today i had a glorious day in the cities with katie. it was filled with lots of art as we visited the minneapolis institute of arts and the weissman museum. it was great to just hop on a bus, sleep, eat and get off the bus and walk around, forgetting everything back in bemidji and just enjoying the wonderful pieces of art work.
we got off at the institute at 10 this morning (still a little groggy from sleeping the last 4 hours). the first place we hit was the store. i wanted to see what was there as i felt the need to buy something artsy (fartsy, i know). we looked for a good while and then we decided to head and check out the rest of the place. we went last year also but we got EXTREMELY lost there. it was basically yell-for-help-or-fall-down-on-the-floor-in-a-fetal-position-and-start-rocking-back-in-forth sort of lost. but this year we conquered the place! we ran through the exhibits that we saw last year but weren't all that interested in this year, saw the ones that we definitely wanted to see and then explored the places that we didn't even knew existed. we saw renoir, degas, picasso, toulouse-lautrec, van gogh, monet, dupre, dali, matisse, georgia o'keefe, kandinsky, gauguin, cezanne and so many more. it's so amazing to be standing there, staring at their painting and think that they made those brush strokes, the touched that paper and they made that masterpiece...it's so smack my head on my wall amazing. my favorite collections would definietly have to be the christ period paintings that basically look so gosh darn realistic that you would assume that they HAD to have had a photographer standing somewhere...or a camera. good thing it didn't exist then, huh. i also discovered that i have a fear of realistic portraits hanging in houses, or there is no way any of those portraits would be able to hang in my house! freaky lookin dead people who don't even SMILE and they stare and look at you with funky looking expressions. i have no problem of looking at them in a museum however. that's where they belong and i can look at them there...except for those scary lookin children and that one lady...(makes me shiver!) i think it's because of this one picture that my aunt and uncle had (squeak's parents) had in there basement before the flood. it was a painting of this weird lookin guy in odd colors and he had huge eyes...i couldn't look at him. i have no idea what it was...good thing the flood came and wiped him out. i don't even think squeak remembers him but i sure do....
then we went to the weissman at the u of m campus and saw a very cool exhibit on the human genome called genesis i think (the exhibit was called that). it was basically a bunch of human DNA tests made into an exhibit. it was pretty cool. unfortunetly it was a smaller museum in a huge building so katie and i ran over to the rest of the campus on the other side of the river. after getting somewhat lost there looking for the art department, we eventually found a library and a huge lecture room that was open. we went on in and sat down and couldn't imagine having class in there. it was so weird too...they had tunels that looked like the subway station with study boothes littered all over it. so odd....speaking of odd, on the way back katie stops dead in her tracks and looks over at the top of the tree right there....and we see shoes. thousands of shoes. it was a freaking shoe tree! i don't know if they just find shoes and throw them up there or steal the shoes as a joke or if they just don't want them they'll throw them up there, i don't know. but i took pictures! they'll be in black and white so they should be pretty cool.
after the weissman we ventured over to utrecht, which is a big art store that has pretty much everything. i just wasn't in the mood at that point to buy my pretty little heart out. i saved my pennies for another time. i think i was tired from walking around all day (by this time it was 5) and hungry and dehydrated. katie and i hoped back on the bus and headed on home after that. so it was a great day. filled with art. nothing else but art. all of bemidji and all that was on my mind stayed in bemidji. the perfect excape!
here's some of my favorite pieces i saw through out the day:
The Japanese Footbridge, about 1922
Claude Monet, French, 18-40-1926
Blessing of the Tuna Fleet at Groix, 1923
Paul Signac, French, 1863-1935
In this painting, it's all little rectangles of color...no two colors are overlapped!
Denial of St. Peter
Gerard van Honthorst 1592-1656
Oil on canvas, 110.5 x 144.8 cm
this is one of kt's and mine's favorites. it's so lifelike, it's unreal! and the light that is shown here, amazing!
Howling Dog, 1928
Paul Klee, Swiss, 1879-1940
I just like the colors in this one and the fact that the little 2nd grade girl in a tour we were watching, when asked what this painting was called as cried out, "I know! I know! It's called 'How, How, How-ling Dawg!" as she stumbled over the words...priceless. i told katie i wanted to take her home with me...besides the fact that it's totally illegal...you get the point!
this is a portrait of clementine karr. it will forever haunt me. can you see why i will never have a portrait in my house? NEVER! i'm gonna have nightmares...
the above were from the institute. i'll have to see what i can grab from the weissman. kt and i are going back to the cities in the summer so we can see the new exhibit they are putting in there collection at the institute which will become the modern pieces...it contains a lot of chairs and other artifacts from the 50's and up that totally inspired a our culture...i'm excited! but i have to get to bed...i tired!
pictures via The Minneapolis Institute of Arts
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