Hopefully, this weekend I will have time to check in on everyone's blogs and see what I've missed during my hiatus.
Inspired by the posts about India at Amid Privilege, I've delved into a stack of books about Moghul jewelry. It's a big subject but a beautiful one because bright color and rich ornamentation was so important in the Moghul culture.
Hopefully the weather will stay nice and I can continue my reading poolside this weekend.
On the opposite end of the artistic spectrum we've got the exhibition of paintings by Salvatore Rosa at the Kimbell Art Museum in Forth Worth.
A contemporary of Lorraine and Poussin, Rosa created works in the mid 17th Century that melded elements of Classicism with Romanticism.
Whatever he was like in real life (apparently he was a combative, rebellious prototype of the bohemian artist), Rosa is not a painter you fall in love with. The first things you notice are what he does not have. There is little playfulness or joie de vivre. He was a contemporary, and knew the work, of Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin, but he lacks the gentle softness of the former and the impeccable coloring of the latter, although his mythological scenes often replicate Poussin's neoclassical geometry. His unsettling landscapes move beyond Claude's pastoral harmonies, replacing them with dangerous, wind-swept, "sublime" ravines and crags, gloom and doom.
The Kimbell's silvery light allows us to see the somberness up close. The pictures here are, by and large, dark: They have little bright color. Some come close to Goya's horrifying late black paintings. Shades of brown and other earth tones predominate even in the landscapes. The sun seldom shines. Rosa brings the underworld up to the surface. He is both classical and (pre-) Romantic.
Unfortunately, there won't be time to see the Rosa exhibit on my trip to Texas next month.
I wonder, why isn't this exhibit coming to the Getty, LACMA or the Norton Simon Museum?
That is just wrong.
Sent goods off yesterday for a Mert and Marcus cover shoot with Gisele for Vogue Turkey. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that that the bad weather conditions in Louisville and New York didn't keep the goods from getting to the shoot...because you never know with snow.
We shall see.
Happy Friday everyone!
