Tank
"Russell paid us a surprise visit"
Yes, that's a flamethrower.
"Judy watching T.V."
Yes, that's my Pop Pop smoking a cigarette and shaking hands with Darth Vader
In Paris I went back to the Musee d'Orsay. A lot of the museum is under construction and some key pieces are not on display. However it made up for it with the insanly awesome exhibit "Crime and Punishment." the exhibit had paintings depicting various crimes (ie. the Death of Marat), an actual guillitine, paintings by prisoners in jail, drawings and plans of the Panopticon jail preposed by Breton. Crime scene photographs, death masks of criminals, penny dreadfuls and posters and newspapers including woodcuts of horrible headlines. It was morbid and awesome, extremely powerful and kind of gross all at once. I definitely reccomment paying the extra euro or two to go see it if you're in Paris.
Amsterdam had the most museums I wanted to go to, The Van Gogh Museum, the Rembrandt House and Museum and the Rijksmuseum. All were amazing I mean the Rijksmuseum had a ton of Rembrandts including the Night Watch, Vermeer, Hals and other Dutch masters. The Van Gogh museum was great, as expected but the Rembranthouse was a lot of fun. It was pretty cool to see his studio and his bed and everything, they also have galleries. They had a great show on early Dutch photography and they had a room with a selection of Rembrant's prints.
Bruges was really beautiful and ridiculously picturesque. I feel like nobody actually lives in Bruges except fairies and unicorns. Bruges had the Groeninge Museum, interesting colloction of local medieval artists and even Belgian modern artists. The Memling Museum in the Hospital of Saint John completely blew me away. The paintinfs and various artefacts from its days as a hospital were fascinating, the Memling museum was amazing, and they had on loan from the Groeninge Museum one of Bosh's famous altarpieces. all of this in a church-like setting, for kids they had medieval coloring books set up on drawing horses with colored pencils. The were scenes from the bible and scenes from the hospital, it was kind of great coloring in Nuns taking care of maimed people. In the upstairs there was this very powerful exhibition by an artist in residence on the "foundlings" since St. Johns was also a foundling hospital.
All in all the museums in Belguim, Amsterdam and Paris were a ton of fun, I prpbably spent 70 euros in postcards and another 40 in Museum entrance fees but it was well worth it!
This is titled "The Return of Persephone: The Advent of Spring" This is not a Labor of Hercules but is in the same vein as the Labors series as well as the "Fall of Icarus," being that this too is a Greco-Roman myth. Oil an Shellac on Wood, 4x4.
"The Girdle of Hippolyta" The ninth Labor. Gesso and Oil on Wood, 4x6.
"The Nemean Lion II" The first Labor. Oil and Shellac on Wood, 8x10.
"The Cattle of Geryon" The tenth Labor. Oil and Shellac on Panel, 5x5
The whole wall, 2nd floor on the right hand side.
So looks like I’ll be a busy lady. My family’s also plans on taking a vacation in Barcelona for two weeks in the middle/end of May. I’m super psyched about that. I’m second guessing purchasing a scanner and might opt for giving my self a camera for my birthday. I can’t do much with a new scanner in Barcelona and all my film cameras are either busted or too archaic to use for tourist-ing. So hopefully I’ll have lots of new work to show everyone in the next month or so, painting, photo and book stuff!
Here are some random images, figure drawings and sketches from MICA years past and of course my Lauren Bacall woodblock print from LaG.
