Art Gallery visit #2, Module 11

For this museum visit I was in Springfield, Massachusetts so I went to the Springfield Museums.  This is a wonderful place to visit if you ever get the chance. There are four museums; Art, History, Science, and a Dr. Suess Sculpture Garden, with one admission price.  There are two art galleries, George Walter Vincent Smith Art Museum and Michele & Donald D’Armour Museum of FIne Arts.  Both had exhibits set up by category.  For example, in the George Walter museum there was a Classical Cast Gallery that contained all types of sculptures and replicas from different time periods.  The room was very large with spring green colored walls.  Plenty of natural light flowed through the large windows as well as spotlights throughout the room.  The room even had columns reminiscent of Greek architecture. The viewer is moved around the outside of the room while still being able to view the large pieces in the center. In the Fine Arts Gallery, most exhibits were arranged by time period.  This was interesting since we have been working through the centuries and art styles.  Wall coloring and lighting varied depending on the century being exhibited.  The Late Medieval Gallery had dark blue walls with limited spotlights mostly on the artwork.  The artwork was in bulky frames.  In contrast, the Modern & Contemporary Gallery was well light with bright white walls, natural light and light wood floors.  There were sculptures in the middle, again guiding the viewer around the outside of the room.  The art work on the walls varied in style.  Large paintings on canvas containing no frames while other paintings had simple frames. One thing I didn’t care for about these exhibits, different from the Albright Knox Art Gallery, is that many of the pieces were not labeled with artwork name, artist, date and medium.  I decided to choose three pieces from the Modern Gallery to critique because there were some really unique and incredible pieces there. 

untitled, Don Eddy

Don Eddy, in this untitled piece from 1970, used acrylic on canvas, approximately 3‘X5’, to replicate, but improve upon, a black and white photo.  What strikes me as most dramatic is that this in NOT actually a photograph, but uses a photorealism style, making a painting look like a photo either from a photo or using a photographic vision.  Eddy uses the red paint in different hues and shades to show value and light reflecting off the car.   The emphasis is placed on the shiny red VW Bug in the foreground but in the background subordination is used with the plain white, almost beat up looking, car.  The red car in front is scaled larger to appear closer while the white car is smaller and we see almost the whole car.  This puts the piece as a whole in asymmetrical balance.  The artist may have been trying to take the viewer back to another place in time with this piece.

Rita, Bill Vuksanovich

Rita, a pencil on paper, by artist Bill Vuksanovich in 1993, is another photorealistic piece.   The black and white contrast in this piece draws emphasis to the woman’s face.  When one looks closely texture is seen in her dress, skin, hair and facial features. This is all done with lines and shapes drawn in pencil as well as the texture of the paper.  The piece is mainly symmetrical with only slight differences in her ands and hair.  The artwork is rather large, slightly larger than life-size.  The subject, the woman, takes up most of the paper with no details in the background.  The framing is simple and black, leaving all the focus on the woman.  I believe the artist may have been trying to capture the realism of an emotionally and physically exhausted woman.

The next piece I was unable to find an information card for but I really liked the piece.  This chair sculpture was in the center of the room. At first look it appears to be chairs unevenly arrange, perhaps mixed up from available seats for viewing.  However, when taking a closer look, the chairs have been cut and formed to create this unique sculpture.  Line is visible not only in the backs and legs of the chairs but also in the way they come together.  As a whole the mass of the piece is rather large in comparison to the space it occupies in the room.  The all black coloring adds little variety however, the asymmetrical way the chairs are arranged creates its own rhythm.  I’m not sure what the artist was trying to portray but I get the sense chaos or a meshing of ideas.  People normally sit in chairs like this to come together to eat and socialize.  These seats would not be functional in that way, thus the chaos.  The fact that the chairs are bunched together, with the back of one chair often connected to the seat of another, could be the ideas of the people that would be occupying these chairs coming together.

Another piece I wanted to point out is The Portrait of an Elderly Gentlemen with his Granddaughter, from around 1550, artist unknown. I immediately  thought it looked familiar.  Once I read the description card I knew why.  Although the artist is not formally known, the piece strongly resembles Portrait of Amilcare, Minerva, and Asdrubale Anguissola by Sofonisba Anguissola, which was discussed in the Living with Art textbook (386) under the Late Renaissance period in Italy. It was displayed in the Northern European and Italian Renaissance room.




Feel free to check out my album on Photobucket from my museum visit and the website for Springfield Museums as well.

Springfield Museum