One of THE MUST SEE things in New York is the absolutely amazing Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met) on Central Park.
This art gallery is New York’s answer to the Louvre and you need to allocate at least 6 hours to wandering around the massive amount of quality art works.
When visiting New York’s Met or MOMA art galleries you must check your back-pack into the cloak room BUT you must take all valuables including cameras and lenses with you – hint – only take 1 camera and one lens – a wide aperture f/1.4 or f/2.0 lens – leave the rest in your hotel safe.
Let’s take a little tour of a few taken with my trusty, quiet, Panasonic GH-1 Micro Four Thirds camera with Four Thirds Leica-D 25mm f/1.4 lens and NO FLASH:
Nydia, the blind flower girl of Pompeii by Randolph Rogers in 1859 (marble, sepia toned in Lightroom):
Magnolias and Irises a lead light window by Louis Comfort Tiffany in 1908:
Winter by Houdon, 1787:
Self-portrait by Rembrandt in 1660:
The absolutely delightful self-portrait in pastel by Elisabeth Le Brun in 1789 (apologies for the glass reflections):
And in stark contrast, this brilliant portrait of his uncle by Cezanne in 1866:
Cezanne showing off his versatility with this painting of a house with cracked walls in 1892-4:
Corot’s 1871-4 painting of a woman gathering faggots:
And from a time when women were appreciated even if they didn’t have a 6 pack or look malnourished and poor – Degas and one of the bathing women series from 1885-6 – women as nature meant them to be:
Likewise, Ingres painted a new version of his famous Odalisque in 1824 showing a woman and her beautiful form even though her body may not sell many bikini’s in Time Square advertisements today:
Even Pissarro in 1895, was comfortable showing a woman is beautiful even if she does have a pot – we have much to learn in our society of accepting people for who they are instead of placing ridiculous pressures upon them to conform to some unobtainable ideal, to the extent they spend all their life in a gym, or all their money at the plastic surgeons – art has much to teach us:
This is further reinforced by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s, 1897 curvaceous Woman at the Mirror:
and now for some modern art:
don’t be fooled, the above painting is by the legendery El Greco, painted in 1608-14!
next post – more from the Met.
