Photo By Gail
Elastic Shapes with Dali-esque shadows litter Tanguy’s landscape, like the paradoxical meeting of unrelated materials in the painting’s title. According to the poet, John Ashbery, the self-taught artist chose titles arbitrarily, sometimes asking friends for suggestions.
Painted in 1940, The Satin Tuning Fork is part of the permanent collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC.
Photo By Gail
By the 1920s, the skyscraper was a symbol of American modernity. Here, designer Paul Frankl uses maple and Bakelite to suggest the jagged, upward-reaching outline of a New York skyscraper. By breaking with the constraints of the past, this towering architectural form expressed the excitement and optimism of a new era.
Photographed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC.
All Photos By Gail
I Saw the Figure Five in Gold (1928) is one of my favorite modern paintings; one that I have loved since I was in my teens. To be honest, I am a little bit obsessed with it. That might have something to do with the fact that the painting’s title is a complete sentence. “I Saw the Figure Five in Gold” sounds like something you would say in a dream. I bet you didn’t even know that this painting is actually a Portrait that was loosely inspired by a Fire Engine, but it is.
Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: I Saw The Figure Five in Gold By Charles Demuth
All Photos By Gail
If you enjoy seeing how very obscenely rich people lived 400 years ago or longer, go hang out at The Met for a few hours and have your mind blown. This fancy cup, made from a gilt-plated-silver shell of a Nautilus is a thing that you can see at this gargantuan museum, and it emphasizes the point that some rich people like to have really fancy things to look at and, maybe, use.
Continue reading Nautilus Cup
All Photos By Gail
Little is known about Costo Archillopoulo, the designer of this table (circa 1934), which is both a functional piece of furniture and a fantastical Surrealist sculpture. The glass tabletop rests improbably atop small balls balanced on the tips of three delicately tapering fingers, generating a sensation of tension and unease.
Disembodied hands and gloves are recurrent motifs in Surrealist art, with the left hand, in particular, symbolizing the irrational. The cloudlike element from which the hand emerges also suggests a transition from the conscious to the subconscious world.
Photographed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC.
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