I know this really amazing woman. She works as a docent at one of the local museums. She is extremely generous with her time and usually offers to give the ladies from church a tour when a really great exhibit comes through the museum (which is basically all the time). The museum is currently featuring Diego Rivera. I missed the original organized tour, so I plead my case and she graciously gave up her Saturday morning to walk me through. I thought I was joining one of her scheduled tours, so you can imagine how delighted I was to find out that it was just going to be the two of us.
Barbara lives and breathes art. She makes it exciting and absolutely fascinating. She spends hours and hours getting ready for the exhibits. Because of her prep time, you always walk away with interesting tidbits of information about the artist, time period, relationship to other artist, etc.. She has changed the way I go to museums and quite frankly whenever possible I will always try to have a docent lead tour.
Interesting facts:
- He claimed that he practiced cannibalism. He, along with some friends, would purchase an un-diseased cadaver. Barbara thought that knowing this could influence how you looked at his paintings. (Because he viewed a body as food, maybe he painted them the way he saw them.) She thought the woman's hands in this painting looked like artichokes and in another painting I swore the subject had a t-bone steak for a face.
- This is probably my favorite piece of the display. Although he acted horribly to woman, especially his wife (in the white), he knows how to paint them. Don't you just want to jump into this moment?
- He got in a huge fight with Picasso and ended their friendship over this painting.
This painting was found on the back of the painting pictured just above. They found it sometime later when they were performing some restoration work on the other piece. I really loved this one too. - He finally left cubism when he got in an argument with another painter.
4 comments:
I am so glad you introduced me to her. I loved the tour we did with her before. I love the first painting. I don't see the food in the lady's body, but her look and coloring make me think of someone who is not conventional and almost eerie.
Viewing art with someone who really knows about it changes everything, doesn't it? Although I can't stand the thought about cannibalism. At all.
Mexico City oozes Diego Rivera. Too bad you didn't come visit...though without the Editor it wasn't the same.
How fabulous to have a one-on-one guided tour of the exhibit!
I'm not very familiar with Diego Rivera, so this was all news to me. Cannibalism though, ew?!
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