Georgia O’Keeffe and Henry Moore at MFA
By
by Bruce Sylvester
Red Hill and White Shell, 1938, Georgia O’Keeffe (American, 1887–1986), Oil on canvas
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Gift of Isabel B. Wilson in memory of her mother, Alice Pratt Brown.
© 2024 Georgia O’Keeffe Museum / Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Photograph © The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Jud Haggard.
Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Simply and matter-of-factly titled Georgia O’Keeffe and Henry Moore, the Museum of Fine Arts‘ new show is said to be first ever whose theme is bringing together these two 20th-century leaders in fusing nature and abstract mondernism: Moore mainly through sculpture and O‘Keeffe mainly through painting, though we do also see the first of only three sculptures she ever did during her lengthy professional career. The show‘s 150 objects are heavily grounded on found objects like shells, stones and animal bones, Moore’s from his 70-acre farm in the English countryside and O’Keeffe’s from her walks around the wide open spaces of her adoptive home beneath the expansive skies of New Mexico.
O’Keeffe was a master of careful staging to create illusions of size and space. Her much celebrated flowers were often larger in her paintings than in real life because she wanted us to see them more clearly. She’d put a small object in front of a distant background of wide open sky to make the object seem larger. Suspending a deer pelvis midair beneath a faraway sky was a masterstroke.
They embraced both the symmetry and the unpredictability of nature. The holes they showed were important to their art. Take the holes in the elm tree section Moore fashioned into a statue of a reclining human. As the show’s excellent wall notes point out, “Gaps and apertures provided new ways of seeing objects and their surroundings. By looking through, new compositional opportunities arose. After all, a hole, Moore remarked, was ‘a shape in its own right, the solid body was encroached upon, eaten into, and sometimes the form was only the shell holding the hole.’ … Moore carefully considered what a visitor would see through the spaces in between sections and how his work could shape that perception.” O’Keeffe once said, “I like empty spaces. … Holes can be very expressive.”
Of course, Stonehenge fascinated Moore. Here are two lithographs of the enigmatic ancient edifice he did when he was 75 years old.
Reclining Figure, 1959‑1964, Henry Moore (English, 1898–1986), Elmwood
The Henry Moore Foundation: gift of Irina Moore 1977 LH 452
Photo credit: Jonty Wilde
Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
We can enjoy recreations of their studios. Some authentic items come from Moore’s. Hers is immaculate and carefully arranged. His is obviously a workplace in the throes of creativity. To enhance our connection with Moore, the MFA has put white splotches on the floor where we’re standing as we perhaps note the similar white splotches on the reproduction of his floor. We see a film of Moore at work. O’Keeffe didn’t allow such films to be made. A photo of him is obviously informal. Her photo looks like she planned and arranged everything about it. Controlling her image was important to her.
To enhance the show’s context, there are a few items from their modernist contemporaries such as Edward Weston, his son Brett Weston, and Imogen Cunningham. The impressive balancing in a small Alexander Calder sculpture made from four pieces of walnut may reflect his academic background in civil engineering.
A gracefully curving cherry wood bench by Peter M. Adams is both functional and art. In other words, you can sit on it, though the museum asks that we all be careful with it.
The Museum of Fine Arts show Georgia O’Keeffe and Henry Moore is on view through January 20.
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Categories: Review
WMBRBQ 2024
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WMBRBQ 2024 (#2) happened recently! This is our approximately-biannual BBQ, bringing WMBR DJs together to enjoy a carefully curated 88.1 mixtape (by Chuck U. of Troubadour & 88 Rewound) and each other’s company. Photos by Kayode Dada ’27, co-host of Midwest Pizzeria.
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At the MFA, “Dalí: Disruption and Devotion”
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by Bruce Sylvester
Collection of The Dalí Museum, St. Petersberg, FL (USA); Gift of A. Reynolds & Eleanor Morse
Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
With his melting watches and disembodied human limbs, Salvador Dali was perhaps the ultimate surrealist of the previous century. The movement’s early leader, Andre Breton, said that the goal of surrealism was to resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality. But Dali also paid homage to his forebears in his own bizarre style. That’s the point of the Museum of Fine Arts’ astounding new show “Dali: Disruption and Devotion,” which brings together old masters that influenced him and his own works, reflecting and building on them in ways that only Dali could imagine.
Gift of Charlotte Nichols Greene in memory of her father and mother, Mr. and Mrs. Howard Nichols
Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
right: Velázquez Painting the Infanta Marguerita with Lights and Shadows of His Own Glory, 1958 Salvador Dalí, oil on canvas
Collection of the Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, FL; Gift of A. Reynolds & Eleanor Morse
Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The show reaches back to the Medieval Netherlands for works in the nightmarish vein of Hieronymus Bosch, moving forward to two of Dali’s heroes: his fellow Spaniards Goya and Velazquez. We see a few of his reimaginings of Goya’s Los Capricos along with the originals. Dali disassembled a 17th-century royal portrait by Velazquez and then fractured, pruned, and recreated it in a 20th-century way. Some people think that Dali’s trademark handlebar mustache was inspired by Velazquez’s, which we see in a royal portrait that includes him doing the painting.
Surrealists saw no need to present the human figure completely and accurately. In a painting of two adolescents, only one face has mouth, nose, and eyes. In another painting of two people, only one shadow is accurate. As for those expendable scientific laws such as gravity, water can spill up.
The show’s excellent wall notes point out that Dali used rhinoceros horns to show the perfect order of nature since the horn develops in a logarithmic spiral.
Dali lived from 1904 to 1989. Though his father was an atheist, Dali became a devout Catholic well into his adulthood. A minimalist “Christ in Perspective” done in red chalk on paper looks at Jesus from above at an angle that makes his torso look like a pelvic bone.
Elsewhere, the heads of three women standing together become in another sense the bottom of a larger bust of Voltaire.
With about 100 items, the Museum of Fine Arts’ show “Dali: Disruption and Devotion” presents an artist who knew no bounds as he reconstrued classic art from earlier centuries that had thrilled and inspired him. The show is on view through December 1.
By the way, the show doesn’t mention this – it can’t mention everything – but Dali lived in the U.S. for various periods and did work for Walt Disney.
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Categories: Review
My Lady Jane
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by Bruce Sylvester
Looking back to 16th-century Renaissance England, no fiction writer could invent the ruling Tudor family with oft-married Henry VIII, Bloody Mary, cautious Queen Elizabeth, and the boy king Edward VI, who became the monarch at age nine. Then there was the first Tudor king’s granddaughter Lady Jane Grey, a brilliant scholar. In 1533, at age 16, when her young friend King Edward died, Jane usurped the crown for nine days and paid with her life.
Premiering June 27, Prime Video’s eight-part series My Lady Jane fictionalizes and revises her story. She doesn‘t get beheaded, and she strives toward her goal of self-determination. The scriptwriters leave out her religious fanaticism in what Prime Video calls an alt-universe of action, history, fantasy, comedy, romance, and rompy-pompy.
The more a viewer has already read on the colorful Tudors, the more they can savor the subtleties in the script such as scenes that are fictitious but beneath the surface are very close to things that really did happen, examples being several scenes with Jane’s conniving mother and, more nobly, one with Edward’s loyal dog, one of the few creatures he could trust in a palace where treachery ran rampant.
This Renaissance sci-fi reflects an era when plenty of people knew that shape shifters – here called ethians – could change from one species to another in an instant. What a great way to get out of a jam. Ethians add a lot to the excitement. In folk songs of the day, women turned into swans, but here instead the soundtrack blasts “Rebel Rebel” by David Bowie. This being historical fiction, the film can take any liberty it wants. Boy King Edward – a typical light-complected, red-haired Tudor – is played by an adult Black actor, Jordan Peters. On the other hand, Jane’s mother looks like her authentic portrait from back then, and Jane resembles descriptions of her by her contemporaries. Her power-hungry father-in-law, the evil Duke of Northumberland , is another matter. The doomed arranged marriage between his favorite son and Jane takes different surprising turns here than it did back in the 16th century.
My Lady Jane is based on a novel by Cynthia Hand and directed by Jamie Babbit, who previously brought us But I’m a Cheerleader. During filming, cast and crew could have nicknamed this one But I’m Queen of England. If only the real Jane or Jane here had wanted the crown rather than merely caving in to pressure and going along with a scheme her parents and in-laws hatched. Emily Bader plays Jane with appropriate strength of character, while Edward Bluemel plays her young husband in what the studio terms a romantasy. The real Jane Grey should have been as fortunate. As for the scene where Edward’s dog saves his life, in the real event the dog was shot to death by the would-be kidnapper, Edward’s uncle. Here the dog lives to tell about it.
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Categories: Review