vince’s ear

This is technically the third post in a series involving the statues and sculpture of Philadelphia. It is about one of the few cemeteries which is also a National Historic Landmark, the Laurel Hill Cemetery.

The cemetery is a historic one with many prominent Philadelphians laid to rest, such as George Gordon Meade, commander of the Union forces at the pivotal Civil War battle Gettysburg. It also brags of being an extensive sculpture garden filled with angels, cherubim, guardians, and all sorts of decorative monuments. One such monument was designed by the artist Alexander Milne Calder (William Penn statue on top of Philadelphia City Hall), the father of Alexander Sterling Calder (the Swann fountain in view of City Hall), and grandfather of Alexander Calder (among other things the mobile looking at the fountain and City Hall from the art museum).

If you ever find yourself in the Philadelphia area, besides the Art Museum and the Rodin Museum, which are just a stone’s throw away from each other, you definitely should visit Laurel Hill, which is about a five minute’s drive from the museums (see the link for directions); admission is always free. There are plenty of reasons for visiting- it’s more than a nice walk in the park on a Sunday afternoon, no matter how many times you go you always find a new interesting monument, and visiting such a somber and peaceful area can be very therapeutic.

You can see the tombstone used for Adrian in Rocky Balboa (2006). Also don’t forget to see Rocky himself near the famous Rocky steps. Below are a couple of the angels you’ll find. I also put the shots from this recent visit in the Sculpture and Statues Gallery.

Laurel Hill Cemetery website.

See also Sculpture and Statuary in Philadelphia Part 1 and Part 2.

Before I told you about Friday after 5 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in my post about the museum. Let me introduce to you today the other place to be on a Friday night once a month in Philadelphia’s historic Old City neighborhood. I speak of First Friday which is on, you guessed it, the first Friday of every month. It’s when all the galleries mostly on 2nd and 3rd streets from Spring Garden to Market open their doors for art openings, wine and beer, hors d’oeuvres and snacks, and one big artsy get-together.

The Place To Be

This event, started in 1991 after Wilmington, Delaware began theirs a couple years earlier, offers many local up and coming artists the opportunity to show and sell their art without dealing with the stuffier galleries in more richy neighborhoods. On the other end, people of all walks of life can walk and mingle with the art crowd in a laid back manner to look at new art whether they are planning to buy or not.

You can usually meet the artist at the opening at certain times, and talk to them about their work, get their autograph or what have you, or just shoot the breeze. If you’re not feeling too social most galleries have a guest book where you can leave a note of appreciation, your email, or just a friendly hello. You can find some pamphlets regarded the artists with a little more information, such as a website. It’ll include all the artists if its a group show, or just the featured artist. I ran into one gallery last night featuring Chuck Close

Music and Good Times

The whole atmosphere is what contributes to such a good time. As you hop from gallery to gallery you are spectator to all kinds of entertainment. I’ve seen fire breathers, sword swallowers, belly dancers, jugglers, and there’s always the pan handlers and street musicians. An old man with an electric violin, a young girl with a banjo, whole bands, and singers are all there on the sidewalk for your enjoyment and generous contribution.

Not every band is outside, though. As you go into each gallery or book store you’ll find all kinds of music being played, my favorite being a certain group who play at the F.A.N. gallery on Arch street. They’re an Irish group called Ceol Mor, with a guitarist, a flutist, violin player, and a fellow that plays the concertina, guitar, and sings. They play classic folk Irish tunes from up beat dancing numbers to old drinking songs. They’ve been known to take some requests, too.

If you’re still in a dancing mood you can visit one of the several clubs you’ll find within walking distance from the galleries such as Cuba Libre, if you’re in a salsa kind of mood and Club Spice for the adventurous Indian dancer. Cuba Libre has an open front so passersby can “people watch” and see some nice Spanish dancing.

Good Food

Most showrooms will feed you and make available nice lagers or wines for a small donation. You can always see some seltzer and pretzels at the very least. They spare no expense in some places, giving you a wide array of gourmet cheeses, fruits, crackers and meats you can enjoy whilst gazing at the artwork.

I must plug a certain Jewish establishment, if you’re to take away any knowledge of the good food you can find at First Friday. You simply must give this gallery a shot, you won’t be disappointed. The artwork is okay, usually very modern and minimalist. But the food is to die for. The height of the celebration there is the Rabbi speaking and giving the Sabbath prayer. He’s a nice guy and usually cracks a joke or two. They’ll give you a decent glass of wine to toast, to boot. After the prayer, on a cold night you’ll find yourself wiht a decent cup of hot chicken soup. Take advantage of the best brownies you’ll ever eat before they go. And they go fast. Don’t miss out on the other food either, such as a nice pasta salad and other Jewish cuisines.

Check It Out

A good gallery to visit is F.U.E.L. on the corner of 3rd and Arch streets. This is the one probably most aimed at the hip young crowd with loud music and featuring undergraduate artwork. They seem to keep a show on for a couple months before changing. Good music, food, and atmosphere with two floors to check out, it’s always worth a visit. Sometimes there’s a line to get it.

Another must-see is the Clay Studio. Nothing but clay and ceramics fill this two storyart house. They usually change their collection each month, featuring several local artists. It has a gallery to view and a gift shop for the more economical. Rarely am I disappointed with their stuff, ranging from traditional pottery to the abstract. I was lucky once to view a demonstration of pottery making on a pottery wheel. The boy was nice enough to let me hold one of the fresh cups and I went ahead and dented it by mistake. Oh well, I don’t claim to be a potter.

The good part of all this is you won’t have to check up on dates and times. It’s open every first Friday of the month, rain or shine. Most galleries are open from about 5 to 8:30. You can get away with showing up at 7:30 but I’d recommend at least arriving between 6 and 7 or earlier. You may get lucky with a couple galleries staying open till 9, but after that they’re pretty much packing up. Most of these galleries are open throughout the month, but you need to check the times and sometimes you may need an appointment.

So it may not be the highlight of your month but sure will on that particular night. A good Friday night could consist of eating at one of the many good restaurants in the area, shimmying by Old City for the gallery walk and then dancing the rest of the night away.

No matter what you’re plan, you’re sure to have a good time.

Technorati Tags: Philadelphia, First Friday, gallery, museum, art, artwork

As featured on Associated Content

Allow me to present the magnificent and awesome Philadelphia Museum of Art. Besides being my favorite museum and a great tourist attraction of Pennsylvania, this museum houses one of the largest and most important collections of art in the United States. The current main building, built in 1919, commands the skyline at the end of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, with the Rodin Museum a little further up close to city hall, and the new Perelman Building on Pennsylvania and Fairmount Avenues.

Founded in 1876, the P.M.A. holds about 15 to 20 special exhibitions a year which attract close to a million people annually. Some of the largest being the Paul Cezanne show in 1996, bringing in 548,000 people and the Salvador Dali exhibition in 2005, which attracted 370,000 museum goers. Both of which I had the pleasure of viewing.

The Collections

The Philadelphia Museum of Art contains close to a quarter of a million art objects with rotating viewing status in 12 main sections or wings. It boasts the most important Thomas Eakins collection in the world and the largest and most important Auguste Rodin collection outside of Paris. Some of the attractions of the Art Museum include a Japanese Tea House, with several rooms, a recreation of an abbey from the Middle Ages, a Burgundian Church, a Buddhist Temple, an English drawing room by Robert Adam, and many more recreations of other times which include their art and artifacts.

Arms and Armor

The Carl Otto Kretzschmar (not Otto Kretschmer the U-Boat ace) von Kienbusch Collection holds many pieces of European arms and armor on view. This huge collection shows relics spanning centuries of armored warfare and includes equine armor and armor for small children.

Here are some other pictures of the arms and armor collection. Click on the thumbnails for larger images.

From Bosch To van Gogh

Currently [12/07]on view in the European Art 1100-1500 is a special exhibit involving the Dutch masters Hieronymus Bosch and the Brueghel family. I couldn’t take pictures of a special exhibit but if you do an image search of these artists I promise you won’t be disappointed. Just don’t look at the Bosch paintings before you go to bed, you might get nightmares.

Some of the most beautiful paintings on view are in the European Art 1850-1900 section. Here you’ll find many notable Impressionistic works to include Paul Cezanne, Pierre-August Renoir, Georges-Pierre Seurat, and Claude Monet. Some of my favorite van Gogh’s are on view, notably his “Rain” painting and one of his “Sunflowers.” You’ll also find some Edouard Manet masterpieces my favorite being the “Kearsarge sinking the Alabama.” I talk a little about that here about halfway through the post. (all the paintings in that post were either from the Philadelphia Museum of Art or the Brandywine River Museum).

Below is the Resnick Rotunda with a fountain in the middle, which connects the European Art 1850-1900 section to the Modern and Contemporary Art section. Some noteworthy paintings on view here are Claude Monet’s “Japanese Bridge,” Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflower,” both of which you can see in the picture and Manet’s “Le Bon Boch.”

The first gallery picture above under the heading “The Collections” shows the European Art 1500-1850 wing. Here are some other shots of the European Art sections, including some sculptures from the 1500-1850 rooms:

Art And Artifacts of The East

A visit to the museum would not be complete without seeing the Tea House. Here you have a perfectly recreated Japanese Tea House setting, complete with gardens and pathways exactly as you would see it in the Far East. This exhibition is loaded with information about Japanese customs and even shows a video on how the Japanese made the tea following tradition.

Other rooms lead you to Indian art, Chinese artifacts, and a Buddhist temple. Due to the sensitivity of the artworks they are cased in extremely low light making it impossible to capture with camera. The objects include ancient Chinese snuff bottles, statues, and icons of India, and other Asian countries.

Thomas Eakins and American Art

Thomas Eakins has been hailed as the father of American painting. His paintings and sculptures included Philadelphia high society, athletes and sports, and some local landscapes. His artwork also included a lot of nudes which unfortunately got him into a lot of trouble, seeing that people in the late nineteenth century were a bit prudish. I recommend reading up about him, you can read an article here.

His masterpiece “The Gross Clinic” sold in November of 2006 for $68 million and will rotate between the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Here are some shots of his paintings in the Eakins section of American Art. The painting on the left is the “Agnew Clinic,” another huge surgery painting.

 

Some other works in the American Art section include Winslow Homer paintings, some Andy Warhol art, 18th century furniture and all kinds of glass artifacts and cutlery. The museum is also noted for its large collection of Pennsylvania German antiques.

Modern and Contemporary Art

Depending on my mood this can be my favorite section of the museum. It shows art of the twentieth century to today from all over the world. Some great artists shown here are Jasper Johns, Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Joan Miro, and Constantin Brancusi. Oh and don’t forget Cy Twombly.

There is always a video playing in the little theater room which shows some modern film which range from documentaries to stop film animation. This section of the museum has I think the most frequent special exhibition rotations and is a very exciting gallery to see.

The Great Stair Hall

In the very middle of the museum leading from the first to second floors is the humongous Great Stair Hall. Many performances are put on ranging from performing arts such as ballet to chamber music, with the people either sitting at tables in front or on the stairs themselves. This shot below just shows the top of the stairs with the huge statue of Diana on the back wall. The giant Alexander Calder mobile is visible in the foreground.

 

This is where the hub of activity is at the Art After 5 events. This happens every Friday night after 5, when the museum would normally close on the weekdays. Theres a bar where you can order your choice of liquor and a decent selection of wines. You can sit at the tables and order from the Museum Restaurant menu. Some form of entertainment commences such as a jazz band playing or a film might play. The first time I went was near Halloween so the film Nosferatu was playing on the big screen, with a live band playing for background music. The best part is you get to look at all the art a little drunk!

 

Here is the jazz band between sets, and a wide shot of the Hall from above:

 

 

The Perelman Building

 

 

If you’re going to visit the Art Museum, don’t forget to stop by the new Perelman Building right across the street on Fairmount Avenue. It’s the museums latest addition in 80 years and will showcase many of the more popular modern art items from the permanent collection. It’s full of sculpture and has a library on the second floor open on weekdays to the public.

 

In the galleries there you will find some Picasso and Lipchitz sculptures, photography, textiles, drawings, prints, furniture and more. You can see some shots below, click on the thumbnails for larger viewing.

 

 

Well I certainly hope you found this article informative and amusing. If this is true, leave a note in the comments box.

 

Maybe I’ll run into you at the museum one of these days, I hope to see you there.

 

Until then…

 

 

See also First Friday

Technorati Tags: art, museum, Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, galleries, Eakins

 

This is the second post in a series documenting my photo-journalist efforts to capture every statue and sculpture in and around the city of Philadelphia on my SLR camera. You can read the first post here: Sculpture and Statuary in Philadelphia Part 1 , and I highly recommend checking out the new shots, as well as the ones from the first expedition at my Philadelphia Statues photo gallery.

Attempting to shoot every statue in the city is quite a challenge, but an exhilarating one. It’s a lot of fun being a tourist in your own city because I guarantee most city dwellers would find all kinds of new and exiting artifacts all over their town if they just went and looked. As I have said before, if you have any suggestions on what I can take pictures of, especially around Philly, let me know in the comments. I hope you enjoy this post and the photos. I plan on making many more from my ongoing excursions downtown, and as a travel companion I hope you enjoy the trip as well.

Founders, Statesmen, and Ghosts?

I especially had a lot of fun with this one, as there is a bit of a story behind it (as is I’m sure of all these statues). The statue is of the founder of my state, William Penn, hence Pennsylvania, or “Penn’s Woods.” In this statue he holds the land charter given to him by Charles II in 1681 to repay a debt owed to his father, Admiral Penn. This is the largest land charter in history. William Penn is a prominent figure in U.S. history, contributing to the uniting of the colonies to become the United States, and his Pennsylvania frames of government would inspire the democratic principles of the United States Constitution.

The statue above rests in the garden of the Pennsylvania Hospital. But some folks may argue against my choosing of the word “rests” as there is quite a legend behind this particular monument. The monument itself had strange beginnings as it was found by mistake by Penn’s grandson in London and bought for a negligible price. It was later donated to the hospital where it has remained since.

Legend has it that the old statue steps down from its pedestal every night and wanders the garden. Could this strange specter be the ghost of old Willie Penn haunting the garden? Could the statue be restless and wander for a nightly stroll? Some stories have it that every New Years Eve, the Penn statue comes to life and walks the Earth.

You know where I’ll be late New Years Eve this year. OK, maybe not, but it still makes for an interesting story. Now this next fellow of Philadelphia prominence I recognized a block away. I talked about him a little here about half way through the post. It is none other than my favorite surgeon, Dr. Samuel Gross depicted in Thomas Eakins’ “The Gross Clinic.”

“The Gross Clinic” was almost bought by the Walton family of Walmart for $68 million but was thankfully overbid by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Wachovia, Pew Charitable Trust and many other public and private donors. The painting shows Samuel Gross, scalpel in hand, conducting surgery on a boy in a classroom at Thomas Jefferson University. The painting at first received little praise but has since been recognized as Eakins’ masterpiece.

Throughout the city you find statues of many statesmen from throughout U.S. history. Here are Commodore John Barry, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Robert Morris.

 

The Philadelphia Museum of Art

In the first post I showed a whole bunch of statues from around the Philadelphia Museum of Art and in and around the Rodin Museum. In this post I will emphasize some of the statues from the collection inside the art museum. Unfortunately there are just too many to include so I’ll show below some of my favorites. Be sure to check out the gallery to see some of the many sculptures found in the permanent collection, once again too many to include. I hope to include more in subsequent posts.

Why not start off with a head of our dear old Ben Franklin. Now this jolly fellow had so much to do with Philadelphia and the founding of our country that I won’t even go into it, but direct you to this article if you’re interested.

Click the thumbnail for larger version. It was funny as I took this picture a man came up with his daughter and asked her “who’s that?” She then of course replied Benjamin Franklin! She also added that the bust off to the left in this picture is his wife. I got a good laugh from that. He sits here in the American collection of the museum.

These next couple of shots are just a few of the sculpture pictures I took that were in the early American and European collections. The rest you can find in the Sculptures Gallery, as will the rest of the more modern ones which I will show you here after these next few pictures.

 

 

By the way the last Rodin sculpture above was difficult to shoot because I couldn’t get in front of it. The reason was because it was After 5 at the museum on Friday night and the place was swarming with people, and this one being near the bar made it next to impossible to stand in one spot to take a picture. I’ll explain Friday after 5 in a later post about the museum itself.

And for the viewer with more modern tastes, these shots are from the American collections and Modern and Contemporary Art collections. I’ll start it with one of Duchamp’s most famous works of art, his “Fountain.” I talk a little about it here.

The Perelman Building

Speaking of modern art, I’ll go ahead and plug the newest addition to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Ruth and Raymond G Perelman building. The museum’s only addition in 80 years, it houses many examples of modern art and textiles, to include a nice collection of sculptures. I’ll go further into detail about this nice new building across the street from the main building when I do my post about the Philadelphia Museum of Art. First check out some of the sculptures you’ll find there. This first one is by one of my favorite sculptors Jacques Lipchitz. I could do a whole post about him.

 

Well this concludes my second post involving the statues and sculptures around the city of Philadelphia but certainly not the ongoing adventure of taking their pictures. There is too much to include in a single post which is why this is broken down across several articles.

Once again I must encourage you to check out the galleries to the right of your screen to see the others, they’re all worth viewing. Furthermore no matter where you live in the world I highly recommend a visit to the city of Brotherly Love, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to at least see the Art Museum. Take a tourist trip around the city to see the many landmarks and historical spots around downtown, you can arrange a tourist trip complete with bus rides and guided tours. Or you can do what I do and just walk around, you’re bound to find something.

I’d say you can’t throw a rock without hitting a historical monument, but I wouldn’t recommend throwing rocks at the statues. You might anger William Penn…

Sculpture and Statuary in Philadelphia Part 1

Technorati Tags: sculpture, Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, statues, statuary, historical, monuments

When I look at a painting, the artist speaks to me. I can picture the painter at work at his easel, making the brushstrokes, mixing the paint and pigments. I see the blank parts of the canvas and the colors and I can almost imagine what they are thinking, and I listen carefully. Whatever the picture is, its elements are telling a story, conveying a feeling, offering a sensation of the mind, or giving a message, sometimes seeming to reveal a secret, a chance to look into the artist’s mind. Much like a writer is vulnerable, and bleeds onto the pages, the painter bleeds himself onto his canvas.

I look at the paintings from two perspectives. First the spectator- I stand back and view, taking it in and noticing how and which way the work catches my eye, its aesthetics. I catch a mood, a layman’s feeling from the piece. Next I play the role of amateur artist, studying it, observing the technique- up close, the brushstrokes, the detail, I always pay attention to which colors were used- which colors straight from the tube mixed to form the palettes. Then I step back again, note the arrangement of objects, the composition, the balance, number of figures, etc. Of course this is done almost sub-consciously. You can’t measure a painting’s worth concretely like that, you have to feel the painting, catch the vibe from it. You can’t see into the artist’s soul by computing a pictorial space as you would solve a math equation.

Not only is enjoying a painting a leap into a mind, but it is a bound into another time. The paint on a board of wood, applied in 1150 AD, has collected the dust of centuries and is as real now in front of your face as it was to its creator, who himself has been dust for centuries. Not just the artists who executed these works but the subjects, too, give us a glimpse of another age. You look at the Duke of Urbino, posing stately in royal garb, and you may wonder what was he thinking, or the peasants portrayed by Jean-Francois Millet in their daily plight, who really were these people?

Let us not be confined to human subjects and portraits to our examination of another era’s questions. When you look at an open landscape, you know that the tiny farmhand in the distance of some American landscapes has long since died and you will too long before the actual land in the picture will change. Or on the other hand look how different the land changed since the painting was done, but feel how insignificant people are in the beauty and immensity of nature.

 

You can sometimes react to a painting much the same way you would of a real life situation. You can look at either Cazin’s or Millet’s “Solitude” and feel yourself walking in a moonless wintry forestscape, hearing the eerie silence, the crunch of the snow under your feet, feel the cold on your face. In reality you bundle up your shirt as you get a chill standing in the gallery room. A painting can put a smile on your face, bring a tear to your eye, or light a fire in your belly.

Paintings can raise questions, provoke concern or bring an air of mystery. I don’t speak entirely of the Surrealists, or the Abstractionists, indeed a Realist can do the same perhaps even more powerfully. Consider Andrew Wyeth’s maypole painting. Who were these strange and peculiar people? We know some of them, but who were the others, namely the German soldier? Why do the footprints not make a perfect circle in the snow, or why are the shadows not consistent throughout?

Sometimes paintings don’t have to be this mysterious to raise a question. When I look at an excellent painting in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Feast of Saint John, by Jules Breton, I feel a sense of mystery. You can see that these peasants celebrate the longest days of summer and dance around bonfires on the Feast Day, and as you look you can almost smell the fire. You may wonder who they were, and what they believed in and what they were going to do.

Sometimes a painting really draws you in. Having some knowledge and interest in the U.S. Civil War, I have a particular affection for this next one. Growing up, being fascinated by the war and looking at illustrated histories of it, there was always a specialness to the naval battle scenes. I could spend hours looking at the pictures and playing the scene in my head, famous scenes such as the Monitor and the Merrimack, and see the smoke, hear the distant resounding shots of the guns, the splashes of the missed shells, the crackle of the grapeshot, and the orders of the officers on both sides, sometimes within earshot as a maniacal maneuver such as a pointblank broadside goes under way. Such excitement!

The painting is by Edouard Manet, the impressionist who did a lot of marine scenes, leading to such exhibits as “Manet and the Sea” at the PMA. The painting depicts a sea battle off the coast of Cherbourg, France, in 1864 in which a Confederate Sloop of War, the CSS Alabama was sunk by the USS Kearsarge, a Federal Sloop of War dispatched to rendezvous with the enemy ship to stop the havoc she had been causing to commercial trade to and from Europe. Manet did the work quickly, responding to the current event after hearing or reading about it just as it happened.

As you look at the painting, which depicts the scene from a bit of a distance, it keeps the viewer at neutrality to the sides (with a slight slant sympathizing towards the sinking Confederates). It shows the Deerhound, a private yacht, in the foreground rescuing survivors from the water. In the distance the Alabama sinks steadily by her stern with plumes of smoke emitting as a result of the direct hit to her engines scored by the Kearsarge. The story has it that five of the 100 Union shots fired were after the Southern vessel struck its colors. The painting further shows the Union ship, almost covered from view firing a volley at the doomed floor-bound Alabama. The primary color in the masterpiece is of course that of the ocean, which is vivid viridian green and blue, and you can make out the civilians on the yacht, in their hats and sailor clothes attempting to rescue what looks to be two sailors clinging to a piece of wreckage.

There’s nothing like a good painting that you can just watch for an hour. In this category I might plug Thomas Eakin’s masterpiece and Philadelphia’s prize “The Gross Clinic” which will be in Philadelphia for a little while. Besides simply admiring the painting and being glad its here to stay, there really is a lot going on in the painting. It’s a huge canvas which takes a whole wall to itself, and shows an almost photographic scene unfolding.

Professor Samuel Gross stands in the middle of the beam of sun coming from the skylight teaching his famous bone marrow operation to a group of Jefferson students. (And might I add that there’s never been a better forehead painted in the history of art. It shines in the light! I think my hair will recede that far by the time I’m 30, though I don’t think I’ll grow Gross’s sideburns). Scalpel in hand, he instructs while he and assistants perform the leg operation, with the boy’s mother cringing behind. The detail is superb, from the looks on their faces to the little drops of blood on the one assistant’s cuff.

Portrait of Thomas Eakins

Another favorite artist of mine has you watching the canvas for long periods of time almost expecting surprises. Henri Rousseau is one to leave you in awe, not just from the greatness of his work, but from the mystery he brings to the table. He’s what you may call a surrealist, maybe a symbolist, but one thing is for sure, you can’t call him ordinary. As a self-taught artist, he has a style all to his own.

 

Probably my favorite painting in the whole Philadelphia Art Museum would have to be Rousseau’s “Carnival Evening.” Another chilly winter scene but this time its very mystifying. While his paintings may not be perplexing as a Dali landscape, Rousseau would give you just enough elements to leave you a little bewildered. “Carnival Evening” shows a forest, middle of winter, completely bare trees at night with a bright full moon above. Only thing is, the forest is strangely in darkness. A couple stand in the center on their way to the carnival, dressed in costumes, the man smoking a cigarette, both seeming to be illuminated from within, not from the moon. Off to the left is a cottage (?) with a mask or face on it, and an unexplained street lamp looms nearby.

The painting after this is in an opposite setting, in a thick jungle. It’s entitled “The Merry Jesters” and it shows an almost “cartoony” setup of baboons with strange beady eyes with what little musical instruments. Click on the thumbnail for a larger image. How many baboons do you count?

 

Technorati Tags: art, painting, museum, gallery

Featured on Ezinearticles.com as “Who Needs TV When You Can Watch A Painting?”

Also featured on Associated Content

This is the first post in a series regarding my photographic efforts to capture all the statues and sculptures throughout the city of Philadelphia, which boasts the largest amount of statues in a single city in the world. The photos in this first expedition were taken in April, 2006 and were part of a collection of 122 shots, all of which are in the gallery named Philadelphia Statues on the sidebar. The next post in the series will center around our outing in the Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philly and will include some of its beautiful monuments and statues.

The Museums

My adventure started on a warm and sunny spring morning near the Philadelphia Art Museum. My route was to shoot some of the works around the museum, make my way up Kelly Drive through Fairmount Park and back again, continue past the museum, and proceed up the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.

The first in this showing will be the Jacques Lipchitz masterpiece, “Prometheus Strangling the Vulture” which stands in front of the east entrance of the museum on top of the famous Rocky Steps. ( The Rocky Statue is currently [12/07] on view at the foot of the east entrance steps.) Lipchitz exhibited at the Philly Art Museum in 1949 at the 3rd Sculpture International, and his sculptures pepper the city streets. Another prominent example of his artistry is at the Columbia University in Manhattan, “Bellerophon Taming Pegasus.”

 

 

Many of Lipchitz’s sculptures revolved around a mythological theme, as do most of the ones around around the Rocky Steps. The next one is a good example.

I’ll have to find out the name of this one and update this, but it is one of my favorites. The following is the huge statue in the small park across the circle from the east entrance generally depicting Native American symbols and a prominent historical figure (perhaps George Washington) atop a stead. It is truly an amazing spectacle.

In one of the subsequent posts I will devote the entire session to the genius Auguste Rodin. He was a nineteenth century French artist whose works, like Lipchitz’s, also focused on some mythology. If you are ever in Philadelphia to see the Art Museum on some Sunday afternoon, don’t skip the Rodin Museum located near the main building on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Housed here is the largest collection of Rodins outside Paris. Its a very decent collection including one of the many versions of “The Burghers of Calais,” and the “Age of Bronze.” In the front of the Museum is the “Gates of Hell” and the famous “The Thinker.”

“The Burghers of Calias”

“The Gates of Hell”

“The Thinker”

Some other decent works under the Museums heading could have come from the recently opened Perelman Building. The Perelman Building is the museums latest gallery and marks the only addition in 80 years. It houses many modern art pieces including sculpture and textiles. Admission is free until 2008.

The Warriors

Too many to display in a single post are the numerous military statues you will find all over the city. They include war heroes, prominent generals, and history makers spanning the centuries. It is interesting to note the symbolism involved with these soldiers. Next time you see a statue of a soldier on horseback notice the feet of the stallion. If both front feet are in the air the subject died in battle, one foot signifies the subject died from wounds received in battle, and both feet mean the rider died of natural causes. The first here is U.S. Grant, the important Civil War general and final commander of the Union Army, whose ride here calmly keeps both front feet firm, as we know he later became President.

The next several here I can’t recall who they are but you and I can both tell if they died in battle, from wounds inflicted in battle, or continued to live after the war.

Each apparently died from wounds received in battle.

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Fairmount and Love Parks

There are some great sculptures all around Fairmount Park up Kelly Drive and along the way to Love Park. The angel here is just one example in Fairmount Park along the Skuykill River. Love Park was created by Philadelphia city planner Edmund Bacon, the father of Kevin Bacon. The Love Statue was created by Robert Indiana.

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Three Generations of Calders

Some of the most influential sculptors of Philadelphia have to be Alexander Calder, his father Alexander Sterling Calder, and his father Alexander Milnes Calder. If you stand in the balcony over the Great Stair Hall you see a huge Alexander Calder mobile over the steps. Turn around and look out the window to observe further down the Parkway the huge fountain about halfway to City Hall, this was the work of ALexander Sterling Calder. Off in the distance you can see atop the City Hall, the statue of William Penn, sculpted by none other than the eldest Alexander Milnes Calder.

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Some Other Great Sculptures

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Sculpture and Statuary in Philadelphia, Part 2