Art Weekend - Kimbell Art Museum

REVISION: Due to copyright confusion, I have removed the images from this post.  If you're curious, please look online (just Google TM the mentioned paintings and you'll find LOTS of copies). Link to following POST.

Saturday was the opening for The Whipping Man, so I spent most of the day in Fort Worth.

The Impressionist show at the Kimbell Art Museum was, um, impressive.

Its great strength was in Renoir's work.  Some very beautiful paintings.  Probably my favorite was his Portrait of Madame Monet.  She was reading, her arms and the paperback book she read making an angular frame for her pale face and dark hair, while the blue and cream-floral-embroidered Turkish kaftan she wore seemed to merge with the blue wall and cream-floral-and-bird patterned sofa...

Her pose, with the stiff angularity of the kaftan and her central placement, reminded me of icon paintings, M. Monet as a little blue Madonna; while the similarity of color and pattern between costume and setting simultaneously melted her figure into the background as in Whistler's Symphony in White or Klimt's Adele Bloch portraits.  (In the actual painting face, hands, and book appear whiter, hair darker, so that they pop out more than in REVISION they do in e-versions.) 

Truth is... I'm not really a big Renoir fan.  There's something about his soft-focus and the pastel-like fluffiness of his brushwork that drives me nuts.  I think it's just that I can't see the world like that: for me it's crisp edged and defined, not... mushy.  Personal taste.  Plus I prefer the bolder colors of the Post-Impressionists, really, or the Expressionists, or even the Fauves.

One of the fascinations of this particular show is how the collectors who gathered these paintings for the Clark Art Institute could have such a refined taste that, even in choosing works by other painters of the period, could choose those individual paintings that most closely matched the aesthetics of the Renoirs... and not just any Renoirs either, those from his "middle" period, rather than most of his late work.  Very refined sensibilities.  But I do agree with Mr. Clark in loving his favorite canvas, Renoir's painting of onions:

Highlights of this show, for me, were Renoir's Sleeping Girl, Berthe Morisot's The Bath, and a gorgeous light-dissolving pointallist landscape by Pisarro titled Saint-Charles, Eagny.

Afterwards, the enchilada dinner on Joe T. Garcia's patio and the opening of The Whipping Man.  More on that later...

Black and White

I just tripped across this photo of last year's Black & White at Pegasus Theatre, Death is No Small Change.

Image courtesy of Pegasus Theatre

Shout Out! Critics Forum Awards

Congratulations to the theater artists recognized by local critics for outstanding work in this last year - with the Critics' Forum Awards.  Well deserved!

Public domain image, messed with a bit.

Sadly there's no statuette, plaque, certificate or, if you're part of a "design team," even your name in newsprint, but still cool.  It's nice when someone notices your talent and hard work.

From this talented group, here's an individualized shout-out to folks I feel like extra-cheering for this morning:

To Tina Parker for her lovely performance in Charm, an honor to work with you; to Joel Ferrell for Cabaret and Dividing the Estate at, of all places, the Dallas Theater Center (a talented local director let loose at DTC? wahoo!); to all the younger, smaller companies who produce outstanding work (against long odds); to all the established companies who continue to produce outstanding work (against long odds and entropy too); and to the "design team" for Trinity Shakespeare's Macbeth (For whom I happen to have Bios.  Critics didn't?).  The designers were: Brian Clinnin SCENIC, Michael Skinner LIGHTING, Aaron Patrick Turner COSTUME, Toby Algya SOUND, and let's add (as co-conspirators in how things looked on-stage) Eric Domuret FIGHT CHOREOGRAPHER and Stephan Fried DIRECTOR.  (Your names in ink-jet print.)

Here's to recognition where it's well deserved!  And to all the other good work done on DFW stages!  You all deserve your names in lights.

Horrible Collision of Architecture, Theater... and Wind

Unexpected weather caused a temporary stage structure at the Indiana State Fair to collapse - video at Boing Boing.  We have to ALWAYS remember to design for safety.

Crazy Busy!

By some measures (sheer sweat, say) a fully realistic set is the easiest thinkin' but hardest labor for a set designer... at least for one without a scenic painter and a set dresser.

Five Women Wearing the Same Dress is set in a the bedroom of a young, wealthy, Southern woman in the late '80s/early '90s during the garden wedding reception of her sister.  The theater - once a church - has a handsome arch on-stage and, using this, her bedroom becomes even grander.  I imagine that this nouveau riche family restored an neoclassical house.  To capture the house, period, and milieu, we're going all Laura Ashley florals, wood floors (painted), wallpaper, etc.  Fun to find and assemble.

But all of which I (with help from the prop designer, thank goodness!) have to find, haul, place, paint, sew, staple...  By Friday.  Oh, and consult with the builder too, first thing today - then IKEA, Garden Ridge...  Where are my paint clothes?

I feel hot and exhausted just thinking about it.

(BTW On Monday we pulled furniture from the Dallas Theater Center warehouse - thanks DTC! - it was 100 degrees F outside; inside it was so hot that carpenter's glue was melting and making chair legs wobbly.)

As You Like It opens tomorrow at TCU in Fort Worth.  Come see!