Brooklyn Museum

I went with U-Chan and her mom to the Brooklyn Museum to see the Norman Rockwell exhibit. His works are a bit too archly sentimental for my taste, but it was interesting to see how he designed his pictures. He had his models pose over and over, variations on his chosen scenes, with a photographer snapping away. He'd then basically crop his favorite bits from multiple photos and project them onto the canvas for the final, detailed work. Very cool.

African Art

I like what they've done with their African gallery. This is an antelope headdress from Mali, from the 19th C but it feels very modern with the abstract but clean lines:

16th Century artifact, apparently one of the oldest known ivory carvings in Africa:

This face was beautifully rendered:

A chair for the chief:


A wooden mask:
A beaded elephant mask:

American Art

From the gallery of American art, I really liked this 2007 piece by Valerie Hegarty called "Fallen Bierstadt" (although I've only captured the top portion of the work ... the lower portion is a bunch of broken pieces on the floor):

Here's "Jonah and the Whale: Rebirth Motif" (by John Flannagan, 1937):

I believe this one is called "Cops and Headlights":

Better than a trip to the zoo, because the animals don't hide from you!

Fred Tomaselli

The serendipitous discovery of the day was the Fred Tomaselli exhibit. In a word: Wow! Or maybe: Psychadelic!

Most of his works were essentially collages and other layers (e.g., paint) embedded in resin.

Of the works we were permitted to photograph, here are some of my favorites.

Here's a closeup of one:

Many of his pieces evoke the feeling of mille fleurs, including this one (this is just a close-up):

Some of the more recent works involved painting over the front page NYT photo, often to amazing effects.

I liked this one because it superimposes an Asian style ocean scene on the tent compound; the tents are like barks offering shelter in the storm.

This photo of victims of terrorist attacks in Iraq was striking because I have seen old paintings of martyred Christian saints rendered in this sort of Byzantine style:

Some of the artist's NYT works were more overtly political in nature, such as laser beams coming out of the eyes of politicians of a particular party...