Art and Artifice

ARCHIVE PAGE 31 - Summer 2019

Art Deco Elevator Doors
Design by Raymond Hood and built by Rene Paul Chambellin
Stainless steel, bronze and nickel, 1931
Photo: Erik Weems at Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington

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John Berger's Ways of Seeing is a famous art instruction on seeing art through a new awareness of elements that get overlooked or are somehow obscure for the casual viewer. The book was first published in 1972 and based on the BBC television series. The Sunday Times critic commented: "This is an eye-opener in more ways than one: by concentrating on how we look at paintings . . . he will almost certainly change the way you look at pictures." AMAZON

Complete Beginners Guide to WaterColor - AMAZON

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Inside VMFA - Gaston laChaise Standing Woman Bronze

Gaston LaChaise "Standing Woman" aka "Elevation" at the VMFA

Midsummer-Night's Dream

John Anster Christian Fitzgerald (aka "Fairy Fitzgerald")
"Queen Titania and Nick Bottom" also known as
"Scene from Midsummer-Night’s Dream" 1860’s
Photo ERIK WEEMS
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

The museum exhibit noted that Fitzgerald used gilded twig framing for his faery paintings, a reference to tales in which faeries use bird nests.

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THE ODYSSEY: With the Greek on one side and the English on the other side this edition allows for easy reading while also opportunities to peruse the original Greek - "the classic parallel text version of Homer." Translation by Augustus Taber Murray (1866–1940) Professor of Greek at Stanford University and George Edward Dimock (1917–2000), Professor of Classical Languages and Literature at Smith College.

Homer was probably born around 725BC and he is from a long line of bards and poets who practiced the oral tradition of storytelling. .AMAZON

Matisse: The Bigger Picture by Anne Sefrioui - AMAZON

"This lavishly produced volume explores Matisse’s lifelong reinvention of art through some fifty works, six extraordinary fold-out spreads, and illuminating essays."AMAZON

172 Pages - Dimensions ‏ ‎ 8.81 x 0.98 x 10.69 inches

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Inside the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

Donut Sprinkles

Donut Sprinkles and Chocolate Glaze

Food sculpture - Donut Sprinkles and Chocolate Glaze, Richmond VA

Rose carved memorial stone at St. John Church

More of the Dengre carved stone

Napoleon

Painting by Francois Gerald, 1805. Photographed at the traveling Napoleon: Power and Splendor exhibit, 2018.

"A study in iconography" is how this piece is described, but there is also the basic image of a man adorned in the royal fashion of 1805. Not only is the outfit (and presentation by the artist) meant for the inspection of the French, but for the inspection of a particular fan club of royalty and "royalists," that is to say, Napoleon's attempted transformation from a Corsican-born professional artilleryman in the French army into a sovereign leader in Europe (and the world) was in mid-program. It worked for awhile, then came exile to Elba, then Waterloo, then imprisonment on St. Helena, and finally death by stomach cancer.

[Below] From the Napoleon Exhibit

Hanging with Napoleon

A model dressed as a Napoleon (in military Marshal attire) mixing it up with the tourists at the VMFA Napoleon: Power and Splendor exhibit, Richmond, Virginia.