Tigers of Wrath and other Brooklyn Museum offerings
If you haven't been yet, or even if you have, now is a great time to visit the Brooklyn Museum. I frequented the museum when I lived in Park Slope, but never did it have so many great special exhibitions.
The reason I went to the Museum this time around was the Ron Mueck exhibition. If you're not familiar with his work, you can check out Washington Post's collection of images to get an idea of how incredibly life-like his either larger scale or smaller scale sculptures are. A Scottish artist with no formal art training, Mueck creates silicone replicas of people, like the tiny 3-foot old ladies at the left, an enormous woman in bed, and a lightly smaller than scale replica of his dead, naked father, plus lots of others. Each hair on each model is implanted by hand. Seriously, they are unreal. The detail in these things blows my mind.
Then there's the Annie Lebowitz retrospective, which, if fashion photography is your cup of tea, features over 200 photographs (and is crazy packed with people on a Sunday). There's a spectacular picture of Leonardo DiCaprio with a swan around his neck that, besides the perfection that is Leo DiCap, is just stunning.
But the big surprise of my visit was a exhibition called Tigers of Wrath: Watercolors by Walton Ford. I had no idea who this guy was, but had some time to kill, so I checked it out. What I had almost missed was a big beautiful hall filled with New York born Ford's large scale watercolors. They are vibrant, colorful paintings of animals, inspired by early 19th century artists, like Audobon, and are aged to look as if they are from that era. The pictures almost all portray scenes of violence, and in some the presence of man is seen or felt (in one, an okepi, if I remember correctly, is about to trip on a string which will set off a camera, to photograph it.) These paintings are the kinds of things I really really want hanging in my home some day. They are just gorgeous and brilliantly done.
If this exhibit was the only good one at the Brooklyn Museum, I would still be recommending a visit. But it's not, there's more. So go. Go before it's too late, and the Brooklyn Museum goes back to it's boring old self.
ummm. that Leo picture, with the swan, is from a Vanity Fair shoot. and if you want, when i go to see all these amazing things I will steal one of those paintings for you. there is no challenge like theft at a museum. you tube that!