It was great (if hot) to be back at the Huntington! Here are two sculpture installations by the Japanese-Californian artist Mineo Mizuno, who blends aesthetics and materials from the two places and from the multitude of traditions they contain: fallen branches from the foothills of the Sierra Nevada contain nests made of aluminum, hemp and ceramics. It's a deliberate melding of the human and the natural - in other words (I'm borrowing this intentionality from the wall panel) "a perfect bridge between the art galleries and the gardens." To my mind, it's decorative, harmonious, not especially thought provoking, but, indeed, a bridge.
Much more thought-provoking was a gardener's cart, which seemed - very mysteriously - to have a stuffed hen in it. I guess one would call that a bridge between the gallinaceous and the horticultural?
The real purpose of my visit was the excellent show Excursions of Imagination: 100 Great British Drawings from the Huntington's Collection - which I was so glad to catch before it closes in a couple of weeks. Under "drawings" were included very many watercolors, and some works in pastel - a really strong assortment, from a couple of big Turner watercolors, and Samuel Palmer, and Simeon Solomon drawings, and a Helen Allingham haymaking scene that's a different view of the field and horse-drawn, hay-laden waggon from the one that I bought earlier this year - strange to encounter a visual relative! Here's a little cat from John Frederick Lewis's Eastern Coffee Shop (1866), who looks like an ancestor of both Moth and Gramsci rolled into one.
No comments:
Post a Comment