Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Impressionists

Visited the Impressionism: Painting Light exhibit at the Albertina Museum here in Vienna.

The display went on for room after room, arranged more or less chronologically, with a history of the development of Impressionism posted in English and German throughout the exhibit, so you could get a feel for the evolution of it.

I found out what I already knew about my own taste in art: The brighter the colors, the more I like it. The paintings done on a sunny day, for instance, were far more interesting to me (the pigments were brighter) than identical paintings done from the same vantage point on a misty day.

That's probably kind of primitive of me, but that's how it goes: I like bright colors.

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Really interesting to me were the displays which explained advances in the technology of painting----simple things like paints in tubes which could be easily carried around, or changes in the shapes of brushes, or easels that could be broken down for transport...all this helped lead to Impressionism because these artists liked to paint outdoors, on locations where the light could vary, instead of in the studio.

Microscopic analysis of some of the paintings showed there were grains of sand, or seeds from trees, embedded in some of the canvases...proof that the artist was really outside painting "on location" instead of back in the studio.


After the exhibit, coffee and conversation with our friend M, who had accompanied us to the exhibit.

Then home, a good supper, some reading, some television, more conversation.

And young Jethro's head was full of ideas about how to do Impressionism-like video portraits, when he returns to the land of Way Too Much Snow.

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