My museum snobbery started somewhere in the early 90s, after a visit to the Queensland Art Gallery and seeing a particularly enormous and delightful canvas, depicting a bright yellow Monaro with big fat tyres and black racing stripes, fancifully entitled: “Bitch Magnet”. If smartphones had been invented then I would have taken an obligatory picture of the abomination, but seeing that they weren’t and the internet was yet to be used for anything at all back then, I am failing in my duty to have a representation of it here for your edification. Unfortunately the QAG has always seemed a little lacking to someone with an interest in ancient and medieval history, and as these things go, if you’re interested in seeing culturally significant works more than 200 years old, then the QAC is not for you. We have a bit of a dearth of that sort of thing in Queensland, which is why so many of us plan trips interstate whenever there is an exhibition travelling to one of the souther galleries that isn’t coming our way. I know many people who have coincided ‘work’ trips or family obligation trips with travelling exhibits of the Old Masters or the Renaissance Paintings exhibit in Canberra at the National Gallery. And when we do get something fabulous, like the Afghan Treasure… we are all over that like fat kids on cupcakes, starving little culture vultures that Brisbanites are.
Unfortunately (nah, I can’t back that up) my museum snobbery was only solidified by travelling to some of the most renown galleries throughout Europe in my early 20s in London, Paris, Madrid, Rome, Florence, Venice, Istanbul, Vienna etc. where I had the opportunity to see many important and famous works of art. Then I went and made things even worse by doing a degree in Visual Arts. And another one in literature and history. Oh well, so be it. But I have digressed before I even began!
Today, I made a pilgrimage to the Metropolitan Museum of Art – somewhere that has been on my ‘to do’ list my entire life, and it does not disappoint. Around every corner is another stunning gallery filled with famous and familiar names, another unbelievable artefact to examine and contemplate, another unexpected delight. Whether you are into Byzantine mosaic, Asian isomorphic representations, Egyptology, Limoge enamelware, 14th century tapestry, medieval armour, American painting, early modern decorative arts, Renaissance sacredotal painting… it doesn’t matter, they have a bit of everything. I think I spent the entire day stumbling around picking my jaw up off the floor as I wandered past all these names from my text books – Vermeer, Millet, Rubens, Rembrandt, Monet, Manet, Cezanne, Gaughin, Van Gogh, Van Eyck, Rodin, Bruegel, Holbein, Surat, Tiepolo, Lotto, and Unknown (OMG, that Unknown artist dude is crazy talented!). I was just in seventh heaven.
We started off in the impressionist gallery as Mr K has a fondness for Van Gogh that I knew nothing about and ran into all the big names from the period just sitting there on the walls, looking all innocuous and marvellous and alarmingly expensive.
There are two entire rooms filled with Degas paintings of his ballet dancers, his bathing nudes and his sculptures. Any one of these pieces would be a major draw card or centre piece for any gallery in the world, and here they have too many to count! It’s unbelievable and wonderful and perhaps even a little overwhelming, it becomes hard to comprehend exactly what you are looking at, when the normally unique and exclusive, is so almost so plentiful as to be appear nearly commonplace… slight weirdness there.
Predictably I spent quite a bit of time wandering around the Medieval European galleries and took so many photos with my proper camera that I will have to sort when I get back, but a small sample of items I snapped with the iPhone mostly include owls, heraldry, memento mori and some pelican paraphernalia.
Heraldic horse pendants.
Ivory casket, 11th century carved with warriors and dancers.
Another 11th century artefact of an obscure little bed described as the ‘Baby Jesus’ bed’ however no other details were available. Very curious thing.
A later period carved ivory rosary and detail.
Brooch of gold and precious stones, late 16th century.
Brass bowl depicting a pelican in her piety, 14th century.
Then there were the hunting tapestries. I walked into a room and saw these on my left and nearly fell over. I’ve seen it so many times in so many books… just stunning.
Obscure detail of a painted altarpiece – I liked his hat. 🙂 Have a snap of the whole work and the info on it (but that is trapped on CF card until I get home).
I spent quite a bit of time wandering through the arms and armour display and took incalculable photos of the armour, details of each, photos of rapiers, firearms, crossbows and lord knows what else. These are just some happy snaps of some 16th century armour.
I thought this was really interesting, it is apparently a Medieval recreation of Roman armour and would have been used for reenactment or dramatic purposes. Very cool.
I took many, many photos of the firearms and crossbows which I will have to post to the Lochac firearms guild FB page when I get home.
This is a 15th century Italian pietre dure table made for the Farnese family, and a detailed shot of the inlaid stone work.
An or nue piece that was stunning in real life, but this picture isn’t as finely focused as I am hoping my other images of it are.
And a French Limoge enamelled casket from the 13th century.
Seriously, these were just a few of the amazing things I saw today and managed to grab happy snaps on my phone of them.
Some more paintings – Salome with John the Baptist’s head (will edit in artist later), a Tiepolo and a Van Eyck altarpiece.
I loved this depiction of the Saints in Adoration of the Holy Trinity, by an unknown spanish painter of the 15th century. It shows all the saints lined up in neat rows and the Trinity in the top centre of the piece and dead centre is HELL… dum, dum, da! Complete with evil hellfish/beast/leviathan thing. Love it!
Then I wandered around the corner and found a beautiful, and very famous, Cranach. And a couple of Vermeers, one of which is an Allegory for Catholicism I think. Then a lovely Venus and Cupid done by Rubens, and a couple of Rembrandts, one of which is a self portrait… just so many amazing and famous works everywhere you turned.
This was pretty incredible, there is a section downstairs under the European Painting gallery that houses entire rooms laid out with Louis XIV furniture and is quite reminiscent of the sort of thing you see in Versaille or the Shonnbrun or other great castles in Europe.
And after that it was time to hit the gift shop and hightail out of there, for today at least. My sticker was tattered and well used, as were my feet. Everyone else seemed to deposit theirs on a board on their way out each day… so much for the cool little fold over tin tokens that were iconic of the MET for many years.
And the best bit about the MET is, I am here all week and I haven’t even touched the Egyptian, Asian, Classical, American Painters or oh, so many different galleries to get through yet! I think this might well be the only reason I needed to come to New York.