El Greco to Antonio López García

I went to the Museum of Fine Arts to see El Greco to Velasquez today and spent the day seeing everything I could. I really need to do this more often.

I bought two tickets. There is a $4 charge for reserving tickets online, regardless of whether you get one or two, so I got two figuring I could give one away. I found a very nice woman who had driven out from the Amherst area for the day who had no ticket. She turned out to be from PA originally, had been a nurse and then late in life decided to become a painter, something she had been discouraged from doing when she was younger. Clearly it was my karma to give this woman a ticket. I hope she enjoyed her day as much as I enjoyed mine.

Good as the Philip III show was, there were other exhibits I found more interesting. An Art Deco jewelry exhibit was outstanding, so much so that I bought the catalog. Just gorgeous jewelry; when you see straight men oohing and aahing over an exhibit that you know they were dragged into kicking and screaming by wives/girlfriends, it's an impressive display of craftsmanship. I have to get Queenee in to see this, she'll love it.

A Japanese house interior was set up to display period furniture and artifacts. Another very interesting exhibit, and very empty. I was in there for a good twenty minutes and I doubt ten other people came in during that time. I even got to give myself a foot massage, courtesy of the museum.

There is a room full of Winslow Homer work, some paintings and a bunch of prints. He really is a master of watercolor, and he was a trained printmaker as well. It was very interesting to see how he re-worked his paintings into prints. One in particular stood out - The Life Line (Saved) verges on erotic in the etching, far more than the painting, and apparently Homer did this intentionally. It is a beautiful print.

The pièce de résistance was the Antonio López García exhibit. Garcia is a Spanish realist painter born in 1936, who stuck to his vision through the abstract art period, and thank god he did. This is, amazingly, his first solo show in the US. His work is exquisite. Incredibly detailed, yet not photographic, the work is real enough to be appreciated by the "my five year old could do that" crowd, like PopPop. PopPop wouldn't care for Garcia's subject matter; too much simple home life and nude men, but even he would have to acknowledge the mastery of form and space. Although Garcia is perhaps best known for the baby head sculptures of his grandchildren, his drawings and paintings are outstanding. He is an artist I knew nothing about, though I had seen some of his sculpture work. In my defense, he's not much interested in being well known, but I've got my eye on him now. What a treat.