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August 12, 2006
Museuming around...the Cloisters
I have the loan of an apartment in Jersey City for a week (thanks, Jeff!) so I'm down here saturating myself. I'm way behind on bloggery!
On Thursday I took the A Train to the Cloisters -- my favorite museum in the world, probably. This was the first time I've been in good weather and alone - so I spent about 3 hours there! Gosh it was pretty and the café was open (in one of the outdoor cloisters).
I hate it when people ask "what's your favorite painting" (or some such). Here are a few of my favorite works from the Cloisters:
Here's an introduction to the Cloisters.
The book of hours of Jeanne d'Evreux, painted by Jean Pucelle. The page that I got to see showed the Entombment of Christ and the Flight into Egypt on facing pages.
The cloister taken from Saint-Michel de Cuxa. Some of you may have noticed that I have little patience with historical preservationism. This is one example of something I don't mind that drives the preservationists NUTS - disassembling a building and moving it, reassembling it into a pastiche. Big deal. It was in ruins, people. It hadn't been a working monastery since the French Revolution, if not before that. This is not to say that some of the robber-baron transplantage of European art to America wasn't a tad underhanded (I've read stories of Bernard Berenson and Duveen buying in Italy for the Kress Collection that are hair curling), but please!
The Saint-Guilhem cloister. Some of these capitals are amazing! I'll post some pics of the Hell-mouth capital. Very instructive!
Yes, I love the Unicorn Tapestries - who doesn't? I had a really fun conversation about hidden symbolism with a student from the Savannah College of Art and Design who saw me drawing capitals in the Cuxa cloister. He has a pretty good eye for detail (and could, of course, draw better than me).
Of course most of my favorites aren't on the website, so you'll just have to go look for yourself!
From the same trip
- Making discriminations at the Frick
- Dada at the MoMA
- Zaha Hadid, Famous Architect, at the Guggenheim
Posted by CrankyProfessor at August 12, 2006 11:00 AM