Artwork of the Week
View Related PagesArtwork of the Week: May 24
Posted on Thursday, May 23rd, 2013Rebellion was common from the early stages of Barry Flanagan’s career. He chose to break away from conventional British sculpture by using unusual materials such as rope and sandbags. By 1982, when he made Large Leaping Hare, Flanagan had abandoned his unique choices of medium and switched to using bronze. However, his playfulness was still [...]
Artwork of the Week: May 17
Posted on Thursday, May 16th, 2013African American artist Art Smith made jewelry that was seemingly simple, but was often inspired by symbols of West African tribal jewelry. The solid half of this necklace actually replicates jewelry worn by the Asante court of Ghana. Smith’s creations are also unusually large due to his belief that the body should act as a [...]
Artwork of the Week: May 10
Posted on Thursday, May 9th, 2013Happy Mother’s Day! A rare double portrait by Gainsborough, Hester, Countess of Sussex, and Her Daughter was painted in the fashionable, western England town of Bath. Here, we see the wife and daughter of Henry Yelverton, who became Earl of Sussex in 1758, placed by a tree. This portrait would have been painted when Barbara, [...]
Artwork of the Week: May 3
Posted on Thursday, May 2nd, 2013Henri Marie Joseph Bergé worked as a decorator at the Daum glass factory, where he had great influence on a floral and pastoral style that would emerge there. His interest in nature led him to design scientifically-accurate glass objects of plants and animals. Victor Amalric Walter’s exploration of the glass technique pâte-de-verre (casting objects in [...]
Artwork of the Week: April 26
Posted on Thursday, April 25th, 2013Spring has sprung and the flowers are beginning to bloom outside, but here’s one tulip in particular that blossoms all year long. Initially trained as a painter, Louis Comfort Tiffany turned to interior design and decorative arts, becoming a leading designer of fine glass that often expressed the Art Nouveau style, like this delicate pink [...]
Artwork of the Week: April 19
Posted on Thursday, April 25th, 2013With this painting, the audience is confronted with a view of Venice that was not often painted: the great expanse of the lagoon and the cemetery island of San Michele in the right background. San Michele was not thought to accurately represent the city, since its size lacked grandeur or large, monumental buildings like the [...]
Artwork of the Week: April 12
Posted on Thursday, April 25th, 2013With this work, we highlight Clement Meadmore as one of only a few Australian artists from the Museum’s permanent collection. Once an aeronautical engineer and industrial design student at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Meadmore briefly designed furniture before ultimately creating large sculptures. Displayed in the Museum’s new sculpture galleries, Maquette for Switchback apparently [...]
Artwork of the Week: April 5
Posted on Thursday, April 25th, 2013In honor of Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s birthday (April 5), we highlight his painting Blind-Man’s Buff. It not only depicts youth in a light-hearted game of matchmaking, but also the playful deception of cheating, as often also seen in tricks played on April Fool’s Day. By peeking from beneath her blindfold, the girl in the painting would [...]
Artwork of the Week: January 11
Posted on Friday, January 11th, 2013New for the New Year, these recently installed figures by Jaume Plensa have already attracted a lot of attention. German for “mirror” or “looking glass,” Spiegel shows two identical giants, hugging their knees and facing one another, though they are technically faceless. They are nearly bodiless as well: the figures are hollow screens given shape [...]
Artwork of the Week: January 4
Posted on Friday, January 4th, 2013New for the New Year, see this striking installation in the newly installed Wolfe Gallery of Contemporary Art. Victorian in its sensibility, Petah Coyne’s elaborate hanging sculpture uses a chandelier as its core, encased in violet silk flowers dipped in black wax. Studded throughout are brightly hued taxidermy Golden and Lady Amherst pheasants. Dusky candles [...]