Art in NYC: Dutch Masterpieces at The Met

October 24, 2018October 25, 2024 arts-NY

Art in NYC: Dutch Masterpieces at The Met

While the Metropolitan Museum of Art has temporarily closed, you can visit it online from anywhere

A magnificent exhibition of works by the 17th-century Dutch masters titled “In Praise of Painting” can be viewed online

Aristotle with a Bust of Homer by Rembrandt at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York — Rembrandt (Rembrandt van Rijn), Aristotle with a Bust of Homer, 1653. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The Met Museum collection of Dutch paintings is highly praised by scholars and extremely popular with the visitors. The “In Praise of Painting ” exhibition, dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the Met Museum founding, uses the occasion to showcase the treasures by Rembrandt, Vermeer, and others thematically and to highlight various aspects of the 17th-century Dutch society in all its complexity. The selection comes from the Benjamin Altman’s bequest, the Robert Lehman collection, and the Jack and Belle Linsky Collection. Thoughtfully organized by the curators around nine themes from portraiture to landscape and domestic scenes, the exhibition unites prominent works and allows for striking comparisons and keen amplification of the historical details.

The viewers are invited in for a closer look at people, their homes, land and the pastime when the Netherland was experiencing rapid changes brought in by the technological advancements and economic growth after the end of the Thirty Years war. The works by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Hals, Steen and the rest of their famous contemporaries bring us closer to people living in the distant fast-changing times not that much dissimilar to our own. Societal mores, etiquette and hierarchy were turning in response to industrial progress and diversification at the time of the Dutch Golden Age. Luckily for us, it gave the world great artworks of unprecedented depth and potency. Savor the art in all its greatness.

In Praise of Painting: Dutch Masterpieces can be explored by taking an online visit. Online Visit

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Virtual Visits: Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel Frescoes at Vatican

March 25, 2020March 26, 2020 arts-NY 1 Comment

Virtual Visits: Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel Frescoes at Vatican City

360° View of the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City in the time of social distancing

Up Close: Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel at the Oculus, World Trade Center, NYC — Sistine Chapel, Vatican / photo by Patrick Landy (FSU Guy)

One of the most popular sites of the Musei Vaticani complex, the Sistine Chapel stuns its visitors with Michelangelo’s frescoes and stories of the sacred rituals, such as Papal Conclave of the Cardinals conducted within its walls from 1492. Completely restored in the years from 1979 to 1999 to its original vibrant colors, the Chapel was visited daily by more than 20,00 people. Pope John Paul II said about the chapel that “The truth of our faith speaks to us here from all sides”.

As humanity stays at home in the face of the global coronavirus pandemic, it is particularly uplifting to revisit albeit virtually the historic places that withstood prior global disasters like plague epidemics and the wars. The Musei Vaticani offers a virtual tour of the Sistine Chapel with closeups of frescoes and an unobstructed view of the room without any distraction by the guards or the unavoidable neck craning to see the ceiling.

Virtual Tour

The Sistine Chapel in the Vatican was built in 1477-1480 by Pope Sixtus IV for whom the chapel is named. In fact, the old Cappella Magna that stood on that site from the mid-14th century was restored by the best artists of that time like Sandro Botticelli, Pietro Perugino, Pinturicchio, Domenico Ghirlandaio, and Cosimo Rosselli. From that time until this day the Chapel is used for special ceremonies of the close circle of the Pope and as a place where the Papal Conclave of Cardinals meets to elect a new Pope.

Interestingly, the dimensions of the Chapel are the same as the Temple of Solomon according to the description in the Old Testament, the Book of Ezekiel. The Temple of Solomon was the first temple built by the Hebrews in 832 BCE under King Solomon. It was destructed by Nebuchadnezzar II after the Siege of Jerusalem of 587 BCE.

Michelangelo spent from 1508 through 1512 on painting the ceiling of the Chapel on the commission by Pope Julius II. Because at the time Michelangelo was preoccupied with sculptures and was reluctant to commit to such an enormous undertaking, Pope Julius granted him full freedom in selecting the scenes and figures to paint thus convincing him to take on the project. The resulting frescoes are considered to be the triumph of the artistic expression in Western civilization. The ceiling is populated with more than 300 figures starting from Christ’s ancestors including Adam and Eve, the scenes from the Garden of Eden and the Great Flood all the way to Christ’s followers, prophets, and sibyls.

Michelangelo’s mastery brings us the “faces of our time: anxiety masked by domesticity, women at work at household duties, men staring out blankly at an opaque fate” in the words of A.Gopnik in The New Yorker review of the exhibit of the photographs of the frescoes at the Oculus in New York City.

Do your best imagining yourself walking through the grand doors of the Chapel by taking the virtual tour. And while it’s definitely not the same as being surrounded by the great art at the place for which it was created, you can still connect with history and art. Their meaning may even become more apparent and better understood.

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Art in NYC: Felix Vallotton Exhibition at the Met Museum

November 11, 2019November 11, 2019 arts-NY 1 Comment

Art in NYC: Felix Vallotton Exhibition at the Met Museum

The Met Museum presents Felix Vallotton: Painter of Disquiet, a retrospective of the most notable paintings and art prints depicting the fin-de-siècle Paris

On view from October 29, 2019 – January 26, 2020

Felix Vallotton, Five O’Clock, 1898 — Five O’Clock, 1898, Distemper on cardboard, Private collection / Photo © Fondation Félix Vallotton, Lausanne

A fascinating exhibition of major works by Felix Vallotton tells a provocative story about life in Paris at the turn of the 20th century. Covering all the major phases of Vallotton’s oeurvre, the exhibition starts with his early prints and woodcuts. These early works were made at the beginning of artist’s career when he experimented with steep perspectives and flat images of the Nabis circle principles. The exhibition also showcases powerful oil paintings of the genre scenes, nudes, and landscapes of his mature period.

Well-known to art historians but not widely recognized by the public, Vallotton’s works are a mix of keen observation, wry wit, and subtle yet potent critique of the hypocrisy of bourgeoisie and the sinful pleasures of Belle Epoch France. His early prints and woodcuts made on a gamut of topics from the docile scene with music instruments to observations of everyday life to the street riots are examples of a mastery of detail and minimalist touch. While clearly demonstrating the strength of the technique, his works seemed to fall in-between the styles and artistic movements of his time. This leaves the impression that he either came too late for the expressive art of such painters like Ingre who was a strong influence for Vallotton or too early for the New Objectivity style of the 1920s.

Emphasizing his upbringing in a strict Protestant family in quiet Switzerland, the exhibition conveys Vallotton’s point of view as an outsider to the fast-moving city life. He immediately sees the dissonance between the newly established canons and their twisted morality, but is restrained in his critique. While executed with very fine detail that at times allude to the influence of the Old Masters in the use of reflections and light, the ambiguity of the scenes leave many questions unanswered. The openness to interpretation is what makes Vallotton’s art so potent. After all, this probably was the artist’s goal and he achieved it with the utmost elegance.

In addition to Vallotton’s famous woodcut cycles, there are expansive paintings of landscapes, nudes, and discrete encounters with a multitude of subtleties, mysterious perspectives, and odd angles.

Coming to New York after a triumphant show at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, this is the first retrospective of Vallotton’s work in New York in 30 years. It is organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Royal Academy of Arts, London, in collaboration with Fondation Félix Vallotton, Lausanne.

Discover this amazing artist while sampling the thrilling artworks on view at The Met. Felix Vallotton: Painter of Disquiet is on view form October 29, 2019 – January 26, 2020.

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Art in NYC: The Renaissance of Etching at the Met Museum

October 30, 2019October 30, 2019 arts-NY

Art in NYC: The Renaissance of Etching at the Met Museum

The Met Museum presents The Renaissance of Etching exhibition with works by Durer, Parmigianino, and Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

The exhibition is on view from October 23, 2019 – January 20, 2020

Etching by Cornelis Anthonisz (Netherlandish, 1507–1553). The Tower of Babel — Cornelis Anthonisz (Netherlandish, 1507–1553). The Tower of Babel, 1547. Etching. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Image courtesy of Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Organized by The Metropolitan Museum in New York City and The Albertina Museum in Vienna, Austria, The Renaissance of Etching exhibit delves into the discovery of the medium by an armor etcher in the late 15th century in Germany to its wide appropriation by the Renaissance artists all over Europe by the mid-16th century. An innovative approach to image printing flipped the old process of etching on its head. Before it was an expensive decoration on the metal armor worn by a few wealthy patrons, now the metal plate became a tool to produce print on paper. Once the process was fully developed, the medium got widely embraced by the artists as it made possible to produce large quantities of artwork relatively cheaply. Every artist working at that time period got involved in making the prints varying the colors and adding nuanced characteristics of the art schools and worldview.

The exhibition curators organized the works in chronological order starting from the German printmaker and armor decorator Daniel Hopfer who is credited with inventing the medium. He influenced Durer to start experimenting with the technique. Several of Durer’s phenomenal prints from The Albertina and other museums are included in the exhibition. Rapidly spreading across the continent, the art of etching was mastered in Italy by Parmigianino, the Renaissance artists in France, and later flourishing in the Netherlands where the printing shops employed the professional etchers to mass-produce the original drawings done by such masters as Lucas van Leyden, Peter Bruegel the Elder among many others.

There are about 125 artworks in the exhibition including the armor, etchings, drawings, metal plates, and engravings. It captures a fascinating time of rapid change in everything from the climate and weather patterns to technology, religious believes and a new societal order that swept the European continent from the mid-15th to mid-16th century. As the curators note, it may require a return visit to The Met to fully appreciate a vast gamut of visual information offered by the assembled collection.

Following its presentation at The Met until January 20, 2020, the exhibition will travel to the Albertina Museum on February 12 – May 10, 2020.

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Category: Art