The Meadows

Driving toward home on 183 last week I noticed a billboard for an art exhibit at The Meadows Museum. It was titled “Coming of Age: American Art from 1850 to 1950″. It featured this painting from Winslow Homer on the billboard.

Since the exhibit only runs through February and I doubted I’d get another chance to go, I went to check it out today. It was pretty good actually, and it was a GREAT day to walk around SMU a little and take it in – something I hadn’t done yet. SMU has a very pretty campus and the weather in Dallas today was just stunning.

Not surprisingly for me, I found that I enjoyed the earlier works much more than the later ones. By the time you get to the 1950′s you are looking at paintings which are very abstract and frankly garish as far as I’m concerned. The works belonging the Hudson River School and the Ashcan School, on the other hand were ones that I really liked. The Hudson River School is apparently what so many of the captivating landscapes of the American west belong to. These are paintings by the likes of Albert Bierstadt and many others of this type:

I don’t know what snooty art critics might say about this genre, but I love it. I can’t help but imagine what it must have been like to actually be there viewing these scenes with my own eyes – before the west was heavily populated and made into something other than wilderness.

The Ashcan School was apparently very controversial not so much for its composition and technique, but it’s subjects. “Gritty urban life” was not considered worthy of art it seems. This painting of a rough and tough Philadelphia boxing club is an example. I can’t say that I’m generally a big fan of viewing men in underwear, but this was a very striking painting in person.

Again, it put me in the mind of what it must have been like to be there watching a boxing match in 1908.

One of the more interesting things on display was modern in the extreme. As in it was done just today. The Reflection Fine Art Gallery had a live painting in 3D oils done by the man who I believe is their owner. While I can’t say that I that I find the works themselves to my taste, watching the painting as it was being painted was something else all together. That was enjoyable. Here are shots of “before” and “during”.

Update – the artist you see below is in fact JD Miller, owner of the Reflection Fine Art Gallery. JD blogs over at The Reflectionist.

This is “before”. The painting to the left of the blank canvas was to give the audience some idea of what the finished product might look like.

Below was “during”, about 30 minutes into two hours of painting. I had to leave shortly after this, but I might see more of it in the future. A gorgeous woman that works at the gallery suggested that I come by on a Friday night some time to see more work in progress – apparently that’s something they do as part of the gallery’s business. I could think of worse ways to spend an evening.

Watching this painting in progress was transfixing in almost the same way as watching a campfire.

Anyway, it was a good chance to see a neat museum. There were plenty of other things there as well, including some really impressive paintings and sculpture from Medieval Spain. I’m glad I went.