Maybe not the best picture from Art In Bloom, but it's a travel day. Flying today to a giant airline hub and spending the night. Saturday morning down to our home away from home in Costa Rica. I think it's +/- our twenty-third visit to the country over some decades (we obviously like it). Anybody want to see pictures of beautiful Dallas - Ft. Worth International Airport?
The title reminds me of calculus, which I had to take in college as a psych major. I was hopeless at it, and if it wasn't for the help of a friend who went on to a successful career in medicine, I might not have passed. I was better with the verbal stuff, which led to law school.
Art In Bloom always has an arrangement in front of this window. Usually you can see straight across the central hall, but at the moment it is blocked by the back of an enormous Anselm Kiefer painting that is on extended display, following his big show here last year.
As mentioned, it is hard to get a clean shot at Art In Bloom, what with the crowds. This one worked, and it might be one of my favorites.
Another from Art In Bloom at the St. Louis Art Museum (which has the wonderful URL slam.org). This is in a room of Baroque paintings; the one the floral arrangement is based on is off to the left of the frame.
I may need to stick with flowers until we head out of town late this week. This weekend brought us the annual Art In Bloom show at the St. Louis Art Museum. Top floral designers present pieces throughout the museum inspired by works in the collection. It gets crowded and hard to line up shots.
Far be it from me to pass judgment on floral arrangements. This one was awarded first prize at Art In Bloom. I like the fact that its gallery has windows overlooking the museum’s central great hall. The painting the arrangement refers to is on the opposite wall, https://www.slam.org/collection/objects/1449/ .
Max Beckmann was an important German artist of the first half of the 20th Century. Like so many others, he fled the Nazis and eventually ended up here. He worked and taught for the last three years of his life at Washington University in St. Louis. Our art museum has a major collection of his work, including a large room exclusively devoted to him. I think the floral arrangement refers to this picture, https://www.slam.org/collection/objects/13448/, not the one shown here.
Not the flowers, actually. I mean, I like flowers as well as the next person but it’s not really my department. The painting on the wall, though, is one of my favorites in the St. Louis Art Museum, a 1908 work by the American Paul Cornoyer, The Plaza After Rain. The place is at the southeast corner of Central Park in New York, looking south along Fifth Avenue. It brings up sentimental feelings for my home town.
It’s become a local tradition. In late winter, our art museum puts on an event called Art In Bloom. Expert floral arrangers are invited to create a design inspired by one of the pieces from the collection. This year there were thirty-some entries. It can be horrifically crowded, but the museum opens to members two hours early on the first morning. It’s the only time worth going.
When I was young, there was a well-advertised brand of cigars around New York called Dutch Masters. A slice of The Night Watch was on the box. I was aware of the product but no one in my family smoked cigars and I hadn't yet been to The Met. I had no idea what the brand name meant. Maybe it was just odd marketing. Over the years, I came to associate black backgrounds with Dutch/Flemish painting (except for maybe Caravaggio). I'm not sure how this floral arrangement interprets the nearby paintings but the effect is dramatic.
I gotta get back out on the street and find some new stuff. Getting my back worked on tomorrow at the mighty Washington University Medical Center and hoping for more mobility.
Everyone has a camera on them. There is a saying that the best camera is the one you have with you, but whether you have the cheapest pinhole or the most costly Hasselblad. the thing that matters is what you can do with it. I enjoy taking pictures of people taking pictures in art museums. I've done it in the Louvre, the Met, the Uffizi. and the
We think of floral arrangements as bursts of color. Sometimes, though, monochrome works better, particularly if the blossoms are mostly white. I think about Robert Mapplethorpe's lilies. This piece was mostly white, with tinges of dusty yellow I didn't find attractive. Would you rather see this in color?
The German Expressionist Max Beckmann was a star of his nation's art world a century ago. Along with that of many others, his work was condemned as degenerate by the Nazis. He went first to Amsterdam and then, in 1947, accepted a position at Washington University here. He developed a relationship with the retail magnate, art collector and philanthropist Morton May. One large room of our art museum is devoted to his work. This floral arrangement represents the painting on the left. The one on the right is a self portrait.
It's the time of year when the Saint Louis Art Museum draws its biggest crowds. For three days in late winter, the most talented floral arrangers in the region are invited to construct a piece that reflects the feeling of something in the museum's collection, if much more perishable.
I've been shooting it for years, and it's a challenge. The Friday to Sunday run can be just packed. The museum sets up remote parking a ten minute drive away. Early Friday morning is reserved for members (we are) but it is still hard to get a clear shot. I stood for a few minutes before one arrangement, camera held high, waiting impatiently for the spectators to clear. Someone beside me asked, "Would you like me to ask that lady to move to the side?" I told her that the person was my wife and, if necessary, I would use telepathy.
Art In Bloom is an annual event at the St. Louis Art Museum. The most talented floral arrangers are invited to create something that responds to a work in the collection. There was a lot of it and I have not edited much.
We spent last night at the Miami airport and will be in Costa Rica this afternoon.
There is an annual event at the St. Louis Art Museum called Art In Bloom. The most talented floral arrangers in the region are invited to sculpt petals and stems to resonate with one of the works in the galleries. There was a members-only preview Saturday evening. It gets so crowded during general opening hours that, for a photographer, it's not worth the effort. However, one room had an assortment of artificial flowers. a scanner and a projector that blew fractals of the plants' fractals onto the wall.
If the gods of the air permit, we'll be in Miami tonight and on to Costa Rica tomorrow. First stop is Monteverde in the cloud forest of the central highlands. The flowers are more gorgeous, intense and even livid than what we could imagine here. And then there are the birds.
