Jose goes to the Long Beach Museum of Art exhibit

Greetings, this is Jose Nava bringing you a small preview of what you’ll find inside the Long Beach Museum of Art’s current exhibition. As you enter the museum, you shall witness how the past comes back to life in radiant colors as Sherrie Wolf resurrects and adds a personal twist to Baroque-era paintings.

The artist who is featured in the exposition is Sherrie Wolf, who is a prominent Oregon-based painter that has made several pieces of art since the late 1970’s.  Her love for art and her admiration for paintings, as well as other artists, are reflected in many of her paintings. Her trademark style is to incorporate still-lives of fruits and flowers into replicas of 19^th-century artwork to convey a mood of surrealism into her art.

Unlike the dark colors that are used in traditional Baroque paintings, Sherrie has added bright colors and more lighting to her paintings, changing the mood on most of her artwork. Another important aspect about her artwork is that a majority of her paintings are actually her own renditions to original pieces of art that she admires. In order to make her paintings different from the original paintings, however, Sherrie adds a still life of items and positions them into her replica to bring the painting into “another world.” According to the exhibition’s brochure, adding a still life into Sherrie’s paintings “challenge the subject of surrealism in painting by posing the question: can a painting ever truly achieve realism, as a painting is a painting, an object, and never the thing it represents.”

The artwork that stood out for me the most is her work titled Self Portrait, in which she seems to be inviting the viewer of the painting to come inside a part of her mind. Sherrie’s Self Portrait is actually her own version of Charles Wilson Peale’s The Artist in his Museum from 1822. In the original painting, Peale lifts a velvet drape to reveal an exhibition hall with shelves of stuffed birds, museum visitors, and the remains of old specimens such as the jaws and bones of a mastodon. Sherrie, however, placed herself inside the painting as she reveals a museum that shows objects and pieces of art that represent parts of herself. For example, Sherrie painted the skull of a steer and a pink flower blossom, which is an reference to her admiration for Georgia O'Keefe. Another example is a reference of Marie-Denise Villers' painting Charlotte du Val d'Ognes, which references the fact that Wolf herself duplicates paintings. These and many other references to already-existing pieces of art is something that appealed to me due to the personal meaning that each work of art inside the painting have for the painter herself.

Sherrie’s work answered one of the questions I’ve been holding in my mind for quite some time: is there anyone in the 21^st century that has created realistic paintings like the ones from several centuries ago? I am very impressed to know that there are people who can replicate the realistic art style from the Renaissance and Baroque eras. Somehow people have been isolating themselves from realistic art styles in the 20^th century. Although the new styles of art have been quite revolutionary and have placed themselves as an integral part of art history, I’ve felt that people no longer cared about the realistic styles of centuries gone by. Sherrie not only resurrected Baroque art, in my opinion, but gave it the life and the brightness it really deserves.

Hello everyone it’s me Tom. The gallery I chose to go to was the Orange County Museum of Art in Newport Beach. They have a section for permanent display with works by various artists in different mediums. In this section of the museum I saw a piece by Manny Farber called “Have a Chew on Me (1983)”.

            Manny Farber was born in 1917 in Douglas, Arizona. He went to UC Berkley and Stanford. He won most of his renown as a film critic in New York, but was also known as talented still life painter. In 1970 Farber left New York to take a teaching position at UC San Diego, where he focused on his art and teaching. He completely retired from film criticism in 1977. Manny Farber died in 2008, near Encinitas, California.

            The materials used, for the piece “Have a Chew on Me”, were oil on board. The work features many seemingly disparate drawings. There are gesture drawings, figure drawings, still life drawings, and a kind of portrait. There are drawings of tools, books and either tiny people and/or dolls. The information next to the display says the work may be a narrative of his life as a film critic and his love of film. The title “Have a Chew on Me” is actually a line from a 1931 film “Other Men’s Women”. The information also goes on to say that this work is a reevaluation of 1930’s culture and ethos.

            I have not seen the film “Other Men’s Women”, but inferring from the title, from the information I already know and from some of the imagery on the work. I would think it is a tale of infidelity and covetousness. The nude drawing of women from the behind seem that it was an only amorous and not romantic rendezvous for the characters, or for at least one. In the only front facing drawing of a woman we see her with a man and both of their faces are left out. We also see one woman who seems to be balancing on a precipice. It seems like we are viewing this work from above, like we are looking down on a workers table with various tools strewn about it. 

         

Ashlee Orellano, Long Beach Mueseum of Art

Hello, Art 15! It’s Ashlee Orellano here to discuss Sherrie Wolf’s Baroque Sensibilties exhibit currently on display at the Long Beach Mueseum of Art. 

Sherrie Wolf is a painter from Oregon best known for her still lifes with atmopheric backgrounds, contemporary realism, and vivid coloration. Wolf incorporates the past through her historical backgrounds that pay homage to well known artists- specifically those of the Baroque period.

The Baroque Sensibilities exhibit explores the Baroque period, inspired by classic paintings, to create original works of art. Spanning from the late seventeenth century through the eighteenth century, the Baroque period was a time of artistic style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur. It featured exaggerated lighting, intense emotions, release from restraint, and artistic sensationalism. Wolf’s expertly painted works begin with inspiration from classic works from this time as a background and her organized choice of objects set within the paintings’ foreground.

Wolf’s work embraces the original paintings and inspirational images and takes them into her own personal direction. She does this through depth of field, reflections and play of light, palette, and additions of modern, everyday objects- creating a unique setting to give the viewer a fresh look and a chance to revisit historic works in a new light.

One painting in particular that caught my attention was  “Self Portrait 2012” is based on Gustave Corbet's masterpiece called "The Artist Studio, A Real Allegory of a Seven Year Phase in My Artistic and Moral Life" (1855). It is oil on linen with intense deep color, and dynamic light and dark shadows. It is 105x70 inches and its massive size was only made more engaging by the fact that it hung solitary on a large white wall.

Left: Self Portrait, 2014     Right: Self Portrait, 2012

Besides the size, the role reversal made the painting particularly striking. The painting, referencing “The Artist Studio, A Real Allegory of a Seven Year Phase in My Artistic and Moral Life", places a modern day Wolf as a painter in a scene of a Baroque era model painting session. She confidently sits in her chair painting, doing what she does best, while the man besides her looks at her work with an expression of wonder and infatuation. Her work consists of anachronisms, but in this one she is the anachronism- which is fitting because it demonstrates who she is as an artist and her work as a whole. The role reversal shows her in a position of power, in control of her own vision and aesthetic while simultaneously borrowing from works from the past.

Left: Still Life with Diana and her Nymphs, 2007    Right: Still Life with Puget Sound, 2012

The collection as a whole effected me because of how elegant and graceful the pieces were. Although the older paintings she references where copied intricately, they seem more backdrops to her still lives. The modern day objects were given life by the background scenes full of animation. The objects complimented the backgrounds and it felt like the background -past- and the foreground - the future- were working together to create one successful, coherent piece. It inspires me to learn from the accomplishments of artists of the past in order to improve and grow as an artist. Her work also inspires me to focus on my pieces collectively to strategically execute them so the parts have a life of their own, but also work together to create lucid and coherent piece.

LACMA Visit

 I chose to visit LACMA over the weekend and I came to find that there were many interesting works of art throughout the museum and each one contributed their own feeling.  The piece of art that captured my attention the most was a piece by Pablo Picasso, called Portrait of Sebastia Juner Vidal, it is an oil painting on canvas. Pablo Picasso was a very unique artist in the 20th century. He co-created such styles as Cubism and Surrealism. Pablo Picasso paintings now rank among the most expensive artwork in the world. Therefore his work shows various amounts of messages and conveys an enormous amount of feeling from each one. This particular piece grasped my attention due to the fact that it is so simply colored with various shades of blue but yet this painting exhibited the most feeling for me. The theme of this painting has a gloomy exterior at your first glance but once you really look at it you can start to read more into the emotions that portrayed not only by Picasso but as well by the subjects who are being painted. The feeling I got from this painting intentionally was loneliness, and despair, but once I really analyzed it I got a feeling of two people being content with who they are and what they are doing in the painting. This particular painting inspired me to try and think of ways to use only one or two colors but with various shades of each color in order to display a feeling that is usually accompanied with that particular color such as dark colors for sad or serious situations and bright colors for fun and free feeling situations. Therefore I chose this painting to do this blog on due to the fact that it is full of emotion and gives an excellent example of colors can be used to convey feelings.