Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Cincinnati art 4

More of the all-star team that I saw at the Cincinnati Art Museum last week. 

I'm a Warhol fan, but can't say that the piece in Cincinnati moves me as much as many of his other works.  This one was commissioned by the museum, and commemorates Pete Rose.  Some observers think that everything Warhol ever did was shallow, crude and deliberately trendy.  I disagree, but this particular piece may come closer than a lot of others.  It is colorful and cheery.

Andy Warhol, Pete Rose, 1985
















Here's a nice Richard Diebenkorn, with an intriguing mix of interior and exterior views; hard to tell where one stops and the other starts.

Richard Diebenkorn, Interior with View of Buildings, 1962
















And a small Robert Rauschenberg combine picture.  I learned that he made an entire series called "Glut," named for the oil glut of the 1980s that wreaked economic havoc on his home state of Texas.  He collected the raw materials for these assemblages on a visit to Texas, where it wasn't hard to find a lot of junk on the sites of failed businesses and factories.

Robert Rauschenberg, Kaleidoscope Summer Glut, 1987

And a nice Rothko, a painting in his standard three-bar format.  The title of the painting describes the background of the painting as maroon, but Mark's idea of maroon is a lot different than mine.  I would describe it as black with a red/brown cast.  To me the most important color relationship in this picture is the complementary orange/blue reverberation.  And while none of these colors will make it to my top ten favorite list, they work well together in this painting.

Mark Rothko, Brown, Orange, Blue on Maroon, 1963



3 comments:

  1. I have enjoyed tis series. Have a Merry Christmas
    cedarridgestudio.blogspot.com

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  2. Kathleen I have been SO enjoying your art discussions and your questions. It's been a while since I have been to the Cincinnati Art Museum... maybe I will make an excursion!

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  3. Standing in front of a Rothko very closely -- the way he wanted his paintings to be looked at -- is an amazing and revealing color meditation. The edges become so vibrant! I had the privilege to spend a few hours in a galery to see the original paintings, and I was sure that he calculated the effect of the complimentary color appearing if you stare at the painting. Any reproduction should be very large to allow the same effect.

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