Life imitates art 9

For many years Ken and I have had the tradition of a "beer shot," a photo when we're sitting in a foreign place about to improve our day with a cold beverage.  We align the glasses or cans so the labels are visible, along with a bit of the background scenery, such as this picturesque little cafe in Copenhagen three weeks ago.

We've done so many of these on various continents that I was able to make a book for Ken's birthday a couple of years ago, called "A Shot of a Beer."  (I was almost as proud of the title as of the photos.)

So when I found this painting in the Hamburg Kunsthalle museum it was clearly a case of life imitating art.  Even though it took three and a half centuries.

Johann Georg Hinz, Still Life with Beer Glass and Bread Rolls, 1665

Life imitates art 8

So imagine my surprise when I looked at the front page of the New York Times this morning and saw -- my quilts!

New York Times photo

Don't you think this photo of a solar farm in China looks a whole lot like my Crazed quilts?

Life imitates art 7

Yesterday afternoon I was sewing and watching the first episode of the new season of Dancing With the Stars, one of my guilty trash-TV pleasures.  When I heard my husband clattering pots and pans up in the kitchen I realized it was dinnertime, so I switched off DWTS and went up to cook.  On the upstairs TV the Republican candidates "debate" was about to begin and I realized -- it was just like Dancing With the Stars!

The same dark, TV-blue set, with sparkly lights in the stratosphere. The same gently curved array of hopefuls, nervously facing the audience.  A flashy prop hanging from the roof -- a mirror ball on one set, Air Force One on the other.  (Sorry, I had to crop out the mirror ball from the photo.)

But most striking, the same atmosphere -- the announcer barely able to contain his grave excitement, the suspenseful music, the camera zooming in on celebrities in the crowd, the on-scene reporters earnestly discussing the prospects of various contestants with random "expert observers."  There were little up-close-and-personal vignettes of the contestants.  There were opportunities for the viewing audience to call in and vote for their favorites.

There were reminders to stay tuned: "If you thought that Round 1 was intense, you haven't seen anything yet!"  (That was from the debate, not the dancing.)  There were commercials (the debate was brought to you by a remedy for toenail fungus).

If you have thought that the presidential campaign, at least at this point, seems to have way more entertainment content than public policy, this may support your argument.

Life imitates art 6

Cy Twombly, Panorama, 1955

on the blackboard, art history department

Life imitates art 5

at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Albert Bierstadt, Farallon Island, 1887 (detail below)

in the Beagle Passage, Argentina

Life imitates art 4

at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Frederic Edwin Church, The Iceberg, 1891

in the Weddell Sea

I was there first

Last week the New York Times had an article on the art scene in Lisbon, illustrated with several luscious photos of the older sections of town.

New York Times photo, Nacho Alegre

When I saw this photo I thought it looked pleasantly familiar -- in a very brief visit to Lisbon in 2007, an afternoon ashore from a cruise ship, we had strolled through a seedy (no, I mean picturesque) old part of town with very similar buildings.

Then I happened to be looking through my pictures from that trip and what did I find....

photo by Kathleen Loomis

Sure, his picture is better. He probably waited around all afternoon for the cars to leave -- or maybe he paid them to clear out.  And he crouched down a bit so the lamp ended up higher.

But what fun to see that nobody has bothered to paint the building in the last five years!  And to realize that I was there first.

Life imitates art 3

Robert Motherwell, Ochre With Black Window, 1973, at Cincinnati Museum of Art (detail)

dumpster behind the Indian restaurant (detail)

Life imitates art 2

John Chamberlain, Red Zinger, 1974 (at the Speed Museum, Louisville KY)

seen in Ushuaia, Argentina (long view below)

Art in Antarctica -- sort of

One of the payoffs to reading your art history and paying attention at the museum is the delicious thrill you get when you suddenly find the doppelganger of the famous work of art just sitting there in real life.

Earlier this month I had a moment like that in Antarctica, of all places, when we visited Deception Island, the site of an old British whaling station and later scientific research base, which was abandoned in the late 1950s after it had the misfortune of being erupted upon by a volcano, not once but three times.

The beach at Deception Island, inside the caldera of the volcano, is dominated by the remains of many rusty tanks, once used to store whale oil but now falling apart.  The instant I saw them I thought "Richard Serra!" 

Serra, one of the great minimalist sculptors, first became famous when his vast work "Tilted Arc" was installed in Federal Plaza in New York City in 1981.  The piece, made of Cor-Ten steel, which rusts beautifully, was 120 feet long and 12 feet high.  Many people thought it was magnificent, but the philistines yelled loudest.  It was too expensive, and it was ugly, and people put graffiti on it, and worst of all, you had to walk a few steps out of your way to get around the arc and enter the federal building.  Although twice as many people testified at the eventual public hearing that they liked it, compared to those who hated it, the bureaucrats in charge voted to dismantle the sculpture in 1989.

Richard Serra, Tilted Arc

I never saw the sculpture, although I did go to New York on business many times during those years, which I regret (missing the Arc, not going to New York on business).  Mea culpa.  I wasn't as plugged in to art as I am now, silly me.  But I have seen many pictures, and have seen many other Serra works in person.

Serra still loves Cor-Ten steel, and in this decade he has extended his arc concept to make huge, room-sized spirals and enclosures of rusty steel.  I saw a lovely one at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art last year.

Richard Serra, Band



















So imagine my surprise to find the psychic twins of these great works of art on the deserted beach of an island at the far end of the world.

Life imitates art 1

unposed -- I swear it!