On Friday we went to the Cleveland Museum of Art. We went through the Rembrandt in America exhibit. It was amazing just to see his work...let alone see them close up. Rembrandt was a master at capturing light and detail. The jewelry on his subjects glows and the lace on the clothing is so delicate it hard not to reach out and touch it....and I was approached to keep my hands back from the painting. Not that I wold ever touch one...that would be sacrilege. But there were sensors that would go off should you get too close. And I have been know to set those off.
This is Portrait of a Woman from the CMA website. This piece is owned by the art museum. They showed how they examined this piece with various methods and wavelenghts of light to see what was under the surface and where it had been repaired.
We went through the African collection. The picture below is a bow harp from the Northern Congo.
This is a close-up of a repair area of the harp. They used some type of cord or leather to patch the damaged area. Sound familiar?? I use it in my jewelry. I didn't invent it. This and many other repair techniques have been around since the beginning to time. BTW...I did invent pants (inside joke).
Another piece from the collection. A Female Face Mask from the Ivory Coast.
Modigliani (one of my favorite artists) was influenced by African masks. You can see this in Portrait of a Woman below.
We walked around the Egyptian and Near East collections and wanted to mold just about everything. I had this idea of creating a distraction with the docents while Cris slapped molding material all over the room. I don't think they would mind...much.
One really cool piece is this huge Assyrian piece called Saluting Protective Spirit. It's from the 9th century. It is about 9" tall and weights 900 lbs. So much texture on this piece. Below are some close-ups.
There is more to come...after I get some sleep. I have a 7AM meeting tomorrow. UGH.
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