Degas/Cassatt Show @ NGA

I can't wait to see this Degas/Cassatt show at the National Gallery of Art, which is still on through Oct. 5.

The museum's description of the show made me realize that both artists preferred to paint the human form versus landscapes and came from similar, highly educated and wealthy backgrounds. I also was not aware they were such good friends and champions of each other's work, which is quite touching really. I previously wrote about Cassatt for this blog in 2012.

If you stop by the NGA before Sept. 18, you can also still see this Van Gogh painting now on loan to the museum from the Netherlands.

While the National Museum of the American Indian arguably boasts the best museum cafeteria dining experience in Washington, the NGA would certainly be a close runner up, with healthy and tasty fare on offer - albeit for a slightly higher price than the more greasy fast food available at many of the Smithsonian museums just a stone's throw away on the National Mall - in a delightful indoor cafeteria setting with an excellent gelato and espresso bar (some people just go for the gelato!).

A more formal cafe and a small cafe with coffee, wine and snacks at the museum's delightful sculpture garden round out its culinary repertoire.

Here are some impressions of the sculpture garden, from a time when I was going a bit overboard with my amateur Photoshop skills while I was enrolled in a cool weekend multimedia journalism program at the University of Maryland, which really made my life at the time ... :

Metropolitain

Spider

Silver Tree

Must-See Show: Ballets Russes at NGA Through October 6

Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, 1909–1929: When Art Danced with Music

Turner on the Tyne

The National Gallery of Art, which I follow on Twitter, tweeted the following on April 23:

"Today is J.M.W. Turner's birthday. From @ngadc, a time lapse of the River Tyne today combined with Turner's painting. http://ow.ly/asekn"

The "Turner on the Tyne" video this tweet links to is so AMAZING, I just HAD to share it here...



This video appears on a funky NGA site called "Art Babble," which in my view warrants two thumbs up for this video alone.

The NGA hosted a major Turner retrospective a few years ago. A very deadpan German-born art history professor in an Impressionism/Realism class I took in college always swooned over Turner - and lambasted most of the famous French Impressionists in the process.

"Impressionism is like a pretty girl in a bar," he would say, his lip curling in a snarky smirk (I later found out he was also spending quite a bit of 'quality time' himself with some 'pretty girls' who were undergrad students at this university, which landed him in a bit of trouble!). "From a distance she looks very nice but then you walk up to her and start talking to her and realize she is not really that pretty and she is all style, no substance."

That, at least, was HIS take on Impressionism (versus Realism, which he ADORED - we looked at a lot of Courbet slides in that class!).

Fans of the Impressionists, would of course, beg to differ.

One thing everyone can probably, however, agree on is that Turner was a genius.

Only 5 Days Left to See Colorful Realm!!!

Anyone hoping to check out Colorful Realm at the National Gallery of Art needs to do so in the next five days.

Two friends of mine viewed this exhibition last Sunday and said it was a MADHOUSE. This exhibition was so crowded that it was hard to really take it in, they said, which was a shame as it is a rare treat. (This is the first time these beautiful scrolls have been exhibited outside of Japan.)

Arriving very early, very late, or perhaps not on the final day of the exhibiton (April 29) might do the trick in avoiding the worst of the crowds.

Here's the latest info. from the NGA:

Colorful Realm: Japanese Bird-and-Flower Paintings by Itō Jakuchū (1716–1800)
March 30–April 29, 2012

Hours Extended
Open until 8 p.m., April 27, 28, 29
Use the 6th Street and Constitution Avenue entrance

Spring Fling: Street Photos, African-American Art, Howard Theatre

Jazz at the Howard, ca. 1941: Ray Bauduc, Herschel Evans,
Bob Haggart, Eddie Miller, Lester Young, and Matty Matlock.
(Photo: William P. Gottlieb/Library of Congress/Wikimedia Commons)

The Washingtonian in its April 2012 issue flags up a few great new exhibitions in DC, including one I've already mentioned called "I Spy: Photography and the Theater of the Street, 1938-2010" (April 22-August 5) now on show at the National Gallery of Art.

At the same time, The Smithsonian American Art Museum is exploring a pivotal turning point in American history through "African American Art: Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Era, and Beyond" (April 27-September 3), which includes works by Robert McNeill, Richmond Barthé, Romare Bearden, and 40 others.

On April 9, moreover, Washington's Howard Theatre (built in 1910) reopened "after a $29 million restoration that has turned the landmark into a state-of-the-art venue and revived its architectural glory," Sarah Wildman reported for The Washingtonian.

Located near the corner of Seventh and T streets in DC's historically African-American Shaw neighborhood it "was once an incubator of great music," according to Wildman. "Ella Fitzgerald, Aretha Franklin, the Supremes, and Marvin Gaye all played at the Howard Theatre early in their careers."

The theatre reopens with a new lineup including Wanda Sykes, the Roots and Chuck Brown.

Theater of the Street @ NGA

NPR's "Art Beat" recently flagged up what seems like a MUST-SEE SHOW for all lovers of urban photography.

As a lifelong city dweller and photography fan, I CANNOT WAIT to go see THE THEATER OF THE STREET (April 22 - August 5) at the National Gallery of Art.

Hokusai @ Sackler + Jakuchū @ NGA

With the National Cherry Blossom Festival in full swing (even though we've already, alas, lost the blossoms!) there is some great related art to be seen in DC.

I really want to see the Hokusai exhibit at the Sackler.

There's also an exhibit on at the National Gallery of Art showcasing Japanese bird and flower paintings by Itō Jakuchū that looks to be lovely.

Metropolitain @ NGA Sculpture Garden

This striking Hector Guimard "Metropolitain" Paris Metro station entrance, with its Art Nouveau flourishes, fits perfectly into the garden with its organic forms. I defy anyone NOT to like this.

Photos by Karen Carstens

There are so many interesting angles hidden among the endless twists and curves of this Guimard masterpiece.

I really could really never tire of looking at it! (Except when the park is overflowing with tons of folks during the summertime Jazz in the Park concert series, which is fun, but can get CROWDED! I prefer the park in its more peaceful, "normal" state, with DC residents and tourists alike trickling in and out of this beautiful oasis right off the National Mall - it really is a sculpture garden intended for the entire nation to enjoy!)

 FYI the Hirshhorn's sculpture garden is also interesting.

Spider @ NGA Sculpture Garden

I also love this spider that always freaks people out a tad when they first step into the garden. It looks like something out of a vintage Steven Spielberg film - "Invastion of the Spider Snatchers!" Mwah. Mwah. Mwah. (All photos by Moi + Photoshop ... )

Spider (1996), by Louise Bourgeois - Normal

Spider - Super Saturated

Spider - All Hued Up

Silver Tree @ NGA Sculpture Garden

I love this silver tree in the sculpture garden. I had not noticed it before it shimmered in the sunlight on Easter Monday, its forever smooth and naked "branches" twisting up towards the sky like a slick trick we are trying to play on nature. (I wonder if any birds have ever perched there?)

Photo by Karen Carstens

Easter Monday @ National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden

Yesterday (Easter Monday) the National Mall and the museums that make this city so marvelous were jam-packed with tourists viewing everything from aircraft to live insects to whisper-weight vintage silk gowns once worn by first ladies.

The National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden provides a welcome oasis of calm and is a great place to stop and rest inbetween visiting other museums on or near the National Mall.

The sculpture garden is an oasis of calm (Photos by Karen Carstens)

One of several entrances to this marvelous magical garden that enchants young and old alike.

Even the iron gates of the garden are like works of art.

The fountains and pool at the center of the garden invite people to relax and while away a few minutes - or hours - in reverie. La Reve. Der Traum. Il Sogno. Something we all long for.

These diagonal lighting effects were captured unintentionally, but I kind of like them.

The sculptures on view inside the garden never cease to fascinate - revisiting the garden is like rediscovering them every time. (Each sculpture is followed by its description stone - these little plaques are discreetly yet visibly placed near each work of art.)

This rabbit (Thinker on a Rock, 1997) could have many connotations - Rodin's famous "Thinker" of course springs to mind, as does Alice in Wonderland and even Giacometti (the Paris-based sculptor from the Italian Swiss Alps - he had several brothers who were also artists and designers). But it also reminds me of that outlandish "Donny Darko" film in which a juvenile yet deeply disturbed Jake Gyllenhall was haunted by that evil rabbit which represented death/the grim reaper (?) It's a Mad World!

Could this be a stair- um "chairway" to heaven?

This playful and quirky "Cheval Rouge(" (Red Horse) by Calder makes me think - only because of its title - of the Blue Rider Expressionist movement that was centered around Munich in 1911/12. When Franz Marc painted his famous "Blue Horse," people were shocked. Today it is a modern masterpiece.

Art News Roundup @ Everywhere

Cologne Cathedral (Thomas Wolf/Der Wolf im Wald)

First there was the amazing news that a new Van Gogh painting was recently re-discovered in the Netherlands (Maura Judkis also blogged about this for the Post).

NOW there is even more awesome art news - a veritable treasure trove of Nazi-looted art could be unearthed soon via an "Indiana Jones" style digging expedition in Germany's Erzgebirge mountains, as Alan Hall reported for Britain's Daily Mail on March 25.

"Monets, Manets, Cezannes and masterpieces by other artists, along with sculptures, carpets and tapestries, are believed to be buried in an old silver mine near the Czech-German border, 90 minutes' drive from the city of Dresden," writes Hall.

"The paintings formed the bulk of the Hatvany collection, the property of Baron Ferenc Hatvany, who was a leading Hungarian-Jewish industrialist and art patron."

(I cannot help but note here that Ron Lauder's mother, the late American cosmetics' tycoon Estée Lauder, was partly of Hungarian-Jewish origin - and that I could very well imagine some of these same artworks in Lauder's own amazing private collection.)

Estée Lauder (at left) "in a vivid print from Yves Saint Laurent, puts today's face on a customer by using a darker shade of lipstick" in 1966. (World Journal Tribune Photo by Bill Sauro/Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection/Wikimedia Commons)

So much world-class art looted from Jewish collectors by the Nazis, as well as by Russia's Red Army (some of the Hatvany collection also went to the Russians), still needs to be restored to its rightful heirs - or at the very least displayed in museums for all to enjoy. In this instance such a sensational find would rock the entire international art world.

Sometimes, moreover, art justice is actually served.

Top 50 emerging artists

Hot off the press, the latest edition of artbusiness news profiles 25 of the "Top 50" emerging artists of 2012 - the first 25 were profiled in the magazine's November/December 2011 edition.

Last year, by contrast, ARTnews published this list of the world's "Top 200" art collectors. (Ron Lauder and his wife, Evelyn, incidentally, made the cut.)

Combating "gallery rage"

ARTnews also recently reported on what museums are doing these days to counter the new phenomenon of "gallery rage," which involves increasingly irked museumgoers venting (often virtually) about the overcrowding of major blockbuster art exhibits that marrs the individual's attempts to experience art.

People lined up around the block of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan on August 3, 2011 to see the "Savage Beauty" exhibition showcasing examples of the late British fashion designer Alexander McQueen's work. I tried to enter the Met just to stand in line to see this exhibition on a Sunday in late July 2011, only to hear the people in line ahead of me - this was just to GET IN to the Met itself (!) - say that they had heard that there would be yet another two-hour line just to GET IN to the Alexander McQueen show itself. As I was babysitting two German 15-year-olds at the time who were on their first ever starry-eyed trip to New York City, there was NO WAY I could ever justify spending the better part of a day in line to see a few dresses designed by McQueen. So I never had a chance to experience "gallery rage" that time around because I couldn't even get into that blockbuster show!
(Photo by flickr user Benny Wong)

I recall a clever system involving timed ticket entry to one such blockbuster show I visited in 2005 at the Tate in London. This stunningly atmospheric Turner-Monet-Whistler show was still pretty crowded, but at least the timed entry system helped keep some of the overcrowding at bay and allowed a relatively decent view of the paintings on show at the time.

Throngs of museumgoers take in the Alexander McQueen "Savage Beauty" show at the Metroplitan Museum of Art in New York on May 15, 2011. This is about as close as I ever got to that exhibition. (Photo by flickr user Wesley Chau)

ARTnews earlier this month also published an interesting item on how art fairs are joining forces with the "virtual" world.

"Degenerate" art on view along Polish-German border

The works of several gone - but not forgotten - 20th century artists are meanwhile chronicled in an exhibition I would love to see were I living in Europe right now.

As reported on by Deutsche Welle, a new joint German-Polish exhibition in Mülheim an der Ruhr entitled "Hunting Down Modernism - Forbidden Art in the Third Reich" presents works which were once dismissed and shunned by the Nazis as "degenerate."

Joseph Goebbels (center, in trench coat and hat), Hitler's infamous Nazi propaganda minister (Reichsminister für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda) strolls through the "Entartete Kunst" (Degenerate Art) exhibit at the Haus der Deutschen Kunst in Munich, Germany on a Sunday afternoon in 1937. Hartmut Pistauer (in glasses, at right) was chief curator of this "exhibit," the first of several to denigrate and attack the avant-garde in Germany. Many artworks were lost, stolen or destroyed in the process, and many artists were compelled to flee the country. Some artists and intellectuals even committed suicide. Nazi Germany was not a great place for artists. Many German and Austrian actors, writers and directors, moreover, fled to Hollywood, where they greatly influenced the rise of the Film Noir genre, which unsurprisingly cast a gloomy and mysterious pall on crime and punishment in the 20th century.
(Photo Deutsches Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archive)/Wikimedia Commons)

This reminds me of the excellent LACMA exhibition on degenerate art I saw some two decades ago when it came to the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

Last laugh: "naked" art in Cologne

At the same time, Spiegel Online International took note of a "happening" whereby two women with famous works of art by Klimt and Schiele painted across their naked bodies walked around the western German city of Cologne - or at least tried to, until police stopped their bare-it-all "walk of art."

This is reminiscent of the 1960's, when the "shock value" of such a stunt may have been somewhat higher - at least in a place like Germany, where people routinely hang out together in the buff at saunas, pools, parks or FKK, ie nude, beaches. All I have to say about this is that, if I had to be one of those two women, I would have rather "worn" the Klimt than the Schiele painting, given that the former provided more, um, "coverage," as this photo gallery attests.

German children enrolled in a state-run daycare program enjoy some healthy down time together in a sauna in 1984. (Photo Benno Bartocha/Deutsches Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archive)/Wikimedia Commons)

(When I lived in Germany I managed to avoid the FKK beaches, but did get talked into going to the sauna - luckily there is a lot of steam in these places. Suffice it to say I preferred the "women's day" at the sauna, when we were not forced to be naked with a bunch of dudes - bar the male staff members on duty who somehow STILL seemed to be hanging around at the sauna working on various faucets or showerheads etc. - the price one must pay for German "Ordnung" (orderliness) - they are constantly repairing roads, sauna showers, etc. in that country - no potholes or leaky faucets for them!)

Mary Cassatt @ National Gallery of Art

Mary Cassatt: Maternal Kiss (1897)

Pennsylvania-born MARY CASSATT (1844-1926), who spent most of her adult life in France, was one of the few female painters to achieve the same level of recognition as her male counterparts when Impressionism flourished in 19th-century Paris.

Throughout the ages, the imaginations of male artists have been inspired by enticingly compliant muses or wildly unpredictable sirens - or both!

(I will omit a 1970s-style, radical-feminist analysis of the biblical virgin/whore stereotyping of women by men that continues in western society - most notably in some radically conservative segments of American society - until this very day. Just read Margaret Atwood's brilliant dystopian novel "The Handmaid's Tale" or contemplate what really might lie behind new "policies" implemented in various US states ***recently*** that affect women's ***reproductive rights*** to imagine just how far some folks could "run" with this stuff, and why groups like Planned Parenthood and the National Organization for Women are still relevant today.)

Mary Cassatt: The Child's Bath (1893)
(Photos: Wikimedia Commons)

Some legendary male artists of Cassatt's era produced slightly voyeuristic visions of nude female models, dancers, or prostitutes that tended at times to take on an erotically charged flavor. This frisson of excitement, however, often breathed great life into their works (think Degas' dancers, Lautrec's ladies of the night, Manet's bold-faced "Olympia", etc.).

Cassatt, by constrast, primarily went about portraying people in more intimate, familial settings. And by people I mean mostly mothers and daughters (men are largely absent from her work). Cassatt painted scenes of women and children who led quite sheltered, Victorian-era, upper-crust lives (she was a woman of means herself). These touching maternal scenes were often set in interiors and conveyed the simple joy of tender daily moments, such as bedtime, bathtime or playtime for young children, their mothers looking fondly on or coddling them affectionately.

Inspired by my own recent blogpost on the National Museum of Women in the Arts, I decided to revisit one of my all-time-favorite Cassatt paintings, which just happens to be part of the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington. (I would "bien sur" recommend going straight to the source to see the original work - no photographic reproduction of a painting can ever quite do the original justice. I also highly recommend the NGA cafeteria, gift shop and the gelato served at the coffee bar - a tasty summertime treat!)

The painting is called Little Girl in a Blue Armchair (1878) and I absolutely ADORE it. I love everything about it, especially the perspective used to depict a bored, dressed-up little girl slumped down into a huge armchair, her limbs all askance in a distinctly child-like, floppy way, and the tiny dog resting with an equal look of resigned ennui in another chair nearby. I also love the way still more chairs are cropped in the background (perhaps under the influence of Japanese-style painting, which was en vogue at the time and also inspired many of Cassatt's works). This close cropping, brings the viewers gaze back to the little girl and the tiny dog, and helps the eye to focus on the brushstrokes that indicate a floral pattern covering the blue chair the girl is sitting in in the foreground of the painting, which also does a good job (even if inadvertently) of observing the "rule of thirds" popular in modern photography.

Mary Cassatt: Little Girl in a Blue Armchair (1878)

When I was much younger I actually found Cassatt's work kind of dull compared to that of, say, Van Gogh, or even Monet, Degas, Seurat, Pissaro or Manet, whom I am particularly fond of. I really could not for the life of me understand when I was 18 or 19 why my own mother, who studied painting and sculpture at the Corcoran College of Art + Design in the 1960s, was so particularly moved by Cassatt's maternally infused impressionistic stylings. I wanted to see more crazed swirls and explosions of color along the lines of Vincent's works, or that of the brilliant French artist Andre Derain.

But NOW I get it - Cassatt's paintings are timeless classics and jewels in the crown of the entire impressionistic ouevre.

I could stare at "Little Girl in a Blue Armchair" for a really long time.

Dutch Treat @ National Gallery of Art

There is still plenty of time to savor this rare Dutch treat at the NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART, but I though I'd flag it up right here, right now, just FYI as worth seeing if you were passing through the NGA anytime soon:

CIVIC PRIDE: GROUP PORTRAITS FROM AMSTERDAM
(March 10, 2012 - March 11, 2017)

National Gallery of Art/East Building interior (Gryffindor/Wikimedia Commons)

The finest Dutch 17th-century painters were masters at portraying both daily and patrician life in the Netherlands during its "Golden Age" and their work, once you see it up close, is always mesmerizing (whether individual paintings belong to your own catalogue of personal favorites or not). These paintings tend to draw viewers in with renditions of people going about the business of life that are often so realistic as to make you feel as if you were right there watching this 17th-century scene unfold yourself.

Before there was Van Gogh, with his brilliant swirls of color considered virtually "insane" during his short lifetime, there were these guys.

Van Gogh @ Philadelphia Museum of Art

I could plan an entire weekend in the City of Brotherly Love around this exhibit:

VAN GOGH UP CLOSE - PHILADEPHIA MUSEUM OF ART

Focusing on his post-Holland, and final, years in France, it aims to "engage the viewer with the strength of his emotions."

And they were STRONG.

John Peter Russell - Vincent van Gogh (1886)

I recall taking an art history class as an elective in college and the professor (who bore more than a passing resemblance to Bebe Neuwirth, that brilliant actress who played Frasier's brainy, raven-haired wife, Lillith Sternin, on "Cheers") insisting on calling Van Gogh simply "Vincent" because of the highly personal nature of his work.

"Really I have to call him Vincent in presenting these slides to you because that is what he was painting - what Vincent saw, what Vincent felt, what Vincent perceived," she said, her voice quivering with unexpected emotion, leading some of us to believe she would suddenly rip off her glasses and undo her bun, her hair tumbling in inky, wild waves about her face and shoulders like Edvard Munch's erotically defiant yet remote "Madonna" or that brazen librarian-like Asian vixen lady in the video for Thomas Dolby's smash 1982 hit single "She Blinded Me With Science."

Seeing a real live Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) painting right in front of you is like gazing head on at someone you  have just fallen in love with - you simply cannot look away (but at some point you just might have to because it is almost too much to bear...) as Vincent's brushstrokes, colors and compositions sear themselves into your mind, never to be quite forgotten like the complex contours of a long-lost lover you will always pine for even if only in some frozen-out recess of your slowly fading personal memory bank.

Vincent van Gogh - Self-Portrait (1889)

I've seen Van Gogh paintings at, among other places, the National Gallery of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Van Gogh Museum.

When I was an undergraduate student of political science - with a missionary-like view to eventually becoming some kind of do-gooder-nature-savior environmental journalist - up at McGill University in Montreal the walls of most of the apartments I occupied during that four-year period suspended artificially between adolesence and adulthood were plastered in various forms with Van Gogh prints torn out of a calendar and Van Gogh posters purchased at various museums. (Georgia O'Keefe and a few European Expressionists also made an appearance here and there, as well as countless "arty" postcards that seemed "cool" to just tape in various creatively conceived formations along bedroom walls or doors ... )

Van Gogh helped keep me awake at night as I typed up undergrad papers until 4 am in flannel pajamas on my brand-new Macintosch Classic with a spoon lodged bolt upright inside an open jar of Nutella perched upon the slab-like, birch-veneer IKEA desk that took up at least a third of my bedroom.

(This was before we even knew what the Internet was, or had vaguely heard it was some project of the U.S. military, and when email was only some kind of minimalistic intra-university thing used sparingly, for instance, to tell a classmate that you had, indeed, just talked to that silent hot Indian dude in the mysterious Nehru jacket you'd both been pining for all semester in that African politics class ... ah, the unbearable lightness of being young - 'tis all too fleeting one only realizes with adequate hindsight!)

Vincent van Gogh - Irises (1889) (c) All Photos: Wikimedia Commons

These papers involved muted musings heavily supported by secondary literature on the the political situation du jour in various parts of the world - possibly influenced by the strains of REM, U2, Nirvana, Depeche Mode, New Order, the Smiths, the Pixies or Sting playing faintly in the background - and were delivered, sometimes via taxi (no one owned a car), in the nick of time to the Social Science building on campus the next morning (... were you still wearing the Nutella-stained flannel pajama pants under your coat? no matter - so were several other students ... ).

Van Gogh's brushstrokes energized me because they made me feel alive. It's like they set off tiny sparks like pop rockets going off all over my brain, like pulsating electrictiy shifting it back into a higher gear.

I remember seeking out one particular Van Gogh painting ("The Night Cafe") that was depicted in my lavishly illustrated encyclopedic art history book.

It was like a pilgrimage.

Vincent van Gogh - Starry Night Over the Rhone (Arles, 1888)

I knew from my college artbook that it was located at the Yale University Art Gallery, where my older boyfriend at the time was enrolled in an MBA program. Given that he had a car and had actually worked full time (!) before, he tended to drive up to visit me in Montreal more often than I visited him in New Haven.

But finally I was going to go visit him again at Yale. I was eager to see him - and excited to seek out said Van Gogh painting while he engaged in some kind of dreadful-sounding "group exercise" with some of his super-driven Yale classmates (who later worked at places in Manhattan that sounded terribly dull to me, like Goldman Sachs, where a single annual salary + bonus was easily five times more than what I later would make starting out as a local newspaper reporter in Maryland ... but what was money? ... yep, I was an idealistic middle class white kid from Chevy Chase, Maryland).

So while my boyfriend was busy with his truly intense studies at Yale, I meandered over to the university's art gallery by myself. After foraging through some interesting, but not exactly heart-stopping, ancient Central American figurines and other similar objects, I finally entered the room where the Van Gogh was hanging ...

... and I instantly lost all sense of time and place as I was engulfed by its melancholy yet oddly radiant nocturnal gloom, by its garish, almost sickly greens, yellows and reds and by the disconcerting, zombie-like gaze of the man at the pool table.

I sighed. Now this, I thought to myself, is a true work of art that will have the same impact on someone a century from today.

That is the power of Vincent's work.

Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) - The Night Café (Arles, 1888)

(And we have his doting brother Theo to thank for it - Vincent was totally broke when he lived in southern France and Theo, a Paris-based art dealer who alas never managed to sell a single painting by Vincent, sent him some high quality paints from time to time. Thanks Theo!)

Harry Callahan @ NGA

I must confess that I know far less about photographers (bar perhaps a few "biggies," such as Ansel Adams, Frank Cappa, or Robert Doisneau) than I do about painters, so this HARRY CALLAHAN AT 100 exhibit at the NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART caught my eye.

As a total Harry Callahan greenhorn (full disclosure here: I had never even heard of him before!) I am intrigued by what this show entails.

And I am alarmed that it will close soon - on MARCH 4 - so it's high time to head over to the NGA if you're also interested in finding out more about the life's work of Harry Callahan (1912-1999).

The NGA hails him as "one of the most innovative and influential photographers of the 20th century."

Photography (c) Rodrigo Senna/Brasilia/Wikimedia Commons