a Photo Blog, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to dear dirty New York
In the last post, I discussed liminal spaces, a subject that we have been discussing in my Photography MFA class. Imagine my delight in finding the Limin restaurant! (Click either image below to see them both enlarged – you may have to click the post title first if you’re seeing this in an email).
This is a slightly disorienting view but it’s no more than the view from the top of a staircase, showing 2 stories of this local gallery.
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Our final morning in Antwerp was spent at the KMSKA (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen), which underwent a massive refurbishment for many years. It’s a stunning museum and as you can see I continue to be interested in capturing the spaces, the geometry, the whiteness (and blackness), the symmetry and awe of this cathedral to the beauty of the capitalist art world. Please do click into the images below to see them all full-sized (you may need to click on the post title above first if you’re seeing this in email).
Some touristy postcard snaps of this magnificent cathedral, famous for its Pieter Paul Rubens paintings. You can see his Descent from the Cross in the 5th picture above and next to it an homage by Sam Dillemans. The accompanying brochure explains that the very realism of the Rubens fails to perturb the contemporary viewer as it ought, where the brutal impasto of the homage succeeds (it’s difficult to write sensibly about art). Click any of the pictures to see them all big (you may have to click the post title, above, first if you’re seeing this in an email).
Bruges’ Groeninge Museum was excellent. Laid out in a somewhat traditional chronological fashion, century by century, it offered laminated placards in every room with explanations for most of the artworks so you didn’t need to bend over to read ill-placed, scantily illuminated placards and block other visitors’ view. Of course, as I’ve been doing in almost every museum we’ve visited, I found the mirrors tto photograph myself in.
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The Magritte show is on level -4. We then descended to levels -5 through -8 for the Fin-de-Siècle museum. Again I was struck by the geometry, space and architecture that museums always exhibit as much as the art they display.
The Magritte Museum is currently being renovated and is temporarily staged in the Royal Museums of Beaux-Arts
Canterbury Cathedral is the seat of the Church of England and dates back to the conversion of the King of Kent by St Augustine and his missionaries in 597 CE. Impossible to miss on the skyline around the town and hard not to want to photograph, even if one could more easily just buy postcards. Click any image to see them all full sized.
In Plato’s cave allegory we are bound and can only see images of the shadows cast by statues of real things. As we free our minds, we first discover that we are looking at mere images, shadows. Next we discover that the shadows are cast not by the real but by statues, imitations of the ideals which they represent. Only when we emerge from the cave do we discover the world of real things.
I stopped to compliment this man on how beautiful his house and garden looked and we chatted for a minute, after which he graciously permitted me to photograph him in front of his house.
Saturday before Christmas we went to see Benny Andrews: Portraits, A Real Person Before the Eyes at the Michael Rosenfeld Gallery. These are very very powerful, strong images, created with paint on canvas and painted cloth and other materials (gesso?) that give them real depth. Well worth putting on a mask and making an appointment to go see.
Next stop on our gallery crawl was this powerful Titus Kaphar exhibit at Gagosian.
Click any image to see them all enlarged.
Continuing west on 24th Street we came to the Luhring Augustine Gallery and these Frank Auerbach works (from 1978 – 2016). Really luscious impasto and a lovely autumnal palette of (mostly) muted shades.
