Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska
Photo Essay on American Art Deco et al.
Note: I am trying to live with Medium’s new photo structure. Click on any picture, and it will enlarge for detail.
Andrea Blythe wrote a fascinating Falling in Love with Shadow and Light. She was captivated by a found wood sculpture called Sky Cathedral by Louise Nevelson. Andrea made sensitive pictures of the piece that you can see in her article linked above. I lit up because one of my favorite things to do is photograph in museums when permitted, which it almost always is if you are discreet and respectful.
I recently published a photo essay on Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry, so I worry a little about crowding the field. Still, I have Eclectic tastes with a capital E; I’m a fair to middlin’ photographer with the skill to shoot quietly and discreetly, handheld, no flash ever, not disturbing other guests and have seldom been asked not to photograph except for occasional special exhibits at the request of the artist. Of course, I comply.
If you are within shouting distance of Omaha, I recommend the Joslyn. General Museum Admission is Free (paid ticketed admission for some exhibitions). My visit was to see the special American Art Deco exhibit.
- Floor Lamp c. 1925, wrought iron and glass, Edgar Brandt (1880–1960).
I loved not only the pieces but the shadows they cast. - Amédée Paris, France, Gold Sequined Dress, c. 1927–29 sequins over silk and net.
This dress is featured in the header above. - Two Vases c. 1925.
On the left is an original René Jules Lalique who made some stunning glass pieces using the “lost wax” technique, where the original design is made by carving it out of wax.
On the right is a glazed and gilded vase by Pinon Heuzé, a Lalique contemporary. My picture had to be made through glass while avoiding reflections.
Lionel Model M-10,000, 1934–1940 Union Pacific experimental gasoline streamliner.
Union Pacific Train, 1934, metal, paint, and plastic. Lionel Corporation, manufacturer, New York, New York, founded 1900.
The National Museum of Toys and Miniatures, Kansas City,
Missouri, 8040a-c.
Danaë, 1920. With its idealized musculature, languid pose, and simplified form, this sculpture of the mythological figure Danaë exhibits a melding of ancient and modern sensibilities.
Weathervane, c. 1920, painted sheet metal and wrought iron, William Hunt Diederich (1884–1953).
I liked that the curator had spaced almost all the pieces away from the walls. I was particularly conscious of the shadows cast by the work and maneuvered to place them with the figures.
- Icarus, 1934 bronze, Donald De Lue (1897–1988).
- Fantasy, 1924 bronze, John David Brcin (1899–1983)
- Another angle on the pair.
Ladies Hats c. 1920s, Boat Hat (“Boater”) and Toque.
I had to include the shadows.
- Dress, 1935–1940, cotton, plastic, and metal. Donnelly Garment Co., 1919–1978, Kansas City MO
- Hupmobile Hood Ornament, 1936–38 chrome-plated metal, Raymond Loewy, designer, American, born France, 1893–1986.
Oopsy. I wandered out of the Art Deco exhibit into the main galleries without realizing it. Hey! It’s all art, right? (Give me a camera and a museum to shoot in…)
Perhaps [Stella’s] most important transition occurred in the 1970s, however, when he began experimenting with relief. Stella’s work became increasingly volumetric, and by the 1980s, he had completely abandoned the austere flatness of his early canvases.
Nogaro is from Stella’s Circuit series (1980–84), twenty-two wall-mounted paintings all named for cities with automobile racetracks.
- Mnemonic Artifact 3, 2017, oil on linen, Hayv Kahraman Iraqi, born 1981.
Hayv Kahraman left her native Iraq at age eleven, amid the first Gulf War. Examining what she calls a “migrant consciousness,” eastern and western worlds collide in Kahraman’s work, with the female body caught in the crosshairs. Kahraman’s recent paintings are crosshatched by tiny incisions across their surfaces. Kahraman then feeds painted linen strips through the slits in a reference to a mahaffa, an Iraqi fan made of palm fronds that she recalls carrying with her when her family left Baghdad. By weaving her paintings in this manner, Kahraman archives her memories of time spent as a refugee.
2. Three Girls in a Wood, 2018 oil on linen, Kehinde Wiley American, born 1977.
— I must have spent a quarter-hour studying this extraordinary painting and the quoted poem alongside:
OMAHA SPEAKS
You’re my sistas
My friends til the end
Got secrets on hold
That I could only entrust you with
Cause this life
This life
Ain’t always been kind to us
Sometimes has us questioning
Our beauty
Our intellect
Our place at the table
But with each other
we’re always kind
Loan a dime
if we got it
Affirmations on time
when we want it
And there’s never a question
about a seat at our table
Cause there’s always room for us, Queens
We be
The Mother
The Daughter &
The Holy Ghost
Shining bright
like the stars we are
Beyond this physical realm
that says we don’t matter
But we are matter
The essence of all that is
and forever will be
We’re sistas
Friends til the end
Feel me?
— Felicia Webster (WithloveFelicia), creative, poet, arts
educator, self-love activist
