Sarah Wherry
I'd just like to also let you know about the competition I've entered - it's called Art Takes Miami and it's a great chance to have my work featured on an international stage!
Just click my name above to go to my portfolio and vote for me if you like my work. The more votes I have the higher my chance of being selected.
Thanks!
Friday 14 September 2012
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
So last month I was fortunate enough to see some absolutely amazing stuff. We went to the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. and I got to see work by artists who I have studied and admired and who by all accounts are some of the absolute Masters of the Universe....oops! Haha, I meant Masters of the art world. But actually, if I think about that for a minute, maybe they are Masters Of The Universe? Just not in the HeMan and Skeletor sense of the word.
Lets just analyze that for a minute. We have a ridiculous competition here on Earth (well we have several, but let's not digress!). The one I am referring to is the Miss Universe competition. How on EARTH (yes, I am being quite literal with this one) can we humans have any kind of competition which states that the winner is the best in the entire UNIVERSE?! We have our measly little (but still quite lovely) home here in planet Earth, and we are one of 8 planets now in our solar system. But there are billions upon billions of planets and solar systems out there in the universe. Perhaps there are even HeMen and Skeletors and maybe even a Chewbacca or two out there. The point I'm getting at is that we don't know, so we can't judge something as being the best of it's category in the universe.
That being said, if we are so egocentric as to say something here IS the best of the best in the universe no less, I think some of the artistic Masters whose work I saw recently would have to be in that category.
There! I made my point. I knew I'd get there eventually!
So...one of my favourite artists in the entire world, maybe the universe, who knows....is Joseph William Mallord Turner. He is AMAZING! I just love love love his work. I saw a few of his paintings in the NGA and they really did take my breath away. Now I appreciate that not everyone can share my all encompassing love for all things art, and by this point in our little excursion I certainly had a couple of fairly bored companions. But they ever so graciously simply sat and waited without complaint while I wandered around the gallery with my hands behind my back, (so I didn't inadvertently touch a painting and get arrested!), exclaiming "Oh my goodness, would you LOOK at this?!?!" or something of the sort anyway.
I was also absolutely blown away when we saw the only DaVinci painting in the entire Western Hemisphere!!
I also saw work by Van Gogh, Matisse, Gauguin, Cezanne, Degas, Renoir, Rembrandt, Picasso....and more. I saw works by Jackson Pollock and Jasper Johns...by Ingres and David. We saw a massive array of art history spanning literally hundreds of years. And I was speechless for a lot of it.
Some of the art I saw, in purely technical, academic terms, was mediocre. But it wasn't in reality. It was amazing because these works of art are all ones we can and have learned from. They are the steps that have provided us with the art that we have today. Every piece of art that has been produced in the history of time, has contributed to what we know and love, and what is acceptable of art today.
It was almost like when you see your favourite band up on stage in person, or if you see a superstar walking down the street. It's a feeling of "wow!!" but also, "huh". And by that I mean, you get a feeling of amazement because you are seeing something in person, right in front of you that you have only ever seen in books, (or on tv, or heard on a cd), and for that aspect it's quite exciting. But also the 'huh' feeling - the ' I can paint like that' or 'I could do something that looks like that' or 'that looks awesome but from a technical standpoint it isn't that impressive'. When you realise that person who seems larger than life, really is just a person. And that moment is just as important as the 'wow' one. Because it lets you realise that anything really IS possible. That all these Masters of The Universe (hehe) were actually just people. Just like you and me. They simply followed their creative minds to where-ever it lead them, and the end result is a painting that billions of people recognize. It makes you understand that mistakes are meant to be made, and they help form what will eventually become reality.
So what did I get from seeing so much amazing art, and so many amazing sights? I got that you should never ever stop playing, that you should always be happy to experiment and that while you need to know the rules, sometimes when you break them, pure genius flows out. Artistically speaking, of course.
Lets just analyze that for a minute. We have a ridiculous competition here on Earth (well we have several, but let's not digress!). The one I am referring to is the Miss Universe competition. How on EARTH (yes, I am being quite literal with this one) can we humans have any kind of competition which states that the winner is the best in the entire UNIVERSE?! We have our measly little (but still quite lovely) home here in planet Earth, and we are one of 8 planets now in our solar system. But there are billions upon billions of planets and solar systems out there in the universe. Perhaps there are even HeMen and Skeletors and maybe even a Chewbacca or two out there. The point I'm getting at is that we don't know, so we can't judge something as being the best of it's category in the universe.
That being said, if we are so egocentric as to say something here IS the best of the best in the universe no less, I think some of the artistic Masters whose work I saw recently would have to be in that category.
There! I made my point. I knew I'd get there eventually!
So...one of my favourite artists in the entire world, maybe the universe, who knows....is Joseph William Mallord Turner. He is AMAZING! I just love love love his work. I saw a few of his paintings in the NGA and they really did take my breath away. Now I appreciate that not everyone can share my all encompassing love for all things art, and by this point in our little excursion I certainly had a couple of fairly bored companions. But they ever so graciously simply sat and waited without complaint while I wandered around the gallery with my hands behind my back, (so I didn't inadvertently touch a painting and get arrested!), exclaiming "Oh my goodness, would you LOOK at this?!?!" or something of the sort anyway.
.jpg) |
| Keelmen Heaving in Coals by Moonlight, Turner, 1835 |
.jpg) |
| Ginevra De Benci, Leonardo Da Vinci, 1474 -78 |
Some of the art I saw, in purely technical, academic terms, was mediocre. But it wasn't in reality. It was amazing because these works of art are all ones we can and have learned from. They are the steps that have provided us with the art that we have today. Every piece of art that has been produced in the history of time, has contributed to what we know and love, and what is acceptable of art today.
It was almost like when you see your favourite band up on stage in person, or if you see a superstar walking down the street. It's a feeling of "wow!!" but also, "huh". And by that I mean, you get a feeling of amazement because you are seeing something in person, right in front of you that you have only ever seen in books, (or on tv, or heard on a cd), and for that aspect it's quite exciting. But also the 'huh' feeling - the ' I can paint like that' or 'I could do something that looks like that' or 'that looks awesome but from a technical standpoint it isn't that impressive'. When you realise that person who seems larger than life, really is just a person. And that moment is just as important as the 'wow' one. Because it lets you realise that anything really IS possible. That all these Masters of The Universe (hehe) were actually just people. Just like you and me. They simply followed their creative minds to where-ever it lead them, and the end result is a painting that billions of people recognize. It makes you understand that mistakes are meant to be made, and they help form what will eventually become reality.
So what did I get from seeing so much amazing art, and so many amazing sights? I got that you should never ever stop playing, that you should always be happy to experiment and that while you need to know the rules, sometimes when you break them, pure genius flows out. Artistically speaking, of course.
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