That silver tray. Next to the fabulous Ricardo Cate’ artwork. A closer look reveals … a beatific rack of ribs, bristling with spices. Yup. Ribs above the fridge. WTF? Well. This. We again have a creature capable of looking our meat eye-to-eye when it’s sitting on a table of non -large-breed-scale. We already lost a tenderloin …
Category Archives: Art Bob
Diego Rivera, Vladimir Lenin and Rockefeller Center
When Nelson Rockefeller commissioned Diego Rivera to create a mural for Rockefeller Center, he wasn’t expecting Vladimir Lenin to make the scene. And when Rivera included Lenin in the work, Rockefeller came unglued, demanding that Lenin be excluded. Rivera offered to add Abe Lincoln as a compromise. When that didn’t appease Rockefeller, the mural was …
Continue reading “Diego Rivera, Vladimir Lenin and Rockefeller Center”
Joan of Arc at Meridian Hill Park
Joan of Arc at Meridian Hill Park, a photo by Suffering the Benz on Flickr. Ozzy and I talked up to Meridian Hill Park yesterday, where we found Joan of Arc looking down on the District from the top of the hill. Wikipedia alleges this is the only statue of a woman on horseback in …
The marvels of ancient Angkor
My obsession with Cambodia began in the early ’90s in a stack of books at the Birmingham Post-Herald. I was ferreting through the review copies looking for something to read when I spotted To Destroy You Is No Loss, which details Teeda Butt Mam’s struggle to survive Pol Pot’s rein of terror in Cambodia. I’d …
The Dying Gaul
I’ve been the the National Gallery of Art several times since the holidays. Every time, I’ve stopped to marvel at The Dying Gaul in the rotunda of the West Building. This morning, the Wall Street Journal ran a piece by Catesby Leigh on the sculpture that helps verbalize the visceral sense I had of why …
Alexander’s big adventure
So this is really strange … While I was drifting around in the National Gallery of Art’s exhibition, Heaven and Earth: Art of Byzantium from Greek Collections, I stumbled across this image of Alexander the Great ascending into the heavens. Here’s a description, taken directly from the exhibit: Alexander the Great (356 – 323 BC) truly …
Sailing to Byzantium
The National Gallery of Art stepped up to help me figure out what to do with my first free Thursday afternoon in a long time. A pair of scheduled gallery talks seemed a perfect way to decompress. A young woman from the museum led a gallery tour of Augustus Saint Gaudens’ Shaw Memorial. I’d already …
Quotes: peeking Into Desolation Row
“This isn’t desolation row this is prostate alley.” — Colin Syme, commenting on “men sitting round a table playing Bob Dylan on acoustic guitar badly” in “The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart,” by David Greig
Metropolis art …
I stumbled across German photographer Michael Wolf‘s photography this morning. Fascinating stuff. He uses mega cities as a concrete palette, mixing the colors, geometries and human faces of urban life into images that vibrate tensely between order and chaos. I particularly liked Architecture of Density and Tokyo Compression … Thanks to Slate for pointing me Wolf’s …
Huichol VWs, Thomas Jefferson and a perfect spring day
Lara and I took advantage of an amazing spring day to walk the National Mall. We started at the MLK monument with no specific agenda, but we managed to see the Jefferson Memorial, a Huichol bead VW at the Museum of the American Indian and the Picasso sketches exhibit at the National Gallery of Art. …
Continue reading “Huichol VWs, Thomas Jefferson and a perfect spring day”