to Henry VIII, as well as three successive Tudor heirs.

Another unknown artist painted Robert Dudley, first Earl of Leicester, who at one point was thought to be a credible suitor to marry Elizabeth I. He, of course, was unsuccessful in that endeavor.

Yet another unknown artist depicted, in 1590, An Allegory of the Tudor Succession: The Family of Henry VIII. This painting was adapted from a painting made by Lucas de Heere. The artist compared the blessings of the English Reformation with the imaged threat of Catholicism (information provided by museum placard).

Next is an assorted mixed of same period pieces. All these and the previous paintings were donated by Paul Allen from his private collection.

Later periods highlighted some brilliant artist such as Theodor Von Holst, who painted the below The Wish.

On a personal note, I found this painting captivating and am sorry that my camera didn’t quite capture the vividness of the painting.

Or John Constable’s Hadleigh Castle, The Mouth of the Thames- Morning after a Stormy Night, 1829. Constable made drawings of the castle fifteen years earlier, with the intention of one day making the painting. It was the death of his wife that inspire him to finally make the painting as he compared himself to the castle despair (information provided by museum placard).

Joseph Wright painted Academy by Lamplight in 1769 and the Blacksmith’s Shop in 1771. Wright became renowned for his paintings of everyday London with subjects lite by an artificial light source. Wright applied what is called the chiaroscuro effect which creates a strong contrast between light and dark, effecting the entire composition of the painting.

Academy by Lamplight

Blacksmith's Shop

Captive Bodies: British Prisons, 1750-1900

  In 1773, penal reformer John Howard began a four-year study of prisons before he published his State of Prisons in England and Wales (1777), depicting the woeful conditions under which individuals were confined. 

Artist George Romney was a portrait painter, who also produced hundreds of drawings that were to serve as prep for paintings depicting penal reformer, John Howard as a Christ-like figure. For some reason Romney never created the paintings, but the draft drawings remain.

Jacob Hogg also drew Howard in Visiting and Relieving the Miseries of a Prison.

Many other drawings depicting prisons and poverty were created in response to Howard’s book. A few examples follow.

The collection housed within the Yale Center for British Art is as impressive as it is massive. There is much more to discuss, and I will do so as a separate paper. I fully enjoyed this trip and have learned to view art through a lens separate from any other societal opinions I might hold.

I will conclude with a photo of the Long Gallery room, which is in a word, spectacular.

Cites

Yale Center for British Art

Wikipedia

The Bruce Museum

 

 

This past weekend we made our way down to Greenwich to visit The Bruce Museum. I'm familiar with the museum residing in CT,  but that was about it. Normally I don't head down to Greenwich area because it seems like no matter where you go, parking is almost nonexistent. I was surprised to find the museum pretty much smack dab off the highway and in the center of a busy intersection area, nestled in its own private drive.

 

The building from the exterior is impressive. The walk to the entrance, looking up the entire way reminded me of some sort of golden age of Hollywood mansion in the hills. After seeing the museum for the first time, I left feeling slightly underwhelmed with the amount of exhibit on display (not to mention much of what was on display was not able to be photographed..in actuality, the museum's rules also stated no strollers among the exhibits, but nobody had stopped our double-wide behemoth; more than likely because there was nobody in the museum at 10am). I'm really unsure how much writing I can get out what I saw. Still, what I did come away with I am sure all of you will find as impressive as I did.

 

So returning back to my initial impression of the building being some sort of old time mansion on a hill, according to the history of the museum, it was. The museum's website tells us that the building was originally a house built in 1853 for a lawyer and clergyman, Francis Lister Hawks. Robert Moffat Bruce, who was a textile merchant (a wealthy one at that. Remember, this is Greenwich after all!) had then purchased the house five years later. Ten years later, Bruce deeds the property to the town to be utilized for the arts, "as 'a natural history, historical, and art museum for the use and benefit of the public'." (brucemuseum.org history) The museum houses not only paintings, sketches, and photographs, but many scientific exhibits such as minerals,  natural science exhibits, and textiles.

 

There is much to see in terms of sculpture and displays in the museum, albeit much of their current exhibits are not able to be photographed. Their natural sciences displays are a work of art all their own. This is an image of a sample of polished malachite, taken from a mine in Zaire in 1990. Green is my favorite color, so naturally I had to stop and check this out. Malachite is a mineral that was mined extensively during the Neolithic Age. It's used primarily in jewelry and decoration, but the color had religious and spiritual connections to the Egyptians. The particular pattern of this sample reminded me of flying over Arizona and Nevada on the way in to McCarran Airport. There are all these strange lakes and bodies of bright-colored water that dot the dry landscape.

 

THIS sample of stibnite I absolutely LOVED! Stibnite is another mineral that would have been known to ancient Egyptians and the Middle East as they used it for cosmetic purposes (this sample was pulled from and mine in China in 1992). Stibnite apparently crystalizes in these sort of jagged, splintered, harsh patterns.  I've seen much more aesthetically pleasing samples when I looked into what the mineral was, but the odd formation of the sample looked like Escher and Lovecraft built a nightmarish castle together.

In the middle gallery of the museum there was a fairly large exhibition called "Downsized: Small-Scale Sculpture by Contemporary Artists". Unfortunately, I mistakenly assumed that this was part of the exhibit where photography was not allowed. I did take a few photos further inside the exhibit, but only because I was out of sight. If you would like to see many of the miniatures sculptures that were on display, I suggest checking out Tracy's visit to the museum because he snagged quite a few photos of the exhibit that I did not.

In any case, this is one of the dioramas that was on display by one of the artists. Brooklyn Bridge Station by Alan Wolfson is a throwback to old, seedy New York City. Wolfson states of his work, "The real impact of my work is not how small everything is but in the stories these small things tell." Wolfson in a sense encourages the viewer to form his own tale of what the work is telling, and I enjoy this concept (I'm a big fan of non-definite, open to interpretation endings to film and books; it encourages repeat viewing). I liked looking at the piece and trying to pinpoint down when the setting was. You'll notice on the pillar there is a poster of the controversial mascot, Spuds MacKenzie and a Guess Jeans ad, so we're looking at a time frame of late 1980s. The grittiness of the train is what I like about this setting. There's some fairly minute detail involved also; check out the phone pillar and what looks like a partially exposed Pepsi ad! It doesn't matter how upscale New York City gets, I will always see it as this grimy, urban sprawl that he portrays in this setting, much like the portrayal of the city in the 1979 classic The Warriors. Again, check out Tracy's post for another awesome example of some super small detail, Occupied Hotel Room. 

 

One of the last displays that I enjoyed looking at during our time at the museum was a multi-piece display by artist Amy Bennett. Sweetness in the Air. This is part of a larger project of hers called Small Changes. Bennett lives in the Hudson Valley, one of my favorite areas of New York State. Her paintings are based upon the small scale model town that she has built (also on display) and fictionalized a history thereof.

Bennett's exhibit invoked an emotional response and fond nostalgia as I viewed them. I grew up in Ansonia, part of Naugatuck Valley. When I was in high school, I had a very close friend who lived in Beacon Falls and occasionally we would walk up the street to the local middle school and hike up the mountain behind it. The view offered up from the top was similar to the small-town perspective that Bennett sees in her own home town. The layout of the streets was almost familiar to me, as if I had driven them dozens of times before.

One of the last things I had noticed in her paintings that I found was interesting was that in such a small community she had chosen to include two churches, and in such proximity. It was small details such as this that kept me viewing and reviewing the paintings while we walked the exhibit.

Her large-scale representation of her small-scale town was a great addition to offer up an aerial view of the entire project. it reminded me a lot of the town that Alec Baldwin's character was constructing with models in the attic of their home in Beetlejuice. Much like Wolfson encourages with his pieces, I found myself looking over some of the portions of the display and thinking over what kind of people lived in some of these areas of the town? There is a section in the top right of the photo composed of only two or three houses on the outskirts: would the town theoretically extend beyond the borders of the display? Were the people living in that area some of the original residents or owners of the land? What denominations utilized the two churches? What type of supermarket did they shop at? It was a lot of fun to compose my own narrative to the town.


I would say my overall experience of The Bruce Museum was somewhat disappointing. I was not expecting a building so large to house so little, or be limited to a single floor for viewing. Still, it was an interesting experience to view some of the "natural" works of art pulled from the earth and examine the unsculpted forms and see what imagery I invoked for comparison. I wish I had known that the small-scale work was able to be photographed; I would have spent more time in the exhibit gathering examples of the work that interested me and less time sneaking around like an infiltrating spy attempting to covertly photograph top secret projects.

Cited

“Our History.” Bruce Museum, brucemuseum.org/site/about_us_detail/history.

I had the day off yesterday thanks to a kid pretending to be sick in the am, so I decided to go to the New Britain Museum of American Art. It was further from me in New Haven than I expected, and it cost $10 for students (luckily free for kids under 12). I’ve been at Albertus for years and 1. Have never had to travel for an online class 2. Have ever had to pay to complete assignments.. But on the brighter side the museum was quaint but sophisticated and I really enjoyed the showcased pieces. They also had more than one area for kids to be hands on which I greatly appreciated. Here are some of the pieces that caught my eye as I prepare to write this paper.

Neil Jenny (1945)

The Bruce Museum

  With my plans to visit the MET this weekend scuttled due to family demands, I turned my attention to the Bruce Museum in Greenwich. Never having been to the Bruce I knew little of what to expect. Unlike my experience at the Wadsworth last week, this visit proved to be underwhelming. Perhaps I should have done advanced research, then I would have known that it was as much a science museum as an arts museum. While arts and science share equal billing, it is heavily, at least as currently exhibited, towards science. Just to be clear, I love science and did enjoy the exhibits, but I came for art. Okay, enough ranting.

  The Bruce Museum of Arts and Science was once the mansion of Robert Moffat Bruce, a textile merchant. The mansion was built in 1853 and deeded to Greenwich upon his death in 1908. It first opened as a museum in 1912. In the early days it exhibited the works of local artist from the Cos Cob Art Colony, many of whom were American Impressionists.

Although there were scant few Impressionist paintings, few paintings at all form that matter, they did have an exhibit that recently opened and caught my attention. It is entitled Downsized: Small-Scale Sculpture by Contemporary Artists. The exhibits force the viewer to take a closer look than normal, a fact that the greeter is quick to remind.

  This first piece was created by British artist Matthew Simmonds and is called Millennium and was carved out of limestone.  The former architectural stone mason finds a strength and permanence in stone, believing it to the natural material to have an inherent connection with the Earth. The carving is as much about the negative spaces ad how the light plays off the openings which cast shadows that reveal something new at different times of the day, expressing something different for every viewer from every angle. The Carving is places on a waist high pedestal allowing for it to be viewed from all angles and vantage points.

American artists Walter Martin and Paloma Munoz collaborated on creating snow globes, but not your ordinary snow globes. These globes show a dark sense of humor, or what the information card describes as “subverting the familiar kitsch of a souvenir snow globe.”  Their series, called Travelers, has a hint of the absurd as ordinary scenes when viewed closely something is just a little off from the norm

Traveler 300, 2014

   Traveler 292, 2014

Next up is the work of Syrian artist Mohamad Hafez, who’s work is his therapy as he combats homesickness. Hafez creates art from the ravaged pieces of the country of his birth, which has been decimated since civil war broke out in 2011. He creates miniature versions of his old neighborhoods of Damascus. There is a great article about Hafez and his work at Aljazeera.com, where he says of his creations, “If you can’t go home, maybe you could recreate home.” His work is an example how artists can take personal tragedy and create a thing of beauty. The materials he used ran the gamut from laundry lines and random rubble from shelled buildings. Hafez, exhibiting the soul of aspiration says wistfully, on the information card, “It’s amazing, the resiliency in the human spirit. That is something I’d like to talk about in my art.”

Here are two examples of his work.

  Another interesting and whimsical display is that of Alan Wolfson, whose Occupied Hotel Room, invites viewers to peer into the miniaturized Monopoly board square of an imagined Baltic Avenue hotel. From an ordinary distance there appears to be little more that a cutout in the board game square. However, the closer you get the more of the tiny work is revealed.

 Looking through the opening, you are transported to a seedy, heavily lived in hotel room that one could imagine could have only been created with a steady hand and stellar patience. The level of detail is stunning, with even reflections in the tiny mirrors.

There wasn’t as much as thought there would be in the museum, but when a closer look is taken, there is some truly wonderful examples of art to behold

  

Cite

https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/mohamed-hafez-homesick-syrian-artist-miniature-war-scenes-180313204226092.html

Metropolitan Museum of Art Paper

Metropolitan Museum of Art Trip

Sean Rallis

I took my trip to The Met on Saturday, November 10^th. This time around, I didn’t bring my wife or children. I felt it would be too cumbersome trying to take the children to NYC and I wasn’t comfortable with just the two of us heading there (I’m still in protective parent mode and my biggest fear is that there’d be an emergency and it’s an hour back to Stamford and then another half hour back to Bridgeport). My sister lives on Long Island, and she just got back from a trip to Japan, so I figured she would want to tag along and come see the Asian art.

It wasn’t an overly chilly day, but the wind between the buildings in the city is always cold in autumn. I got to Grand Central relatively early, while it was still empty. No trip to New York is complete without coming through Grand Central. I feel it makes for part of the experience. I met up with my sister, we took the subway to 86^th Street, and walked the remainder of the way to the museum.

I’ve only ever been to The Met one other time, probably 8 or 9 years ago. The building is always impressive to me, because no matter how you approach it, there is somewhat of a forced perspective you’re meant to view the building in that makes for an impressive entrance. Because it was a weekend, even at opening time there were many people, both inside and out.

The Met’s history dates to Paris, France in 1866. According to the website, “a group of Americans agreed to create a "national institution and gallery of art" to bring art and art education to the American people.” (metmuseum.org/about-the-met) The museum was advocated by a lawyer named John Jay, and on April 13, 1870, the building was opened to the public in the Dodworth Building on Fifth Ave. The building’s current location opened on March 30, 1880. The museum houses many different collections, ranging from a large European art section composed of 2,500 pieces, 26,000 ancient Egyptian artifacts, armor, statues, music instruments and various sculptures from all over the world and representative of various cultures.

It is highly recommended to grab the map as you enter the exhibits. I mean, this sounds like a common-sense move, but I didn’t until about midway through, thinking I’d wing it. Though it is easy to deduce what gallery you are in, trying to plan the route ahead proved to be difficult, and some of the galleries, such as the European art on the second floor take on an almost maze-like quality. We started with the “traditional” starting point of the tour, which is in the Egyptian exhibit of the museum. With 26,000 pieces on display, there is a very large portion of Egypt’s history covered. I was impressed that some of their pieces extended all the way up to more “modern” times such as early AD.

The wealth of human history in this gallery alone was enough to spend all day analyzing. Many of the artifacts pertain to reconstructed portions of excavated tombs and statues, serving as silent guardians to the deceased carefully housed within. Naturally, the gallery houses plenty of examples of hieroglyphs in painted, cast, and carved form. Though these were used for communicative purposes, to view them up close once can appreciate the detail and workmanship as an art form all its own.

One cannot go the The Met and not expect to see mummies or coffins on display! There are many spectacular examples in many forms of preservation or decay. The sarcophagus attached is part of an exhibit of pieces from the period that would have been used in temples and funerary rites. This is the gilded coffin of Nedjemankh, who was a proponent of traditional Egyptian religious rites during the reign of Cleopatra. The information provided next to the display states that there are, “…numerous vignettes and symbols designed to protect his mummified body and spirit. The most important aspect of the coffin is the hymn inscribed above the feet that speaks of gold and silver, both associated with divinity.” Clearly, this was a man who took the beliefs quite literally.  

From here, we made our way next into the Medieval art section, which covers a large amount of religious works from prior to and after the Renaissance. I enjoyed wandering the Medieval wing of the museum for the same reason that I enjoyed the European art section in Yale University Art Gallery. The quiet atmosphere invokes a sense of wandering the halls of an ancient cathedral. I would have loved to get some pictures of the interior where most of the statues, paintings and tapestries are houses, but they were beginning to install a Christmas tree for display, and much of the central interior is partitioned off.

This statue of Saint James the Greater, one of the Apostles of Christ, I felt was a good representation of the stonework that adorns the gallery. I liked the way they positioned the lighting above him, almost in an answering a Divine call sort of manner. Much of the statues pertain to the Catholic persuasion, so there are many saints and representations of Mary and Jesus on display.

There are also beautiful and massive tapestries on display. This one below is a pictorial representation of The Apostle’s Creed. It is beautifully woven, each panel handling a different statement from the Creed.

Up close you can see it both as the textile it was created from and the image without losing one in the other. It spans 11 x 15 feet and was created between 1550-1600. If you are unfamiliar with Christianity, creeds were a set of stated beliefs among believers that set forth the doctrines that they commonly accepted. The Apostle’s Creed is an early form of that belief system (most churches today base beliefs and affirmations on much later affirmations like the Nicene Creed because these earlier representations did not have theological concepts that were adopted in later centuries).

I’m going to briefly pass over the European art section that we had passed through next in order to discuss some of the Asian art gallery (the European gallery is where I found my paintings that I chose to put as the focus of my paper). In my first post on the blog about my trip to The Met (If you haven’t checked out, please do so because there are a few more great examples of what I saw on display in the galleries) I shared an example of a Gautama Buddha statue, one of many that decorate the halls. There were also beautiful examples of “traditional” art as well.

One of the more recognizable pieces that I was amazed to find was Kautushika Hokusai’s The Great Wave. Hokusai lived from 1760-1849. According to biographical information on his website, “Hokusai began painting around the age of six, possibly learning the art from his father, whose work on mirrors also included the painting of designs around the mirrors.” (katsushikahokusai.com/biography) As he grew up, he embraced and mastered the style of ukiyo-e, wood block print and paintings. His Mount Fuji series was his most famously recognizable work, but he never saw himself as the artist the world did. On his deathbed, he proclaimed, "If only Heaven will give me just another ten years... Just another five more years, then I could become a real painter." (katsushikahokusai.com/biography)

The Met houses one of many original prints of this piece (I had incorrectly assumed there was only ever one original). Being able to view the print up close I had never noticed the boats caught in the wave before. When I saw the mountain in the background, I also noticed the waves also took on this similar mountainous, impassible quality, especially the smaller one in the foreground; a truly terrifying event for those caught in the middle of it!

There was a few Hokusai on display (part of his Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji series), so this was one of a handful of prints from the series. The other print that I liked in the series was Viewing the Sunset Over Ryōgoku Bridge from the Onmaya Embankment. The scene depicts a group of boats docking their boats at the end of the day, I am unsure if it is a ferry boat or if they were out fishing. Hokusai’s usage of the progressively darkening sky gives the viewer an indication that nightfall is approaching. I didn’t see the title at first until I included this piece in my paper. My first assumption on seeing the sky depicted in this manner was that a storm was approaching.

So we are going to circle back around and return to the European gallery. I was disappointed when we first arrived at the entrance because it was closed off! We had come to find out that it was only that portion of the gallery that was empty inside and therefore the entrance was relocated. The European gallery was a mixture of portraits, religious scenes, and landscapes. As we wandered the halls of the gallery, examining different interpretations of historical figures, I felt intrigued that, given the religious landscape of European history and art, that there was still such a heavy emphasis on the human individual through these paintings. One of the more fascinating paintings to me that exemplified both human and divine qualities was by Moretto da Brescia. I have not chosen this as my focal painting for my paper, but I include it here because of its representation of Christ. The Entombment approaches the pivotal Christian moment in a different manner than I think we are accustomed to. Here, da Brescia is not handling the image of Christ with care, as we see in most interpretations. This is the real Christ; the lifeless body that would have been removed from the cross. The paleness is what stopped me to look over this painting.

What caught my attention was, if I recall, in the same room or adjacent. The Penitent Magdalen is a painting by Georges de La Tour, a French 16-17^th century painter. Georges was born in 1593 in Vic-sur-Seielle France. Of his painting style, Encyclopedia Britannica writes, “The paintings of La Tour’s maturity, however, are marked by a startling geometric simplification of the human form and by the depiction of interior scenes lit only by the glare of candles or torches. His religious paintings done in this manner have a monumental simplicity and a stillness that expresses both contemplative quiet and wonder.” (Britannica.com)

The story behind the painting is somewhat familiar to me, it isn’t canon according to biblical tradition but is an extra narrative in the vein of other miraculous tales of the lives of saints. Following the death and resurrection of Christ, Mary winds up in Marseille after being set adrift to sea in a boat to die, and she spends the remainder of her live as an ascetic in a cave.

I had bounced back and forth between this painting and another nearby, noticing very similar qualities, though they were two different painters. This painting was the more “pleasing” of the two; I’m going to attribute it mostly to the geometric layout of the painting. What really got me about it was the usage of the shadow and the singular light source. I looked at this painting and I felt almost sorrowful for Mary Magdalene. If you’re familiar with the Bible, she was one of the most devoted women to Jesus and his ministry and I wondered if in her continued devotion, there was a sense of abandonment from the object of her devotion? Her face looks away from us, longingly at something else, perhaps the mirror, perhaps something out of frame. The placard next to the painting mentions the symbolism of the painting, “She is shown with a mirror, a symbol of vanity; a skull, symbol of mortality; and a candle that probably stands for her spiritual enlightenment.” The mirror reflects back not her own image, but her spirituality in this case.

La Tour’s usage of the shadow looked a lot like the style of Caravaggio, whose painting, The Denial of Saint Peter was found on a wall in an adjoining room.

Caravaggio was a 16^th-17^th century Italian painter, who was known for this type of feature in his paintings. In this painting, Caravaggio utilized light and shadow on the individual in a similar manner. Here, we have the story of Peter, having followed the tribunal procession that arrested Christ into an adjoining courtyard, is questioned by a group surrounding s fire whether or not he had been a follower of Christ. I enjoyed this painting for the similar blending of shadow and light found in Le Tour’s work, but it was the melancholy that drew my interest to study Penitent Magdalen longer than Denial of Saint Peter.

My overall impression of The Met is it is clearly not something one can see all of in a single visit. There is a wealth of not only art and sculpture, but within there are countless tales of our history on display also. There will be other times, and other works to see and hopefully these old friends will remain on exhibit to come back and view once again.

 Works Cited

About the Museum - Metropolitan Museum of Art.Retrieved from https://www.metmuseum.org/about-the-met

Katsushika Hokusai Biography. www.katsushikahokusai.com/biography.jsp

Britannica, T. E. (2018, March 12). Georges de La Tour. Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Georges-de-La-Tour