National Gallery of Art

Years ago, I visited National Gallery of Art fairly comprehensively over two visits (one, two). Hence, during this stint in the National Gallery I focused on the special exhibits. Here I mention a few that were remarkable in some way (though not necessarily up my alley).

The special exhibit on Andy Warhol focused on his work as a headline painter--making paintings that look like the front page of newspapers (often tabloids)--and as a television producer, both aspects of Warhol's work I wasn't aware of.

The special exhibit on Antico displayed his finely sculpted bronzes. He did an especially good job with hair and with fabrics.

The Pastrana Tapestries are incredible. I can believe the introductory text that claims they're "among the finest gothic tapestries in existence." These large tapestries, appropriate for a great hall, are engaging despite it being a bit hard to make out specifically what's going on. Di Yin says it may be because the inanimate objects (shields, flags, etc.) are brightly colored, not the animate ones. It's thus hard to spot individual people such as the King.

The conservators did a great job conserving the tapestries. (The exhibit had some before and after shots of the preservation process.) The tapestries' wavy surface reminded me of this story published in The New Yorker about digitally preserving a different set of famous tapestries.

The Chester Dale Collection was on display. Chester Dale had a great collection of paintings (mostly French), including Picasso, Renoir, rare blue van Goghs, Matisse, Degas, Modigliani, Cassatt, Cezanne, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec, and a number of top-notch Monets. Wow. I took a ton of pictures.

One special exhibit contained only one painting: Samuel Morse's painting Gallery of the Louvre. It belongs in my photographic collection of paintings of paintings.

In the special exhibit on photographer Harry Callahan, I found this rather shocking label attached to one piece:

Immensely supportive of her husband and his work, Eleanor Callahan regarded his photographing her as simply a part of their daily lives. She later recalled that she might be cooking or cleaning when Callahan, seeing something of potential interest, would say, "'Take off your clothes. And that would be that!"

Wow. For what it's worth, Callahan photographed a wide variety of subjects--animate and inanimate--over his fifty-year career.

I liked the I Spy photography special exhibit for its voyeuristic qualities. Walker Evans photographed random people on the subway or on the street. Robert Frank took pictures from a moving bus. Philip-Lorca diCorcia managed to take celebrity/glamour shots of unsuspecting people by manipulating or adding and positioning lights on the street so that if a person walked through the right spot the lighting would be perfect. He has some amazing results.

There was a special exhibit devoted to George Bellows. He painted a variety of subjects. I tend to like his landscapes, both rural and urban.

I liked the Miro special exhibit. I enjoyed seeing how his style evolved before (and after) his switch to weird symbolism. Also, I especially liked the busy patterns in Miro's Constellations group paintings on display (scroll down to second-to-last section for an example). In addition to presenting his work, the exhibit also explained how Miro's life was tossed and turned by Spain's and Catalonia's troubles in the twentieth century, especially with the Fascists.

I took pictures in the few special exhibits that permitted photography and also of some items that struck me in the permanent collection that I hadn't photographed in earlier years.