Le Hunter et Le Boulevardier

You may have noticed that Mr. Hunter has an affinity for busts and other sculptures of heads.  And when he encountered this fellow at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Mr. Hunter felt an even stronger kinship.  The pointed chins, the long noses... they could be cousins!

 

Mr. Hunter's new friend in the top hat is called Le Boulevardier, and he was created by the Polish-born American sculptor Elie Nadelman.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)

Los Angeles, California

March 2013

____________________ 

Official LACMA page on Le Boulevardier - 

http://collections.lacma.org/node/249962

Official LACMA site - http://www.lacma.org/

A Field of Painted Polka Dots

Back when Mr. Hunter's caretaker worked as a web surfer, she created this directory category for polka-dot specialist Yayoi Kusama.  So Mr. Hunter had to pose with this Kusama painting, which is called No. C.A.9.

A closer look at the texture of Yayoi Kusama's dots in the painting.

 Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)

Los Angeles, California

March 2013

____________________

About the Whitney Museum's 2012 Yayoi Kusama retrospective - 

http://whitney.org/Exhibitions/YayoiKusama

LACMA page on Yayoi Kusama's No. C.A.9 - 

http://collections.lacma.org/node/188228

Wikipedia article on Yayoi Kusama - 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yayoi_Kusama

2012 interview with Yayoi Kusama - 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/07/yayoi-kusama-interview_n_1749378.html

Where In the World Is Mr. Hunter? - East Ninth Street Edition (The Answer)

Which museum was Mr. Hunter visiting when he stood before this lovely Abstract Expressionist painting?  Well, he wasn't on East Ninth Street, but the painting he was admiring is called East Ninth Street.  The piece is by Joan Mitchell, and you can see the entire work in all its glory if you go to the Los Angeles Country Museum of Art (LACMA).

Ten years ago, Mr. Hunter and family went to LACMA for the first time--to see a show about John Singer Sargent in Italy, actually--and it was in the permanent collections of LACMA that Mr. Hunter's caretaker discovered the seemingly endless pleasure of taking photographs of paintings and details of paintings.  There's a sort of conversation that takes place for me, a particular kind of deeper engagement as I zoom in on aspects of artworks that have spoken to me.

I have synesthesia, and one type of synesthesia that I experience makes it so that I hear what I see; the things I'm looking at create an experience of sound in some other dimension.  As I focus on different points in a painting, I've noticed that particularly pleasing compositions in my viewfinder will change the sounds of that painting for me, like an alignment or a kind of harmony.

In doing some research on Joan Mitchell and her painting, I've just learned that Mitchell also had synesthesia!  This WWD article by Lorna Koski recounts that "Mitchell was notably bright and shrewd and had the unusual quality of being a synesthete, someone for whom sounds, letters, numbers and personalities had colors, flavors and shapes."  I shall have to investigate further.  And this illustrates another of the pleasures of taking photographs of works of art: revisiting those photographs can lead you down new paths so that your experience of the paintings and sculptures broadens to include new stories.

 

I quite like this detail from East Ninth Street.

Stay tuned to see more photos from Mr. Hunter's LACMA explorations.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)

Los Angeles, California

March 2013

__________________________

LACMA's page on East Ninth Street -

http://collections.lacma.org/node/233733

The Joan Mitchell Foundation - 

http://joanmitchellfoundation.org/

Where In the World Is Mr. Hunter? - East Ninth Street Edition

Mr. Hunter likes to visit art museums now and again, and when he does, he often finds paintings that speak to him.  There's something about the contrast between Mr. Hunter's carved wooden angles and the varied and vivid colors and brushstrokes of paintings by artists from Eric Carle and Claude Monet to Jackson Pollock.

In March, Mr. Hunter and friends wandered the halls of the largest art museum in the western United States.  Where was Mr. H when he felt the need to pause and pose before this lovely Abstract Expressionist painting?

A Visit with Space Shuttle Endeavour

Kennedy Space Center opens its Space Shuttle Atlantis exhibit this weekend, so Mr. Hunter has been remembering his visit this past winter to the Space Shuttle Endeavour exhibit at the California Science Center.  (You may recall some divine photos from the days when Endeavour was towed through the streets of Los Angeles.  And you can bet that Mr. Hunter and I were sorry to miss that sight.  Here's NASA's official Flickr set showing the move.)

The California Science Center's exhibit currently has Endeavour displayed horizontally, so you can walk under and around the orbiter.  There are plans to eventually change this configuration so that visitors can get different views.

 Last time I'd seen Endeavour (at the 2012 farewell flyover), it surprised me to see how worn she looked, though of course it makes sense that a vehicle whose job it was to be rocketed into space and then to reenter the Earth's atmosphere repeatedly would not be in pristine condition.  At the California Science Center, you can walk underneath Endeavour, so I got a closer look at the wear and tear on her heat-shielding tiles.

Heat-shielding tiles on Endeavour's underside.

At the California Science Center, Endeavour also looked smaller than I had anticipated, even though I'd seen her flying overhead on the 747.  I suppose my expectations were influenced by the breathtaking Saturn V exhibit at KSC, which has the massive Saturn V rocket suspended overhead in stages.  It sounds like the new Space Shuttle Atlantis display in Florida will include replica external fuel tank and solid rocket boosters, which should help visitors get a more vivid perspective.

Mr. Hunter's family had the chance to see two shuttle launches in 2002 because my dad was working on an experiment that flew up to the International Space Station on STS-110 and then returned to Earth on STS-111.  So Mr. Hunter had to pose with the signs about those missions.

"Our" shuttle missions.

Thank you, Endeavour!

Space Shuttle Endeavour exhibit

California Science Center

Los Angeles, California

March 2013

Official site for the Endeavour exhibit - http://www.californiasciencecenter.org/Exhibits/AirAndSpace/endeavour/endeavour.php

Official site for Kennedy Space Center's Atlantis exhibit - http://www.kennedyspacecenter.com/the-experience/atlantis-shuttle-experience.aspx

Los Angeles Times gallery:

Space Shuttle Endeavour rolls through the streets of L.A. -  http://framework.latimes.com/2012/10/12/space-shuttle-endeavour-2/#/31

I particular enjoyed this L.A. Times photo of Endeavour rolling by while two boys played basketball in their backyard.

The Tate Britain: Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose

At the Tate Britain, Mr. Hunter stepped in front of the camera to pose with a favorite John Singer Sargent painting: 

the luminous Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose.  

The extensive JSS Virtual Gallery web site has an interesting article on how the artist created his work.  In order to capture his true impressions of a certain kind of light--a balance between twilight and the colorful glow of Chinese lanterns--Sargent would apparently paint this scene for about two minutes each day, gradually shifting the time from day to day as the sun went down earlier.

As you can see, I spent more than two minutes taking in this painting.   I especially loved the golden pink glow of the Chinese lanterns.

Roses.

Lily, lantern, rose.

A lily.

The lilies and the glowing lantern.

You can make a virtual visit to see Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose on this page of the Google Art Project.

Tate Britain

London, England

September 2011

Official site for Tate Britain - http://www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-britain

The Parthenon Sculptures (aka the "Elgin Marbles")

At the British Museum, 

Mr. Hunter visited the Parthenon sculptures and friezes that have commonly

 and controversially been known as the Elgin Marbles. 

Mr. Hunter and some horsemen of the north frieze.

The figures on the right are the goddesses Hesta, Dione, and Aphrodite.

Room 18

British Museum

London, England

September 2011

Official site of the British Museum: http://www.britishmuseum.org/

Totems in The British Museum

After he'd basked in the presence of a genuine Easter Island moai, Mr. Hunter noticed some more tiki-ish figures in the corner, including this totem, which may be of Inuit origin.

No Mr.  Hunter in this photo,
but we admired this housepost from Papua New Guinea.

Room 24

The British Museum

London, England

September 2011

The Rosetta Stone

Here's Mr. Hunter posing in front of a particularly important rock: The Rosetta Stone.  The Rosetta Stone dates back to ancient Egypt and was rediscovered in 1799, and it provided a key for finally understanding hieroglyphics.

Hieroglyphs and Demotic on the Rosetta Stone

Here's the name "Mister Hunter" in hieroglyphics, courtesy of the Online Hieroglyphics Translator:

Demotic and Greek sections of the Rosetta Stone

Room 4

The British Museum

London, England

September 2011

Colossal Winged Bulls From the Palace of Sargon II

Mr. Hunter appreciated the intriguingly textured beards of these winged bulls who originally stood as "magic guardians against misfortune" in the Khorsabad palace of Sargon II.

"Yo."
(As if a colossal winged bull guarding a palace would say, "Yo!")

Khorsabad is located in Iraq.

Side view of one of the bull gates.

The British Museum

London, England

September 2011