Today (3/28/07) at the Guggenheim, while waiting in line.Without really planning for it, I ended up catching the last day of the El Greco to Picasso: Time, Truth & History exhibit at the Guggenheim museum. My much-adored 71-year-old Photoshop teacher raved about it during class last week, and he strongly recommended that we see it before it ends on March 28. He explained that one of the compelling things about this exhibit was that it was arranged not chronologically but by theme, so you get to see how a 17th century painter like Velazquez treated the subject of children, for example, alongside Picasso’s or Dali’s versions. “Go just to see the hands!” my teacher gushed. “How those Spanish painters handled hands through the centuries is worth the exhibit! Plus you get to saunter down sideways in that museum, so that part is fun.”
So while washing dishes this morning the dismaying thought occurred to me that today might be the 28th. Sure enough it was. And sure enough today really was the last day to see it, so off I went, scruffy and barely prepared.
But man, is Professor Sanders right or is he right. Being there today really was worth it. The woman at the ticketing counter said the exhibit starts at the bottom and you work your way up, but I said screw that, and took the elevator to the top and worked my way down. A group of people, all of them with the look about them of “I’m a native New Yorker and I know what I’m doing” were all in the elevator with me. And when I got off I zoomed down, we’re talking speedy Gonzalez here (get the pun?), just glancing at each painting to get a general gist of it, and I made it down to the landing in 25 minutes. I thought of my friend Pax who has a 1-hour expiration period when it comes to museums; if she exceeds that she turns into a pillar of salt. Pax would have been proud of me.
No, not really. For I then donned one of those headphones the docents were giving out, and then I turned right back around to inch my way up, intending to look at each painting while listening to the audio tour, and hopefully have the time of my life in the process.
The exhibit featured painters ranging from Goya, Velazquez, Dali, Miro, Picasso, Murillo, and this guy I never heard of whose work I really liked named de Zurbaran. To make things even more fun, I spontaneously decided to hold a contest on whose painting is the best per category. So here are my results.
Winners of Teaneck T’s Time, Truth & History Contest: In the category of….
- Monks = “Saint Francis of Assisi in His Tomb” by Francisco de Zubaran
- Bodegones (which come from the word bodega. The subjects here are objects that would ordinarily come from the household pantry, which thus make them still-life paintings, but here the perishable nature or mortality are emphasized) = “Still Life with Fruits and Vegetables” by Juan Cotan. This one was pretty haunting to see in person.
- Vanitas (a type of bodegone that features actual dead animals, like dead rabbits and fish on tables and other stuff that made me cringe) = “Imperial Violets” by Dali (1938)
- The Domestic World = “House of Nazareth” by de Zurbaran (1644)
- Women in Public (yes, there was such a category) = “Girl Seen from Behind” by Dali (1925). This one was quite special to me since I wrote a fictional scene using this piece as a prompt two years ago during one of my freeflow writing sessions.
- Weeping Women (yow!) = “Weeping Woman” by Picasso (1937)
- Virgins and Mothers = none (or rather, nada). Sorry, hombres. Though I liked how in the “Madonna of Port Lligat” by Dali (1949), mother Mary is doing Reiki on baby Jesus.
- Nudes = This one had a clear winner. The very lengthily-titled “Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate, One Second before Awakening” by Dali (1944). The painting was huge and quite overpowering. I stood there transfixed.
- Childhood = Nada para esto. Those muchachos painted children like they were adults. You could tell they didn’t have respect for children in the 17th century. The audio guide said that children back then were considered more defiled than adults because they were closer to the state of original sin and were more like beasts than grown-ups. Yo! Tell THAT to Kayla!
- Monstrous (royalty and aristocrats in 17th century Spain liked to keep dwarves, lunatics, and deformed folks around for bizarre entertainment. Hey, maybe these are the ancestors of Quentin Tarantino) = “Don Sebastian de Morra” by Velazquez (1643-44). This man’s dignity was so captured by the great artist.
- Knights & Ghosts (bizarre phrasing but it makes sense. The ghost part is really what the Spanish called “fantasma,” which was the self-conscious appearance of the subject versus his actual real-world appearance. Put another way, the subject could have been an asshole but when the artist painted him he came out looking like a saint.) = There were two winners here. “Portrait of Luis Bunuel" by Dali (1924); and “Portrait of a Man” by El Greco (1590-1600)
- Ladies = Another clear winner: “Woman in Blue” by Picasso (1901). This is a huge painting that was hard to look away from. Btw, I didn’t know Picasso did a lot of realist paintings. Goes to show what I know.
- The Fallen (you know, sinners and people who like sex and the like) = ya think I’m gonna select something in this insulting category? Just kidding. I didn’t find any that grabbed me in this section.
- Flyers (“volandisimo” according to the espanols, aka angels) = “Liberation of Saint Peter” by Juan de Valdez Leal (1657-59). See page 10 of the linked PDF file.
- Crucifixions = um, this one was too dolores for me. Though I did like the red at the bottom of Alonso Cano’s "Crucifixion" and the audio guide’s lecture about it.
- Landscapes = “Pass with a Cape” by Goya (1793).
Doesn’t this make you feel you too saw the exhibit after reading this entry? (If you got this far, that is). Hope you appreciated my little summary vis a vis a little contest.
