Koons' Rabbit

Nearby our hotel, we saw pop artist Jeff Koons' 52-foot inflatable Rabbit sculpture in Covent Garden market in London. Spectacular.

Victoria and Albert Museum

The Victoria and Albert Museum has an interesting exhibit of dream and horror inspired design called Heaven and Hell : Telling Tales.

A particular favorite of ours was this white chandelier of twisting bodies of the damned, sculpted in white plastic by Luc Merx:

The museum also has a nice hall of sculpture and some great paintings, including The Day Dream by Rosetti, and a few Blakes. Above all, the Victoria and Albert Museum is a decorative objects museum. Recently, the museum updated its web site to feature over one million objects from its collection: http://collections.vam.ac.uk/

Tate Modern

The Kiss by Auguste Rodin

At the Tate Modern, we saw Auguste Rodin’s marble sculpture of the doomed lovers, Paolo and Francesca, embracing moments away from a passionate kiss. Their lips would never meet since Francesca’s husband (also Paolo’s brother) discovers the lovers and kills them in his rage. In Paolo’s sculpted hand is the book -- the story of Lancelot and Guinevere-- that inspired their affair. Dante sees Paolo and Francesca on his journey through hell where they were sent for their infidelity. The Kiss was first created to be part of Rodin’s monumental Gates of Hell.

Tate Britain

At the Tate Britain, I was thrilled to see some of my favorite works of art.

The museum features many great PreRaphaelite paintings, including Ophelia by Sir John Everett Milais. Ophelia is drowned in the stream she lacked the will to climb out of. She had gone mad with grief when her lover, Hamlet, murdered her father, and so she resigned herself to death. In her hand she holds poppies for death, daisies for innocence, and pansies for love in vain.

Also at the Tate, a second woman of Shakespearean tragedy by Pre-Raphaelite Sir John Everett Milais: Mariana. Mariana is wearied by life, abandoned by her fiancé after her dowry was lost in a shipwreck.

John Singer Sargeant’s Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose transports us to a springtime garden in the Cotswolds where two children light Japanese lanterns at dusk.

Whistler’s Symphony in White No. 2 is a beautiful portrait of the artist’s lover, Joanna Hiffernan. Whistler’s artistic goal was to create beauty, and he certainly has with this portrait!

The Tate Britain also has an extensive collection of art by William Blake. My husband is greatly interested in his poetry and visionary paintings. His startling image Ghost of a Flea was on display while we were there.

Unfortunately, J. W. Waterhouse’s painting of The Lady of Shalott was on tour. I love this painting and I have been fortunate enough to have seen it years ago in London and once at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. A friend of mine, Soraya Homayouni, introduced me to this painting one inspiring afternoon. She showed it to me in a book and played for me Loreena McKennett’s ethereal voice singing the words of Tennyson’s tragic poem, The Lady of Shalott. A beautiful experience of art, music, and poetry.

The Tate Britain’s collection was lovely, and overall, very romantic!

The National Gallery, London

Our next destination on our art adventure was a short flight away in London, England. First stop: The National Gallery.

Here hangs Van Gogh's sunflowers. Created to decorate his yellow house in Arles in preparation for his friend and house-guest, Paul Gauguin, Van Gogh's glowing, textured, fiery bouquet is among his greatest masterpieces. On the wall of the National Gallery, the painting radiates warmth and good feeling.

That afternoon at the museum, a group of English school girls sat in a cluster on the floor sketching Peter Paul Reuben's dramatic portrayal of Samson and Delilah. This tragic image of ill-fated romance was perhaps an irresistible choice to copy.

The Arnolfini portrait by Jan Van Eyck was intriguing with its odd inclusions of traces of the artist. Inscribed on the back wall behind the Arnolfinis he wrote "Jan Van Eyck was here" in Latin, a graffiti-ed autograph, just above a mirror reflecting two figures, one believed to be a self-portrait.

And there she was again, years older than we had seen her in Munich the day before: Madame de Pompadour! This time she was painted a year away from her death by the artist Francois-Houbert Drouais:

The National Gallery has many other great paintings as well, a tremendous collection!

Design and the Pinakothek der Moderne

Back when I was in high school, I received a couple of Scholastic Art Awards, and the awards ceremony took place at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. This experience was very reaffirming at my young age as I was deciding what to study in college and what I should do with my life.

I specifically remember the (now former) Director of the Corcoran Gallery of Art's address to us and our families at the ceremony. In his speech, David Levy told us that the world needs artists. He said that everything that is made is designed by an artist. He said there is an artist involved in making absolutely everything. This was the beginning of my broader awareness of design, and how art is all around us.

At the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, Germany, we saw a wonderful exhibit of artfully designed objects. The display is from the Neue Sammlung’s collection of applied arts, which is regarded as the most important collection of industrial design. It was a reminder of the impact that aesthetic decisions have on functional objects and how an ordinary thing can transcend into art. Here is a photo from the exhibit: (click on image to enlarge)

Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Portrait of the Marquise de Pompadour by Francois Boucher (above)

The next stop on our grand art adventure was the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, Germany. The Alte Pinakothek features an excellent collection of 13th to 18th century European paintings. Famous paintings that I was thrilled to see in person included Leonardo da Vinci's Madonna of the Carnation, Albrecht Durer's Self-Portrait, a self-portrait of Reubens with his wife called the The Honeysuckle Bower, The Deposition by Rembrandt, and Francois Boucher's beautiful Portrait of the Marquise de Pompadour (pictured at the top of this post).

Aside from such celebrated old masters' paintings, the Alte Pinakothek also had an incredible collection of German paintings from the 14th to 17th centuries including large, impressive Christian altar pieces that were quite breathtaking.

Kaisheim Altar: Presentation of Christ in the Temple by Hans Holbein (above)