MFA Redux

Though Joe and I were at the Museum of Fine Art just to see the Hokusai exhibit, we managed to stumble across some other amazements on our way to the basement gallery.

Max Beckmann's, Still life with Three Skulls was in a first floor hallway along with a few far less interesting, older still lifes—it was hung opposite a large information desk.

This piece is BRILLIANT and it's displayed in a room that most folks are just buzzing through on their way to elsewhere? OK, OK, my indignation might be a coming from a sorta, kinda biased place. I'm magnificently keen on Beckmann and most of the rest of the German Expressionists. There's a mega-ton of lovely but not quite soul piercing work at the MFA. I've got to hunt for the stuff that moves me to jaw dropped, stunned silence and I just, practically, tripped over Three Skulls.
Chancing on this piece as we dashed to get in line for Hokusai, thrilled me right down to the cellular level.

This beautiful sculpture at right, Orpheus and Cerberus by Thomas Crawford, stands just inside the main entrance. Crawford's best known works are in D.C., on and around the Capitol. Frankly, apart from the fig leaf over his boy parts, I like Orpheus and the dogs best.

Post Hokusai action, we climbed the stairs for a brief look at Sargent's lush, gorgeous paintings on the ceiling of the rotunda.

On the way up, as uzh, I was taken by this big, green Chinese hound. Man-o-man, I want to create a menagerie for the entry way to our wee cottage. I want a big green dog, Orpheus and Cerberus, a gryphon or some other chimeric beastie—they should all stand out front to greet visitors.

Appeal to the Great Spirit~C. E. Dallin

Would that be awesome or what?!

The chief enemy of creativity is good sense.
~Pablo Picasso

Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.
~Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island

One eye sees, the other feels.
~Paul Klee

We have art in order not to die of the truth.
~Friedrich Nietzsche

Life is a blank canvas, and you need to throw all the paint on it you can.
~Danny Kaye

I want to meet a guy named Art. I'd take him to a museum, hang him on the wall, criticize him, and leave.
~Jarod Kintz, I Want