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| "Study for the chimpanzee" by Francis Bacon. As usual, the reproduction colour is not right, the canvas is actually a gorgeous red/pink. |
My daughter, Julia, is backpacking her way through
South America right now. On her very first day, she went to an art museum in
Bogota and saw some Botero and Bacon. (Try saying that quickly three times!) Obviously,
my parenting work is done here, since my kids love art even when not being nagged about it.
I have so many great memories of art I’ve
seen while travelling. I couldn’t take my eyes off an extraordinary Francis Bacon
painting of an ape on a bright pink background at the Peggy Guggenheim Museum
in Venice. I saw a huge Ed Ruscha
retrospective at the Whitney in New York City that made me fall utterly in love
with his charming and intelligent work. And I went to Palm Springs just to see
a show of Wayne Thiebaud work, where his confectionary colours and lush paint
application seemed to fit perfectly with the artificiality of an oasis city in
the desert.
However I think that my best art moment
came 10 years ago in Milano. After touring through Italy and seeing the wonders of ornate cathedrals and dark Renaissance masterpieces we were drawn to a strange
anomaly: a Whitney show of American art which had travelled to Italy. We
wandered through the
bright lights and white walls which contrasted completely with the dark spaces we had
been touring. The kids laughed at giant Oldenburg food sculptures, while Pat
contemplated a Lee Krasner work that vengefully dwarfed the Jackson Pollock
beside it. I recognized artist after artist that I had been studying at art
school, this was a greatest hits collection of the rich period of American art
in the 50’s and 60’s.
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| Mark Rothko, in living colour |
Afterwards, as we relaxed in an outdoor patio with fizzy
Italian drinks, we compared notes. “What was your favourite painting?” is a
question I often ask the kids. Amazingly, Pat, Julia and I all liked the same
painting: an absolutely luminous Mark Rothko. I can’t even remember exactly
which one it was, but the yellow on the canvas glowed so brightly, you were
drawn to it from across the room. We all agreed, it was the best painting we had seen that day.
I remember being impressed that we could all
love a simple abstraction so much, and also shocked that a painting I had seen
in books could be a thousand times more beautiful in real life. Even now,
looking back, I remember a certain happiness, perhaps at seeing something new and
yet familiar, something simple and modern after so much ornate history, or perhaps just a
connection to North America while we were so far from home.
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| Bacon, Rothko and....me? Yikes. |
This brings me to the May contest. I wanted to know, what was your best art experience while travelling?
I have the appropriate prize for this contest, a painting
using the topographical maps I got through the kindness of Natural Resources. However this photo shows a work in progress, I’m
not quite finished the painting yet, so it will still change, hopefully for the
better…but who knows.
It measures 8” x 8” or 20cm by 20cm. Anyone can enter, even if you've won before. You can enter in the blog comments, on facebook, or send me an email at mat@matart.ca, I will summarize the comments at the end of May and have a draw for the map painting then.
One question came up about why I'm running contests, and I'm not trying to promote anything; I just wanted to give a little art to people who want it. Good luck!
