Yale University Art Gallery

 

For this trip I chose the Yale University Art Gallery. It was a beautiful sunny, Sunday afternoon and Downtown New Haven was full of people. It was a welcomed change to the snow storm we had experienced the day before. This trip was not my first time going to the gallery. As a New Havener, I've experienced the art of the gallery before.

 

The Yale University Art Gallery was first founded when John Trumbull sold 28 paintings and 60 miniature portraits to the University. It was the artist himself that designed the Neoclassical building in where the painting would be exhibited. When it first opened on October 25, 1832, it was called the Trumbull Gallery and it was the first university museum in the United states.   Even though the Trumbull Gallery is no longer standing, today the Yale University Art Gallery is housed in three historic buildings designed by four architects.

 

 

When you first walk in to the gallery , this impressive art is on the wall near the door. This painting is by the British painter George Stubbs (1724-1806). This is oil on canvas and it is called "A Lion Attacking a Horse (1762)" This painting is the first of 16 that the gallery has pf this painter.

 

A special exhibition that the gallery has is the Whistler in Paris, London and Venice exhibition. After walking through it, I honestly have to say that it did not interest me at all. It just seemed a little too boring to me, so I moved on to one of my favorite rooms of the gallery, the ancient art of Greece and Babylon exhibit. Even though this room hasn't changed in all the years that I've been coming to the gallery, this room still fascinates me. It is astonishing all the intricate work that was done in stone with nothing more that a chisel and hammer.

 

 

This is a called "Lion Relief from the Processional Way." Its from Babylonian, Near Eastern, ca. year, 605-562 B.C. It is glazed brick. According to the informational card this colored relief once lined the Processional Way running from the Ishtar Gate, Babylon's main entrance through the heart of the city.

 

 

Mosaic Floor with Views of Alexandria and Memphis

Early Byzantine, Jordanian, Gresa

ca. A.D. 540

 

After the first floor, I moved on to my second favorite part of the museum and that is on the second floor, the Modern and Contemporary Art and Design. This floor has on display one of my favorite artist, Pablo Picasso. Picasso was a painter, sculptor, print maker, ceramicist, stage designer, poet and playwright. Picasso even though he was born in Malaga, Spain in 1881, as an adult he spend most of his time in France. Accroding to Wikipedia, he is know as one of the founders of the cubist movement, the constructed sculpture  and the collage. He is most known for painting in periods, of those periods the most famous is his blue period which went from 1901-1904. In this period he painted in shades of blues and blue-greens. This period was influenced by his travels from Spain to France and and by the suicide of his friend Carlos Casagemas.

 

 

This on of the paintings in the gallery: Pablo Picasso's First Steps, this is oil on canvas. This painting was painted by Picasso in mid-1943 during WWII and the German occupation of Paris. According to the information card, this painting was X-rayed by the Yale University Art Gallery's Conservation Department and it revealed that Picasso made significant compositional revisions, such as: the woman's features once resembled those found in the paintings about his lover Dora Maar and that the little boy sat of stood on a chair.

 

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 This one is called Femme assise or Seated Woman. This is oil on canvas painted in 1939. This painting came about after Picasso took a year from painting. During that time Picasso turned to writing, he wrote more than 100 poems during that time. When he returned to painting in April 1936, he created many portraits, inspired by his mistress Marie-Therese Walter, which this is one of them. Something interesting about this painting is the Picasso included his own profile to the right, overlapping himself with her.

 

Like always, I completely enjoyed my wanderings through the  museum. After many years of coming to visit, I can always find something new that I learn from the artists that are always on display like Picasso or from the new exhibits that are always changing that museum.