A Quiet Abiding: Jacobus Vrel’s Interior with a Sick Woman by a Fireplace

January 31, 2023January 23, 2023 / antonioyrocinante / Leave a comment

This world is driving us all crazy, it is polarized, violent, in a rush, inconsiderate, uneducated, younameit. But there are a few solutions, a few ways out. One is art. We need more art in our lives. Art makes us slow down, it makes us stop, stop and look, stop and listen, stop and touch, stop and smell, stop and taste.

Last Saturday, although I was just coming out of a massive cold, I went to see A Quiet Abiding: Jacobus Vrel’s Interior with a Sick Woman by a Fireplace from the n at my oasis of culture and art: the Norton Museum of Art.

I arrived at the same time as the Chinese Dragon show was about to start in the garden to celebrate the Lunar New Year, but I went straight upstairs to see this painting, which will be on show at the Norton for two years.

Little is known about Vrel other than he barely preceded Vermeer, in fact the painting has an air of Vermeer, but apparently it is the other way around Vermeer has an air of Vrel.

The painting is beautiful, simple, quiet, and alluring. You want to make some tea for the sick old lady, some chicken soup. There is a weak fire in the fireplace, and that flickering flame, a handful of tiny brushstrokes, makes the painting, brings it all together, it is amazing!! A little like the flowers in infanta Margarita Teresa de Austria’s dress in Velazquez’s Meninas.

If you are around Palm Beach up until December 15 2024, do not miss this painting. You are welcome.

Hispanic Heritage celebration at the Norton

October 11, 2022October 10, 2022 / antonioyrocinante / Leave a comment

The Norton Museum in West Palm Beach is such an oasis of culture for me that I have already written about it five times in this blog. Well, here is the sixth:

Understanding the importance of Hispanic Heritage and Hispanic Heritage month, the Norton organized an open house “Nuestra Cultura” day in celebration. I took advantage of the opportunity and took some students from my classes. We had a blast!

We skipped the piñata making table, the Latin dance lessons, and the food stalls. We checked out the mercado set up in the garden, and what we really dug our teeth into was the actual museum. Although the collection is small, it contains top notch art. We walked around discussing different pieces and paintings.

We had a wonderful time, and I enjoyed (finally) being able to share the Norton with my students!

Picasso in Warmer Climes: Works on Canvas, Clay, and Paper

September 6, 2022September 6, 2022 / antonioyrocinante / Leave a comment

For many of us growing up in the eighties, Picasso’s art is something we just grew up with (the Impressionists, especially Monet, are also right up there, but this is a post about Picasso). By the time I saw my first real Picasso painting, I had seen so many prints, posters, photos, etc. that I do not think I was that impressed.

The first Picasso painting that I remember seeing was no less than the Guernica, at the NY MOMA, (before it was returned to Spain) in the late seventies. I was more impressed with the size than the horrors of war that it portrays -also, I was, like, twelve.

Along the way, I became a fan of Picasso, studying his art, his career, his life. The whole thing is fascinating! My first full time teaching job, back in 2005 I organized a trip from Boston to NY to see the Picassos -back at the Museum of Modern Art! I relish any and every chance I get to explore his work.

Fast forward to last week when I made it to the last day of a tiny Picasso exhibit at the Norton Museum in West Palm Beach. It was worth it even if it only had a handful of works, equally divided between paintings and ceramics.

The exhibit was titled Picasso in Warmer Climes: Works on Canvas, Clay, and Paper, and it focused on Picasso’s last few decades, when he was prolifically generating art.

Every single piece of art Picasso created is brilliant and genius, but I have a soft spot for his interpretations of Don Quixote. Here was a tiny ceramic jug with a simple image of the Knight. Picasso and Don Quixote were implacable individualists creating their own destinies.

With such a massive oeuvre, there are Picasso exhibits everywhere constantly, so keep your eyes open for an exhibit near you soon!

West Palm Beach, a celebration

May 10, 2022May 8, 2022 / antonioyrocinante / Leave a comment

Within the suburban wasteland that is South Florida, Palm Beach stands out as a beacon of civilization. Developed in the early 20th century by rich northerners who were scaping the cold and snow, it soon became the place for really rich folks to build winter homes (think Post cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post’s Mar-a-Lago). If you were not rich enough to own a home you could always spend a few days at the iconic Breakers hotel. Nowadays, the Palm Beaches boast the Norton Museum which I have talked about already, and great dining venues.

I recently had the chance to explore Palm Beach at night. A colleague’s birthday was all it took to get three guys to go explore, improvise, and enjoy some drinks and a great dinner. Sure, there was some shop talk and some philosophy talk (they are both professors of philosophy, I am just an amateur) but mostly we just chatted and shared and enjoyed breaking bread together.

Pre-dinner drinks were had at the great rooftop Spruzzo bar atop the Ben hotel. The views were amazing, the drinks chilly, and the vibe great!

From there we walked around Clematis Street checking out the fun atmosphere, before settling down for dinner at Elisabetta’s Ristorante for a great Italian meal.

Overall, a fun time was had by all. I must say I was impressed by the cosmopolitan and sophisticated feel of West Palm Beach, I’ll be back.

Dürer, Rembrandt, and Picasso, who is missing?

April 19, 2022April 15, 2022 / antonioyrocinante / Leave a comment

The Norton Museum of Art a few miles away from me in West Palm Beach is my oasis of cultural and artistic stimulation. After their fantastic Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera exhibit, they come back with a small but powerful exhibit of three fundamental printmakers of all time.

Albert Dürer is one of the Renaissance’s top artists, despite the fact that he was not Italian, but German! His draftsmanship is just phenomenal. The Norton gave out little plastic looking glasses so we could appreciate the detail in the prints. It is simply mindboggling! I was particularly impressed with St. Jerome in his study. Legend has it that Dürer’s dad was a doormaker and so Dürer’s logo -by the way, he is accredited with “inventing” the logo- is a door. My friend and super well-read Irina mentions the same story but instead of his dad being a doormaker, he was a chalice maker, and the logo represents an upside-down chalice! Take your pick.

Next in line was Rembrandt. Although the exhibit only had a handful of his prints, they got the point across of Rembrandt’s formidable talent. Maybe he does not have the detailed precision of Dürer, but what he might lack in technique (which to a layperson like me is impossible to appreciate), he makes up for in expressiveness. His Christ coming down from the cross has this hand sticking out of the darkness which could very well be any of our hands. It is in fact, a very “Picasso” hand, like something out of the Guernika…

Speaking of Picasso, he is the third star in this exhibit. In the 20^th C. Picasso was not so much concerned with the time-consuming detail, but with bold statements. For example, the colors on Bust of a Woman with Hat were simply blinding (granted the print belonged to Picasso’s print maker and he had kept it in top shape, but still).

So, here are three master printmakers representing the Renaissance, the Baroque, and whatever you want to call the late 20^th century. But I felt a big gap, a lacuna. That gap was the late Enlightenment and Romanticism, and the printmaker that defined that era was Francisco de Goya. I missed him. Goya did four series of prints: Los Caprichos, Los Desastres de la Guerra, Los Disparates, and La Tauromaquia. In goya we get a lot of the detail work of Dürer and Rembrandt with the bold statements of Picasso. You see, the Enlightenment as I have written before is the hinge between the old world and the modern world. You can read my thoughts on that here.

But overall, this was a small but potent exhibit. Thank you sincerely to the Norton for pulling it off!

Norton Museum of Art

March 9, 2021 / antonioyrocinante / 2 Comments

The other day I finally had a chance to visit the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach. I was thinking I was going to visit a small museum with a couple of obligatory Impressionists, a couple of Cubist pieces, maybe a few pieces from between the wars, plus some modern random stuff. Well, as usual, I was wrong!

To begin with, the museum is quite large – much larger than say, the Baker Museum in Naples. It consists of a three-floor modern building (designed by Foster) attached to the Art Deco original, plus a sweet garden with a nice modern sculpture collection.

After the necessary Covid protocols: temperature and hand sanitizing, I paid the steep $18 fee (plus $5 for parking). My museum viewing strategy, started years ago (possibly induced by the Guggenheim in NYC) is to take the elevator to the top floor and then work my way down. What was my surprise when I landed on the third floor and I saw a couple of massive 17^th and 18^th C. portraits! (The first painting you come to is an early 20^th C. Orientalist, but probably because it was the only one of the genre there and they did not know where to put it). The third floor has a surprising collection of 16^th to 18^th C. paintings including Rubens and Tiepolo, and some sculptures, including a gorgeous Spanish wood carved Virgin Mary.

The second floor is mostly Chinese art where I am quite lost. There are Shang, Ming, Jin, and Qing Dynasty pieces which are all gorgeous.

The ground floor is where the majority of the collection is. And what a great collection it is! (for a smaller, private museum in Florida). Sure, you have your unavoidable Cézanne, Miró, Picasso (sculpture and painting!) and Monet, but also rarer Gaugin, Brancusi, Gris and so forth. The American art collection is solid: A couple of Georgia O´Keeffes, Norman Rockwell, an early Jackson Pollock, Calder, less known but highly influential Milton Avery, even a Man Ray chess set! The old and new buildings are seamlessly connected, so you do not really know what part of the building you are in, unless, like me, you stumble into the old patio, which is a beauty.

A big part of the ground floor is dedicated to Contemporary art and the usually massive installations they require (maybe to compensate for technique? – no, to be fair, I must confess my old fashioned taste and lack of knowledge on the Contemporary art front.)

The garden and sculpture collection are also delightful. Who knew that Keith Haring did sculpture? well at least one, it is here!

There is the de rigueur over-priced cafeteria, but it is spacious and modern, and the food is good. You can sit indoor (as soon as Covid allows) or outside.

So all-in-all a highly recommended visit if you happen to be an art lover in South East Florida.

Antonioyrocinante's Blog

With the passing of Rocinante, Antonio goes solo

norton museum

A Quiet Abiding: Jacobus Vrel’s Interior with a Sick Woman by a Fireplace

Hispanic Heritage celebration at the Norton

Picasso in Warmer Climes: Works on Canvas, Clay, and Paper

West Palm Beach, a celebration

Dürer, Rembrandt, and Picasso, who is missing?

Norton Museum of Art

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