Art in the vineyards- the importance of a STELE

Each Stele features a select poem about wine from past German poets

the making of the STELE: a community event

check out the guy harvesting pears in this beautiful setting

Weinlese in Flein

I am trying to figure out how to do a selfie without looking at the camera

doing three things: composing the photo, looking at the grapes, snapping a selfie.......

 wow I ALMOST got it right but the best is yet to come- with the HAHN in the background

this is the swabian Toscana- with WO DER HAHN KRAHT Hotel in background

WHISTLER in new "LIGHT"

James McNeill Whistler , (American, 1834-1903)  Blue and Silver: Trouville   ca. 1865-  Phillips collection, Washington, DC.
Oil on canvas--H: 59.3 W: 72.8 cm --United States --F1902.137a-b

James McNeill Whistler, American, 1834-1903, Harmony in Blue and Silver: Trouville, 1865

Oil on canvas, 49.5 x 75.5 cm, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Location: Yellow Room

This picture, painted in the autumn of 1865 when Whistler worked alongside the artist Gustave Courbet at Trouville, marks an important moment in the development of Whistler’s art. In the late 1850s and early 1860s, Courbet’s defiantly unconventional paintings and persona had provided an important model for Whistler. Harmony in Blue and Silver is at once a tribute to Courbet’s influence and an assertion of the younger artist’s move toward more exclusively aesthetic concerns and an independent painting style. Titled by Whistler in 1866 as Courbet – on sea shore, the painting echoes the composition of Courbet’s Les bords de la mer à Palavas (1854). Yet, while it refers to that picture and represents the figure of Courbet within its composition, Harmony in Blue and Silver is a turning point in the emergence of what would come to be Whistler’s mature painting mode, a radical reduction of painting to thin veils of color brushed across canvas. Whistler’s growing commitment to the purely formal elements of painting is apparent in the way in which the calm expanses of sand, sea, and sky approach the abstraction of pure bands of color; yet at the same time, thin washes of a pale lavender color suggest shifting lights and depths in the water and the air.
In this painting, a dynamic tension between surface pattern and the evocation of expansive space is reinforced by the ambiguous direction of the gaze of Courbet’s small figure at the lower left. If the figure’s head is turned toward the right, then he gazes diagonally across the sands, with his “Assyrian” beard visible in profile, though wearing his hat at an oddly precarious angle. Alternatively, the figure might be looking straight out to sea, as the hat’s placement tends to suggest. The ambiguous direction of the figure’s gaze may be taken to relate to the picture’s suspension between flat immediacy and expansive depth: in one reading, the figure directly confronts the flat bands of color; in the other reading, the figure gazes across a sea that recedes toward a vanishing point defined by a sailboat in the middle distance and a second boat on the far horizon.
Whistler remained attached to this painting, and after he sold it, bought it back a few years later. He was loathe to part with it once it had been returned to his studio in 1892. One version of the story of Mrs. Gardner’s acquisition of the painting goes as follows: She fell in love with the picture when she saw it in Whistler’s Paris studio. The artist reluctantly agreed that she could have it, but showed no signs of relinquishing it to her. Impatient, Mrs. Gardner returned with a friend whom she had coached in advance. She told the artist: “That’s my picture… you’ve said many times I could have it, Mr. Whistler, and now I’m going to take it.” Her companion took the painting and started out, followed by Mrs. Gardner, who blocked the way as Whistler followed, complaining that the picture was not finished because he had not signed it. Mrs. Gardner refused to listen, inviting the artist to lunch at her hotel, where he could then sign the picture.
Source: Aileen Tsui, "Harmony in Blue and Silver: Trouville," in Eye of the Beholder, edited by Alan Chong et al. (Boston: ISGM and Beacon Press, 2003): 198-199.

There was more to see in the Sackler for which I actually had gone to the museum namely the Cyrus Cylinder

and a number of surprises such as the Ai Wei Wei work and the Xu Bing work.

Washington's Museums: The Freer, The Sackler and the Hirshhorn

Went to see a number of incredible highlights such as the Peacock Room in the Freer, the Cyrus Cylinder in the Sackler, and the Zodiac heads by Ai Wei Wei...

All need a special paragraph because they show the vibrancy of the art scene in Washington- despite it not being the hip capital of major movers and shakers in the art world. Perhaps I like that better because the exhibits are connected directly to my interest in socially and politically significant art!
So let us begin: 

Whistler and Courbet

Funny thing happened because of SOCIAL MEDIA connections:
While with my kids in Washington we visited the Phillips collection - a wonderful private museum near Dupont Circle in walking distance from Tom's and Beth's place. We took photos of the works and Beth posted them on FACEBOOK. She also mentioned that she saw a Mali photographer. She wrote:

In addition to seeing some great artwork today, I also made an amazing discovery in a photography book in the gift shop - check out the fabulous work of Malian photographer, Malike Sidibe. A kadi n ye! http://www.gallery51.com/index.php?navigatieid=9&fotograafid=47
How fun! I immediately let her know that one of my students had done a screen cast on Malik Sidibe as an assignment accompanying a Tremaine Gallery show featuring pieces of the Ray McGuire collection.

The world IS connected!!!!!

Who has ever hear of Wolfgang Laib?
Well I did not! Even though I have been a faithful reader of the online newspaper Art Daily, I missed what they wrote in November 2006: --> "wolfgang laib (b. 1950) numbers among those German artists who have been admired and respected over a long period."

Well this week was Wolfgang Laib week for me: on Monday March 11, 2013 I saw his wonderful installation at MoMA. Glowin, shining, mesmerizing from above we observed a square arranged from Hazelnut Pollen. Here Laib is in the tradition of Josef Albers (another German) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Josef_Albers%27s_painting_%27Homage_to_the_Square%27,_1965.jpg
or even Mark Rothko:
http://www.nashvillescene.com/binary/f9bd/1331328564-rothko_untitled.jpg

 On Saturday March 16, I was at the Phillips collection in Washington DC and saw a totally different Laib: THE WAX room:

As THE HILL  reports: The Laib Wax Room... is the first permanent room made of beeswax at any museum in the United States.The room itself is small, measuring 6 by 7 by 10 feet, but its walls and ceiling are covered in pure beeswax.Laib melted 20 blocks of beeswax — totaling 882 pounds — and then applied the warm beeswax to the walls like plaster, smoothing it with an iron and a hot air gun.

“It looks a little bit like an alfresco. And it has a speckled look because there are little pieces of beeswax in it that didn’t melt. The melted beeswax is very yellowy-orange in color and the pieces that are not melted are a little darker, more like honey, so it has a beautiful texture,” Klaus Ottmann - the curator-said.

Ariella and I were instructed by a museum guard to put down all our belongings and enter- two at a time. The room which we could smell from afar felt warm yet at the same time confined. the single lightbulb illuminating the place was disconcerting reminding me of an interrogation room or a solitary confinement cell. Yet, at the same time I was disturbed by the opening where other visitors waited to experience WHAT? I wanted to stay, be enveloped by the material made by life-giving creatures.

wolfgang laib (b. 1950) numbers among those German artists who have been admired and respected over a long period. A retrospective that traveled to five museums in the United States closed at the Haus der Kunst in Munich in early 2003.

More Information: http://www.artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=18204&b=wolfgang%20laib#.UUWc3L-hDlo[/url]
Copyright © artdaily.org

wolfgang laib (b. 1950) numbers among those German artists who have been admired and respected over a long period. A retrospective that traveled to five museums in the United States closed at the Haus der Kunst in Munich in early 2003.

More Information: http://www.artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=18204&b=wolfgang%20laib#.UUWc3L-hDlo[/url]
Copyright © artdaily.org

wolfgang laib (b. 1950) numbers among those German artists who have been admired and respected over a long period. A retrospective that traveled to five museums in the United States closed at the Haus der Kunst in Munich in early 2003.

More Information: http://www.artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=18204&b=wolfgang%20laib#.UUWc3L-hDlo[/url]
Copyright © artdaily.org

wolfgang laib (b. 1950) numbers among those German artists who have been admired and respected over a long period. A retrospective that traveled to five museums in the United States closed at the Haus der Kunst in Munich in early 2003

More Information: http://www.artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=18204&b=wolfgang%20laib#.UUWc3L-hDlo[/url]
Copyright © artdaily.org

wolfgang laib (b. 1950) numbers among those German artists who have been admired and respected over a long period. A retrospective that traveled to five museums in the United States closed at the Haus der Kunst in Munich in early 2003

More Information: http://www.artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=18204&b=wolfgang%20laib#.UUWc3L-hDlo[/url]
Copyright © artdaily.org