Today was Corcoran's last "free Saturday" of the summer, where the doors are open for the public to sketch live models in the lobby. Fortunately for me the Chuck Close exhibit was extended, so I got to participate in art and see the exhibit.
This was my first taste of the open sketching event. I like to doodle wherever I go, but my skills were far behind those who attended today, so I gave up. I enjoyed the view of other participatants much better.
In addition to sketchers, there were singers: a performance by the Washington Revels was going on upstairs, just outside the galleries containing the Close exhibit.
The Chuck Close prints exhibit was interesting to me because I hadn't studied his work since college, which at the time would have stopped with his photorealism work. After that, he began experimenting with materials and techniques, from paper pulp to his own fingerprints.
This work would seem to me to fall more into the realm of craft, which is what the Renwick specializes in.
The Renwick's permanent collection features paintings that most of us would consider art, but also pieces that showcase the skill (craft) of working with materials such as clay, glass, fabric, and wood.
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| Grand Salon, Renwick Gallery |
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| Blanket Cylinder Series (1984) Dale Chihuly |
This demonstrated an impulse to create that transcended the degradation to which humans had been exposed. It would be the same impulse that led Chuck Close to continue to create and experiment and express his vision despite physical disabilities.
Returning to the Norman Rockwell exhibit, "Telling Stories: Norman Rockwell. From the Collections of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg," I'm drawn to the "realism" of his technique, much as I was to Chuck Close's earlier works. Whereas Rockwell's realism was more idealized, Close's was more hyper-realistic. Both forced an idea of reality onto the viewer that is actually quite artificial. One did it with whimsy, carefully casting his scenes with real actors and constructing the sets, and the other with a startling focus on that most intimate of subjects, the face, decontextualizing it through sheer scale.
Before I even decided to see the Rockwell exhibit, I'd read a review (rant, actually) that lambasted this art as propaganda for an idealized America that never existed. Rockwell was a commercial illustrator; of course the images were selling something. I've never felt that diminished the work as art. My favorite piece in the collection, showing a writer dreaming of Daniel Boone, was an ad for Underwood Typewriters.
Back over to the Renwick, I loved the objects in the permanent collection, though I have to say I am bitterly disappointed to have bought a book from the gift shop that featured only one of the objects I saw today (Chihuly's glass cylinder; see above). The book, it turns out, was published in 1998. That's like a century ago, right?
Anyway, the most popular piece today was this glass dress by Karen LaMonte.
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| "Reclining Dress Impression with Drapery" (2009) |
I say it was a popular piece because I had to wait about 10 minutes to get a clear shot of it. There were three women who took turns taking photos of each other with their heads sticking up out of the neckline of the glass dress.
Actually, it made me smile to see that. What started over at the Corcoran a couple of hours earlier--a day of people experiencing art at a very personal level--was just being carried over by these ladies enjoying a work of exquisite craft.
It is why we create, is it not?
love, hosaa
observing observers of life and art
Credit: All photos by C. G. Wagner
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