“An artist must paint not what he sees in nature, but what is there. To do so he must invent symbols, which, If properly used, make his work seem even more real than what is in front of him.”
Well, no wonder no one else paints like Charles Burchfield. The Memorial Art Gallery still has some surprises and the current show there is a big one. For “Drawing as Discovery” they painted their walls a warm rich black and brought out rarely seen treasures from their collection, drawings and works on paper that can only handle so many strenuous museum hours. This could be their best show yet. One certainly worthy of a catalog yet I couldn’t even find a list of artists. So you will just have to get over there and spend some time looking.
Burchfield moved to Buffalo In 1921 to work as a wallpaper designer. He gained national recognition in 1930 when the newly formed Museum of Modern Art organized an exhibition of his early work. Winter Moonlight” was purchased by MAG director Gertrude Herdle in 1953 from an exhibition at The Buffalo Fine Arts Academy (now the Buffalo AKG Art Museum).
From wall tag: Goya emphasizes the most dramatic episode in the life of Artemisia, an ancient queen of Caria in Asia Minor (present-day Turkey), After her husband King Mausolus’s death in 353 BCE, Artemisia mixes her late husband’s ashes with spices and water, and prepares to drink the bitter brew in an ultimate tribute to his memory. This drawing was a gift to the gallery from James H. Lockhart in 1978
Everyone loves Rodin’s sculptures. They are magnificent. When Fred Lipp suggested I look at Rodin’s watercolors it took me a while to get around to it. I pictured Rodin as the manliest of men. Rodin watercolors? I came across one in the Johnson Museum at Cornell and eventually bought a book of his watercolors. The gallery purchased this beauty in 1956
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