Honolulu Museum of Art ~ Art Inspiration of the Islands

"Many things are so beautiful that they don’t seem real. 

My idea of the world—nature—things that grow ... "

~ Georgia O'Keeffe, 

letter from Hawaii to her husband Alfred Stieglitz

George Rickey

Two Open Rectangles Excentric, 1977

Burnished steel, 31' x 11'

(Balanced with counterweights, it moves with the wind!)

Honolulu Museum of Art

Opened to the public in 1922

This is a wonderful museum in Honolulu with a beautiful and varied art collection. I actually joined the museum when I was there, hoping to be able to spend more time. If I was an O'ahu resident I think I would practically be living there! You'll see why.

"The museum’s permanent collection has grown from 500 works to more than 50,000 pieces spanning 5,000 years, with significant holdings in Asian art, American and European painting and decorative arts, 19th- and 20th-century art, an extensive collection of works on paper, Asian textiles, and traditional works from Africa, Oceania, and the Americas." - from the website

Beautiful flowers as you enter the museum ...

"That our children of many nationalities and races, born far from the centers of art, may receive an intimation of their own cultural legacy and wake to the ideals embodied in the arts of their neighbors....that Hawaiians, Americans, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Filipinos, Northern Europeans and all other people living here, contacting through the channel of art those deep intuitions common to all, may perceive a foundation on which a new culture, enriched by the old strains may be built in the islands."

—Anna Rice Cooke’s dedication statement, which she read at the opening of the Honolulu Academy of Arts on April 8, 1927    

"The museum is really lovely—white— rooms not too large—open courts here and there—open to the sky—a lovely building ... The Chinese room very beautiful—much more human feeling than what we do with such things in the East—flowers and grass seem to get in—they help in a museum ..."  ~ Georgia O'Keeffe, letter from Hawaii to her husband Alfred Stieglitz

There's a building for the "Arts of Hawai'i" which is so lovely to experience while you are in Honolulu. Here is a very small sampling of those works. 

Theodore Wores

The Lei Maker, 1901

Oil on Canvas

Chris Campbell

Strike a Pose III, c. 2005

Oil on canvas

"It is hard to tell about the island- the people have a kind of gentleness that isn't usual on the mainland. I feel that my tempo must definitely change to put down [or paint] anything of what is here- I don't know whether I can or not- but it is certainly a different world- and I'm glad I came." ~Georgia O'Keeffe

Lionel Walden

The Torchlight Fishermen, Waikiki, 1930

Oil on canvas board

Lionel Walden

Hawaiian Fisherman, 1924

Oil on canvas

William Twigg-Smith

Hilo Sampans, 1917

Oil on canvas

"One of the things I find myself thinking most often is that there is some thing so perfect about the climate here that it seems a bit ridiculous— even if you walk in the rain as I did yesterday up on the side of the mountain . . . it is neither hot nor cold and I love slushing through the water—Such lovely rainbows too ... "  ~ Georgia O'Keeffe, in a letter to her husband Alfred Stieglitz

Robert Delaunay

The Rainbow, 1913

Oil on Canvas 

(I love his piece!!!)

If you'd like to get to know more of Robert Delaunay's work check out this slideshow (with music) someone uploaded to YouTube. I actually adore his wife Sonia Delaunay's work, as well.

Alexander Calder
Hi!, c. 1928
wire

Hans Hofmann (American, 1880-1966)

Fragrance, 1956

Oil on canvas

I love this vibrant work of abstract impressionism! In person it has even more a sense of energy, light and movement! 

Detail of Fragrance

Kevin, below, enjoying art of the 19th century. Van Gogh to the left, Monet's Water Lilies directly in front and a lovely Camille Pissarro, Rouen Saint-Sever Morning, to his right.

Vincent van Gogh
Wheat Field, 1888
Oil on canvas

This next photo was one of my favorite rooms. I want this room! Haha! I could have sat in there for hours with my journal or sketchbook. How cool do the orange walls look with the incredible (and very large) portraits, crystal chandelier, and lucite chairs? Yum!

On the left

John singer Sargent

Mrs. Thomas Lincoln Manson, Jr., 1891

Oil on canvas

On the right

James McNeill Whistler

Arrangement in Black No. 5: Lady Meux

Oil on canvas

Center

Alex Katz

Ada With a Black Scarf, 1966

Oil on canvas

There's also a wonderful Alice Neel painting in that room!

And, of course, when there are Italians present I must include a couple of those! Check out the look on Baby Gésu's face below.

Follower of Benozzo Gozzoli

Madonna and Child with Angels (detail) 15th Century
Tempera, gilding on wood panel

Workshop of Fra Fillippo Lippi
Two Saints, Mid 15th Century
Tempera, gilding on panel
(And velvet?!)

 

I love this garden area! So peaceful and the pond has koi fish! I want to go back and sketch there too!

The beautiful area above leads you into their wonderful collection of Asian Art. 

I don't have any photos of the Japanese Woodblock Prints because (for preservation) the room was too dark but they have the most incredible and expansive collection. More than 10,000 prints which is the 3rd largest in the United States! You can see many of them on their website including Hokusai's The Great Wave.

What I did get were photos of some of the other beautiful artifacts and exhibits that were on display.

Amida 

Japan, 15th century

Wood, gold

Bodhisattva Seishi

Japan, Heian period, 10th-11th century

Wood

The figure above is one of the main attendants of Amida Buddha and symbolizes the power of wisdom.

Anonymous Empress

Japan, Edo period, 19th century

Porcelain, paper-mâché, wood, hair, 

silk, cotton, metal and pigments

Attributed to Tankei (1173-1256)
Eleven-Headed Kannon
Japan, Kamukura period, 13th century
Wood, bronze, gold

So delicate and the face is exquisite!

OK, so keep in mind this next sculpture is large. As in ... life size. The room lights are dim and as you enter the room it's presence is so powerful. As you'll see, it sits there washed in a warm glow of light in the "royal ease" positing. Stunning.

Anonymous 

Guanyin ~ The Bodhisattva of Compassion 

c. 1025

China, Northern Song or Tangut Xia dynasty 

The Hawaiian wood works and textiles were almost impossible to photograph behind glass. It was too dark and there was too much glare for my iPhone but if you get there, they are definitely worth seeing.

When I came around a corner and saw these paintings I took a long breath and exhaled. Beauty in green! There's nothing else like a Georgia O'Keeffe. Here, she seems to pare the paintings down to their absolute essentials and the result is captivating. You have all the information you need about these beautiful scenes.

Georgia O'Keefee

Waterfall-No. III-Iao Valley, 1939

Oil on Canvas

" My paintings are all sharp green valleys with waterfalls. Today was very rainy so the valley is full of mists—It is queer to sit out there in the rain painting and not mind the rain till it really poured so hard I couldn’t see much ..."~ Georgia O'Keeffe, in a letter to her husband Alfred Stieglitz

Georgia O'Keeffee

Papaw Tree, 'Iao Valley, Maui,

1939

Oil on Canvas

Georgia O'Keeffe 

Waterfall-End of Road-'Iao Valley, 1939

Oil on Canvas

"Such deeply wrinkled mountain sides with such high waterfalls could be seen through breaks in the trees across the valley—It is really a beauti-ful world . . ." ~ Georgia O'Keeffe

There was a whole show of O'Keeffe's Hawaii paintings at the New York Botanical Garden last year! Wouldn't that have been great to see? Well, we may have missed it but here's a great little video explaining her time in Hawaii. The video also shows more works that she did while she was staying in the islands as well as works she painted when she got home that were inspired by her visit. 

(The sound cuts out for about 10 or seconds near the beginning but it kicks back in so don't give up!)

"It all just doesn’t seem real—a lot of different kinds of waterfalls—mostly very thin—tumbling way down from way up high—Then the trees—such wonderful trees  ... " ~Georgia O'Keeffe

"The shade is sort of thick and light at the same time—the sun pale—a long dreamy blue sort of a mountain raising up out of the ocean to the right and on the other side of the house a nearer mountain rises up so abruptly it is startling—it has a look like a sort of mossy rock.—palm trees—other trees—flowering things—many birds. I think I am going to like it."  ~ Georgia O'Keeffe

1. The letters are in the Alfred Stieglitz/Georgia O’Keeffe Archive in the Yale Collection of American Literature at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library and copyright © 2012 by Yale University. Per O’Keeffe’s request, the correspondence was sealed until 2006, twenty years after her death. 
   
   
   Hope you enjoyed the museum visit! For more information about the Honolulu Museum of Art, click HERE.

 Blessings, Light and Aloha!

Mark Bradford: Tomorrow is Another Day - 2017 Venice Biennale

I go through the arc of a relationship with every single painting that I do. 
Mark Bradford

Barren, 2017

Exterior installation of American Pavilion 

gravel, trash, paper cups, broken hoses

American Pavilion
MARK  BRADFORD
TOMORROW IS ANOTHER DAY
Venice Biennale 
2017

Ever since I'd seen an old PBS Art 21, about artist Ann Hamilton, I'd wanted to go to the Venice Biennale. She was the artist who did the 1999 American Pavilion and my parents had seen her installation that year. The artist chosen for the 2017 American Pavilion was artist Mark Bradford. 

Check out how cool his work and medium are in this video.

It was incredible. 

Mark Bradford was born November, 1961 in Los Angeles, California. I'd seen his work at the Broad Museum downtown and was very excited to see his pavilion that year!

Here he his talking about the installation and his philanthropic work in Venice.

Art is everywhere, in Venice, during the Biennale. It all began in 1895 and it was founded by the Venetian City Council. It is held in odd-numbered years.

The formal exhibiting happens at the the Giardini. It is a huge park or garden where there is an enormous exhibition hall and 30 smaller national pavilions. The 30 permanent national pavilions are owned by the participating country and managed by their ministries of culture and if you didn't end up in one of those, your country might be exhibiting at another venue somewhere around Venice. 

As I said, art is everywhere!

Spoiled Foot, 2016

The entrance room of the American Pavilion of 2017 was filled with this enormous installation piece that pushed you to the outer edges of the room to get by it. It had Mark Bradford's trademark layering and textures. It would be difficult to describe it so I'm glad I photographed it. It was a metaphor for people being "pushed to the margins" (you physically were pushed) and for "centralized social power." 

I'm kind of an insecure artist.
I hop from piece to piece. 
I always think my life depends on every painting. 
Every painting is my first painting. 
~Mark Bradford

Medusa, 2016

Acrylic, paint paper, rope, caulk ... 

Medusa, as told by Ovid, was a beautiful and powerful woman raped by Poseidon in Athena's temple. Athena was pissed and transformed her lovely locks into serpents and gave her a face that would turn men to stone looking upon her.

This piece made me sad for Medusa.

I looked her dead in the eye
And I knew her
~Mark Bradford's poem of Medusa 

Pavilion Rotunda

Oracle, 2017

Site-specific

skeins of sleached and black paper

About this piece he said it was "a site between cave and altar, between nature and culture, where oracles would deliver profound truth and predictions."

I just follow the things I'm interested in. 
That's always guided me. 
If I'm interested in something, that's where I go. 
Mark Bradford

I wish you could see the following two works in person. They represented the "beauty and fragility of nature" and they were stunning. 

The layers of color and texture were absolutely transporting. There was so much depth. I think that's why I love Rothko, as well. You feel like you can fall into the layers and let them take you on a journey somewhere else. I'm not great with talking about art in a way a historian or gallery person would talk about it, but I know what I love when I see it. And this ... I loved!

Go Tell it on the Mountain, 2016

My art practice is very detail-, labor- intensive 

and I think that that's a way of slowing myself down 

so that I can hear myself think. 

That quieter voice has sometimes 

the more interesting idea, 

if I can get to it.

~Mark Bradford

Tomorrow Is Another Day

mixed media on canvas

Below is a detail of the piece above. If I'd had a chair and endless amounts of time I could have stared at it for hours. The commercial paper used was bleached, soaked and then molded by the artist.

I've always been inspired by small details that make me wander. 
My mother would ask me, 'What are you looking at so intensely?' 
I would answer, 'Everything and nothing.' 
She really supported my wanderings, 
called me Marco Polo. 
~Mark Bradford

From Artnet.news

"...In Venice, as an adjunct to his pavilion, he has pledged to provide funding over six years for Rio Terà dei Pensieri, a local prison cooperative that teaches practical job skills to inmates. Consider it site-specific social work. For him, art is “not just what happens in the hermetically sealed studio, and it’s not what happens in the communities—it’s something in between.”

"When I say the artist is a citizen, I have interest in politics and communities, but it’s still under the umbrella of being an artist,” Bradford said at the opening ceremony for his pavilion. Over the years, he has used his clout as a market star to support numerous social causes in his hometown of Los Angeles, focusing this work through his nonprofit organization Art + Practice. He has sold artworks at auction to raise the hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund these projects." 

Here's a 60 Minutes interview about the chance meeting between Bradford and Anderson Cooper. 

I just like artist-driven projects, 
but for artists themselves: 
artist spaces, artist mentor programs, 
and artists buying buildings and making lofts. 
Doing whatever we can do. 
Because at the end of the day, 
I really think that we as a community only have each other. 
~Mark Bradford

The Biennale was so inspiring and completely varied. Each pavilion was another creative adventure to behold! I'll share more of the artists but I plan to alternate with other posts, as well. Venice, Padua, Verona, Hawaii and then ... my recent walk through Italy on the Via di Francesco. 

Blessings and light!

National Museum of Women in Art

What would life be without art? Science prolongs life.

To consist of what-

eating, drinking, and sleeping?

What is the good of living longer

if it only a matter of satisfying the requirements that sustain life?

All this is nothing with out the charm of art.

~ Sarah Bernhardt

National Museum of Women in Art

founded 1987

NMWA is the only major museum in the world 

solely dedicated to recognizing women's creative contributions.

It's a place I'd wanted to go in D.C. ever since I'd heard about it! A museum dedicated to women artists! So often, women in history are forgotten and this is very much the case when it comes to the history of art.

Alice Bailly
b. 1872, Geneva, Switzerland; d. 1938, Lausanne,
Switzerland
Self-Portrait, 1917
Oil on Canvas

The building was originally built in 1903.

In 1983, NMWA purchased a landmark 78,810 square feet former Masonic temple in the Renaissance Revival style to house its works. After extensive renovations that included the addition of the two dramatic marble stairways linking the first floor and mezzanine, the museum opened to the public on April 7, 1987. The Elizabeth A. Kasser Wing opened November 8, 1997 making the entire facility 84,110 square feet.

The museum was founded to reform traditional histories of art. It is dedicated to discovering and making known women artists who have been overlooked or unacknowledged, and assuring the place of women in contemporary art. The museum’s founder, Wilhelmina Cole Holladay, and her husband Wallace F. Holladay began collecting art in the 1960s, just as scholars were beginning to discuss the under-representation of women in museum collections and major art exhibitions. 

Impressed by a 17th-century Flemish still life painting by Clara Peeters that they saw in Europe, they sought out information on Peeters and found that the definitive art history texts referenced neither her nor any other woman artist. They became committed to collecting artwork by women and eventually to creating a museum and research center. wikipedia

Remedios Varo

b. 1908, Anglès, Spain; d. 1963, Mexico City

La Lamada (The Call), 1961

Oil on Masonite

I do not with to talk about myself

because I hold very deeply the belief

that what is important is the work, not the person.

~Remedios Varo

A perfect example of women in art, forgotten by larger society, is Berthe Morisot who was in all but one of the Impressionist Exhibitions, alongside her contemporaries like Monet, Cezanne, Pissarro and Renoir from 1874-1886. She was in many ways pushing the boundaries more than the men. In some of her paintings, her brushwork was so loose and expressionistic, she was more like the expressionists of the 20th Century!

Berthe Morisot

b. 1841, Bourges, France; d. 1895, Paris

The Cage, 1885

Oil on Canvas

It is important to express oneself ...

provide the feelings are real and are taken from your own experience.

~Berthe Morisot

Suzanne Valadon
b. 1865, Bessines-sur Gartempe, France; d. 1938, Paris
The Abandoned Doll, 1921
Oil on canvas

Suzanne Valadon began her career in art as a model for Renoir, Lautrec and other painters. As you can see, she was an incredible figure painter. I love her use of color! This painting is so beautiful, in that you see this transition from girlhood, with her doll cast aside on the floor, to becoming a young woman.
Look at all the wonderful colors in the flesh tones. Ugh, it's so exquisite ... and next to the red?!

I paint with the stubbornness I need for living,

and I've found that all painters who love their art

do the same.

~Suzanne Valadon

Janet Forrester Ngala
b. ca. 1936, Northern Teritory, Australia
Language group: Luritja
Milky Way Dreaming, 1998
Acrylic on canvas

Alma Woodsey Thomas 

b. 1891, Columbus, Georgia; d. 1978, Washington, D.C.

Iris, Tulips, Jonquils, and Crocuses, 1969

Oil on Canvas

Remember our heritage is our power;

we can know ourselves and our capacities by 

seeing that other women have been strong.

~Judy Chicago

Elaine de Kooning

b. 1920, Brooklyn, d. 

Bacchus #3 (detail)

Acrylic and charcoal on canvas

(I LOVE this piece!!!!)

May Stevens

b. 1924, Boston

SoHo Women Artists, 1978

Acrylic on canvas

Judy Chicago

b. 1939, Chicago

Virginia Woolf (test plate for The Dinner Party), 1978

Glazed Porcelain

Porcelain plates like this one form a main component of Chicago's monumental work, The Dinner Party. This large installation consists of a triangular table with thirty-nine place settings, each dedicated to an influential woman in history. Chicago purposefully incorporated techniques traditionally associated with women, such as porcelain and needlework, to provoke questions about their traditional designation as craft rather than fine art.

If you have never seen an installation of the Dinner Party and you get the chance, definitely go see it. I saw it at the Hammer Museum in LA in 1996 and it really stuck with me and made a huge impression on me, as a woman. It was like going through time and history and in the end finding my place in it.

I believe in art that is connected to real human feeling-

that extends itself beyond the limits of the art world

to embrace all people

who are striving for alternatives in a an

increasingly dehumanized world.

~Judy Chicago

Hung Liu
b. 1948, Changchun, China
Shui-Water, 2012
Color aquatint etching with gold leaf

I hope to wash my subject of their 'otherness' 

and reveal them as dignified,

even mystic figures 

on the grander scale of history painting.

~Hung Liu

Kiki Kogelnik

b.1935, Bleiburg, Austria; d. 1997, Vienna

Superwoman, 1973

Oil and acrylic on canvas

"Superwoman comments on the representation of the female body in popular culture. With deadpan humor, Kogelnik challenges comic book clichés, which portray female superheroes-if they include them at all-clad in sexy, impractical costumes ..."

Lavinia Fontana

b. 1552, Bologna; d. 1614, Rome

Portrait of a Noblewoman, ca. 1580

Oil on canvas

I once had a boyfriend who asked why there weren't any genius women artists like Leonardo or Michelangelo. He's lucky he wasn't socked. There are a couple of ways to answer this. One is that there have been, but people don't usually know their names. (Critics and historians have selective memory and particular prejudices. I know that is shocking.) 

The other answer, or reason there weren't as many painters in history of art, was lack of opportunity. 

As a young artist, you would do what Michelangelo did, and go apprentice with an older established master. For a young girl or young lady this would have been completely inappropriate, to go off and live at an art studio with a man. Which is why you see so few women painters in the Renaissance, Baroque periods, etc. 

For the most part if you were able to paint, you had a father or older brother you could learn from, like the painter Artemisia Gentileschi who became very well known in her time ... her dad was Orazio Gentileschi who was a known artist and contemporary of Caravaggio. This was also the case with this Renaissance master, Lavinia Fontana. Her father was a painter.

Doesn't it make you wonder how many incredible, talented, genius women were out there and not given the opportunity??

Mary Cassatt

b. 1844, Allegheny City, Pennsylvania; d. 1926,

Le Mesnil-Theribus, France

Buste d'une femme en corsage blanc, 1905

oil on canvas

I hated conventional art.

I began to live.

~Mary Cassatt

detail of Mary Cassatt portrait ...

I am independent!
I can live alone 
and I love to work.
~Mary Cassatt

Jane Hammond
b. 1950, Bridgeport, Connecticut
Wonderful You, 1995
Oil, gold leaf, and collage on canvas

Real painters understand with a brush in their hand.

~Berthe Morisot

Amy Sherald

b. 1972, Columbus, Georgia

They call me Redbone but I'd Rather be Strawberry Shortcake, 2009

Oil on Canvas

(Love this work!)

From the museum website:

They Call Me Redbone but I’d Rather Be Strawberry Shortcake alludes to racial labeling directly, as the slang term “redbone” typically refers to a black woman with a light skin tone.

Typical of Sherald’s art, the young woman in They Call Me Redbone but I’d Rather Be Strawberry Shortcake appears to float against an intensely colored background, which enhances the work’s dreamy quality. The artist achieves this effect by limiting her use shadow along the figure’s contours. Here as in other works, Sherald disrupts viewers’ readings of her portrait subjects as black by painting their skin in grayscale, metaphorically removing their “color.”

Sherald modifies historical portrait formats to upend the dominant narrative of African American history. She notes: “I create playful yet sober portraits of black Americans within an imaginative history where I do black my way, in the European tradition of painted portraiture.” While historical portraitists aimed to reveal a sitter’s social standing or some essence of character, Sherald’s haunting figures are expressionless and dressed in unusual, costume-style clothing that she has collected.

Sarah Bernhardt
b. 1844, Paris; d. 1923, Paris
Après la tempête (After the Storm),
ca. 1876
White marble
(Did you know she was a sculptor, as well as an actress?!)

From the museum website:

Her debut in Racine’s tragedy Iphigénie cemented her importance as a stage actress and launched what would become a 60-year career and a pan-European reputation as “the Divine Sarah." While acting, Bernhardt began studying sculpture with Mathieu Meusnier and Emilio Franchesci and became passionately devoted to the art. 

By 1874, she was exhibiting her work at the Paris Salon, which she continued to do until 1886. Exhibitions of the artist’s sculpture were held in London, New York, and Philadelphia. Bernhardt participated in the World’s Columbia Exposition in Chicago in 1893 and at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900.

What matters poverty?

What matters anything

to him who is enamored of our art?

Does he not carry in himself every joy 

and every beauty?

~Sarah Bernhardt

Marzia Migliora
b. 1972, Alessandria, Italy
Pleaure, 2002
Leather and thorns

"In Pleasure, she explores one of life's dualities: pleasure/pain. The supple leather of this pair of wedding gloves evokes the appealing sensation of touch. The thorns that stud their interior make them, ironically, untouchable. Such physical sensations evoke equivalent psychological ones."

Lee Krasner

b. 1908, Brookly; d. 1984, NYC

The Springs, 1964

Oil on canvas

Frida Baranek 

b. 1961, Rio de Janeiro 

Untitled, 1991

Iron

(I love how this looks like an organic tumble weed that looks like it would be rather light but it's made of iron wire and wigs about ninety pounds!)

E.V. Day
b. 1967, New York City
G-Force Dive, 2001
Spandex thongs with resin, monofilament, and turnbuckles

Amy Cutler
b. 1974, Poughkeepsie, New York
Provisions, 2008
Lithograph

Loved this artist (above) which are influence by old fairy tails and Indian Miniatures. So groovy. To see more of these, click here after you read the rest of the post.

Sharon Core

b. 1965, New Orleans

Single Rose, 1997

Chromatic Print

Clara Peeters

Active ca. 1607-1630s, Antwerp, the Netherlands

A Still Life of Lilies, Roses, Iris, Pansies, Columbine,

Love-in-a-Mist-, Larkspur, and Other Flowers 

in a Glass Vase on a Table Top,

Flanked by a Rose and a Carnation,

ca. 1610

Detail of Clara Peeters Still Life from 1610

"A pioneer in the field of still-life painting, Clara Peeters is the only Flemish woman known to have specialized in such pictures as early as the first decade of the 17th century." 

I paint people to learn to know them.

~Suzanne Valadon

I got one of these buttons for the Women's March, benefitting the ACLU and Planned Parenthood with the sign language for I Love You.

Lauren, Shea and I, out in front of the museum! In honor of the Women's March on Washington, entry was free all weekend! 

Women should be someone and not something.
~Mary Cassatt

A celebratory cocktail, bought for us by the sweet restaurant manager, in honor of the March!

To find out more about the National Museum of Women in the Arts, in Washington D.C. click Here.

You can find out more about the artists, under Artist Profiles on the Museum's Website Here

I have touched with a sense of art some people – 

they felt the love and the life. 

Can you offer me anything 

to compare to that joy for an artist?

~Mary Cassatt