Chicago Trip, Part Two: Art Institute of Chicago / Gustave Caillebotte

Chicago has an amazing (and ginormous) art museum named the Art Institute of Chicago. I've visited it before, but not for quite some time, and I forgot how big it is and how one can find something from any time for any mood and interest! We spent around 5 hours there, and apart from a quick lunch all this time was packed! 

But the highlight was the current exhibit of Gustave Caillebotte - one of my art heroes! To see so many works in one place, experience in person slight variations of color, be in the presence of expressive brushstrokes - this was a gift! I am fascinated with the way he worked with light, how he builds compositions. With conversations between bodies in his art, with integration of people into environments, and all of that with the simultaneously serious and playful feeling that comes from his works! He lived a short but very interesting life, left a large city to live in a suburb, and stopped trying to get into the Art Salon but continued painting. He was a gardener, worked on textile design, collected stamps, designed and built yachts, sailed them, and he supported other artists. What a life! 

Museum Visit: Ruth Asawa's Retrospective

There is a wonderful (and large) retrospective of Ruth Asawa's work in SF MoMA (one of my "I want to see in 2025"). This exhibit makes a fair attempt at showing works of someone who had a very prolific 60 years of making art of all sorts. It was not an easy task to put it together and it is quite possible that several separate exhibits would be a much better solution. I probably would not visit them all through. But I would love to look at room after room of sketchbooks.  Or an exhibit of only paper sculptures? I would love to have a day of visiting a garden and the house. The faces installation in the Cantor Art Museum at Stanford is always worth a visit (they were not part of this retrospective however were mentioned). But that is an interesting project - uniting many years of artist's work and life in a community. The wired sculptures that are considered the most recognized pieces created by Asawa took many rooms and could be a separate art show as well. As usual - being in their presence was different from looking at them in a book - I spent quite some time watching people dance to them, kids try and draw every coil and I tried to film some moving shadows. Then there are public art projects. And teaching, and work with kids. And then there are some wonderful prints! In short - there is a lot to embrace if you are trying to make (or look at) a retrospective of Ruth Asawa! more notes in my sketches :)

Art exhibits that I want to see in 2025

(this drawing from my sketchbook is here because I think every post needs an image)

I posted my art exhibits that I want to see around the world before and it seems like this year I have a fresh list! Some I will visit, some I will only hear about and to some I might make it ;) Probably the list will grow later in the year but so far here it is:

1. David Hockney Is Taking Over the Entire Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris. David Hockney is one of my all-time art heroes and his ability to work at put together such a huge exposition at 87 is definitely one of the reasons for that. There are several great articles about the show:

in Vogue: https://www.vogue.com/article/david-hockney-fondation-louis-vuitton

in New York Times (this article is unlocked via Austin Kleon's Newsletter which I recommend to people on a weekly basis!) 

2. Ruth Asawa: Retrospective - in San Francisco MOMA. In 2023 I wrote about Ruth Asawa exhibit in Whitney Museum of American "Through Line" and then read all I could find about her. Since then I slowly track down and visit all of her art (there is much to go still) - but this retrospective will move me a lot on my quest!

3. The Met has "Sargent and Paris" From April 27 till August 3 of this tear. Sargent is one of the painters whose works I love to see in person. There is so much in the dance of the brush, so much color and light in layers and so much in seemingly empty parts of the paintings!

4. Palazzo Barberini (check out their logo!!) in Rome has Caravaggio 2025 - which is an extensive collection of works, including some "recently authenticated" - but to see such a collection on one place? That is a gift!

5. Wayne Thiebaud: Art Comes from Art is in Legion of Honor in San Francisco! Did you know that Wayne Thiebaud played tennis even after turning 100? And painted too! And he was an artist who was thinking with both his art and words - as a teacher for many years.  Did you hear about a Cake Event in San Francisco - in honor of this exhibition? Here is a great article about it by Wendy MacNaughton (whose substack I also recommend). https://club.drawtogether.studio/p/let-us-eat-cake

Here is a video that accompanies the exhibit: https://www.famsf.org/stories/wayne-thiebaud-film

ANd an article: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2025/apr/16/wayne-thiebaud-san-francisco-exhibition

That's it for now. 

What exhibitions are you looking forward to? 

Mary Cassatt as printmaking inspiration (and more!)

San Francisco Legion of Honor hosted a wonderful retrospective of Mary Cassatt "Mary Cassatt at Work" and it was a fantastic experience. I wanted to see in-person works that I knew from books and they as usual elevated my relationship with the art piece because of the level of details that one can see in person and by the experience of looking at an artwork on the wall, in space and imagining the process of making it. I specifically enjoyed looking at the brushstrokes and colors on the edges - away from the well-defined features. 

I did not know what to expect from an announced section of prints but was excited to learn more about printmaking recently and had a companion who was willing to explain and discuss all the intricate nuances of what is innovative in her work, how she did this or that and what we can deduct from these prints and what is still a mystery. Legion of Honor put together a comprehensive article about it with lots of visuals: How-To with the Conservators: Mary Cassatt’s Color Prints by By Christina Taylor, paper conservator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

And a great video about the process:  Demonstrating Mary Cassatt's Color Printmaking Techniques

It would be unfair not to mention some wonderfully colorful and free pastels. And a lot of information about Mary Cassatt: a woman impressionist, the only american in their circle, human, artist, feminist. 

It was so good that we did two takes!

Here are some of my notes from the show.

Two Museums: Looking at Life through Art from Japan, Europe, and Africa.

I recently had a chance to visit two museums and below are some of the notes and sketches I did there. 

The first exhibition was "Japanese Prints in Transition: From the Floating World to the Modern World" at the Legion of Honor Museum of San Francisco centered around 250 years of the history of Japan seen through many woodblock prints by many artists. Some of these were pieces I knew and there were many discoveries. I had a lot of fun tracking down different patterns, plants, cats, and facial expressions! A very interesting part about propaganda and pop-culture too. If you get a chance to visit this art show I would highly recommend it! 

I am now on the hook: getting books on Japanese folklore and art books filled with more woodblock prints!

The second museum was Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University where I split my time between In Dialogue: African Arts and Auguste Rodin: The Shock of the Modern Body. Rodin's exhibit nicely segues to the outdoors where sculptures were available in a park setting with lots of live people around them. A lovely experience! 

p.s. an idea of a fantasy coffin sent me down the rabbit hole of exploring this amazing part of culture of Ghana. (This is how I found out about existence of The National Museum of Funeral History).

Winter Europe Trip: Madrid Museums

We visited a whole bunch of museums and historical sites on this trip, however museums of Madrid were the ones I spent the most time preparing for and where I drew the most. 

In Prado, I was excited to find a Museum guide and map in Ukrainian and marked my plan for everyone in our group so that they would know where to find me (follow along!). Goya is always a hit and this time I went not from earlier works to the late years but in the opposite direction and it created even a bigger contrast and wonder. In the Naval Museum, I drew some figureheads and spent my time finding the best depiction of the sea (there were quite a few spectacular ones!). We also went to the home and museum of my art hero Joaquin Sorolla, found his works in two more museums, and visited a little but fantastic exhibit "Sorolla's Summers" on its last day in Madrid. I ended up painting a "bunch of Sorollas" in my sketchbook as I could not stop thinking about all the light that he saw! 

More from the trip (winter 2023-24, Spain)

1. Sketching Tools that came with me on this trip.
2. Public Transportation is amazing (sketching people).
3. Sketching landscapes from a moving train.
4. Cordoba Part 1
5. Cordoba Part 2
6. Seville
7. Granada
8. Madrid
9. Toledo
10. Museums
11. Organizing my notes for these posts after the trip :)

Art exhibits that I want to see (fall 2023): Monet/Degas, Maria Primachenko, Ruth Asawa.

I posted about my dream art exhibits at the beginning of 2023 and recently realized that I've been saving information about more art events that I would love to visit, remember, and share.

First - there is the "Manet/Degas" at the Met.

Each of these giants of color, brushwork, composition and subject matter would bring me to a museum many times over. But to have both in the same space - is amazing! And the whole idea of juxtaposing these works of art, the idea of trying to parse their many years of artistic argument, rivalry, and dialogue is something that takes the work of the museums to a different level. And this is the first trip of Olympia to this side of the Atlantic! 

Whether you could make it to the museum or not - there is a wonderful video put up by the Met that will give you a very interesting tour of the exhibit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ep_OgMsLcQA

The second exhibit is in the Ukrainian Museum in New York: Maria Primachenko: Glory to Ukraine.

Maria Primachenko is one of my art heroes. I've seen her work since I was a kid - in my parent's home in Kharkiv we have several catalogs of her work, filled with clippings from newspapers and magazines - my parents collected all the reproductions that they could find. She was a self-taught artist with a brilliant imagination and the ability to bring joy of color and whimsy with every piece of work she created. She had a long and very hard life yet it was filled with art-making to the end. 

This is the first exhibition of Maria Primachenko's works outside of Europe and has over 100 pieces including some 3D pieces. You can read more on the Ukrainian Museum's FaceBook page or Ukrainian Museum Instagram Page. 

The third exhibit is in the Whitney Museum of American Art: Ruth Asawa: Through Line.

Ruth Asawa was an American sculptor best known for her hanging wire sculptures. I've borrowed Ruth Asawa's biography from the library so many times that I lost count - yet I could not finish reading it because every reproduction of her work sends me away to work on something or to look at the shadows of something and draw them. I recently saw her "The Faces" installation at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University and it blew me away with the infinite personal feeling that I got from looking at all the faces. 

The exhibit the Whitney Museum of American Art is showing Ruth Asawa's line works. Here is a quote from the description of the exhibit: "For Ruth Asawa (1926–2013), drawing served as a center of gravity—the activity she described as her "greatest pleasure and the most difficult." Although now widely recognized for her wire sculptures, Asawa drew daily. Her exploratory approach to materials, line, surface, and space yielded an impressive range of drawings that speaks to her playful curiosity and technical dexterity as well as her interest in the aesthetic possibilities of the every day."

I also recommend reading an excerpt from the essay by Kim Conaty, Steven and Ann Ames Curator of Drawings and Prints - “Your Hand Is Already Flowing”: Ruth Asawa’s Daily Practice of Drawing". There are amazing examples of work there too.

Another exhibit I would love to see in 2023.

A few weeks ago I wrote about two exhibits that I want to see in 2023. It started a little avalanche of things I would suddenly notice and think about as "what if that would be an exhibit to visit? How far would I be willing to travel to see it and what else would I do in that place? Who would I love to go with? What would be the title of that show and what other artists would be cool to add to that experience - art/audio/video/dance/fragrance/food etc.? What would I draw there?

One of these daydreaming sessions was inspired by a new book "David Hockney. My Window" - a very much overpriced collection of 120 works by one of my art heroes and it contains his latest works done on his iPad and iPhone - views from his window in Yorkshire. And then I saw that there is a new immersive performance that he put up in London - David Hockney: Bigger & Closer (not smaller & further away)" (which by the way is very much a manifesto I would like to adopt!) 

This article in the Guardian will show you some stills and tell you more about this - but in short - I think it is a retrospective, a moving way through  Hockney's thoughts on looking, it is a new kind-of exhibit with animation, video, multiple points of view, multiple screens surrounding viewers in 3D space of the room, it has its own score of music and yes it is probably overwhelming but also exciting! It looks like a celebration of the joy that humans get from making things. 

I would love to experience it!

All this meant that I pulled my Hockney books (see below, and more are waiting for me at the library - hurray for public libraries!). And went back to my notes on the exhibit that I saw in San Francisco some years back - "David Hockney. A bigger exhibition" (it blew my mind then) and now I am knee-deep in thinking about my own curated version of Hockney exhibition :) 

Two exhibits that I want to see in 2023.

There are two exhibits that are happening soon. One is talked about a lot in the press - it is the biggest exhibit of Vermeer ever! And it is running from February 10 to June 14th, 2023 in Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. There is a lot of great info online and I've been browsing scanned close-ups for all the joy of light that Vermeer paintings bring.

And a second exhibit is in Nahmad Contemporary gallery in New York and is titled "Henri Matisse and Jonas Wood" and runs from February 14 to March 12, 2023. There is not a lot of information about particular works that will be included but that is surely a juxtaposition I would love to see! The boldness of colors, graphical shapes, and all of that wrapped in an endless story filled with plants!

Vermeer's works are rather small, whereas when I hear the names of both Matisse and Wood what pops up in my head are large, expansive canvases. Vermeer has shadows and light so nuanced that you never know when one starts and the other ends and both Matisse and Wood are amazing in how they make flat colors do so much work. But I think they all are very much about everyday little fleeting moments and that is what I would love to see! 

Images above belong to respective artists/institutions and are screenshots from:

https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en

and

https://www.instagram.com/p/CoNVXLgJjbD/

Museum Visit: Alice Neel: People Come First | de Young

I went to see Alice Neel: People Come First at the de Young. She is an astonishingly astute looker at things but firstly - at people. Shapes, textures, expressions, and blue outlines jump at you but parts of the canvas are left untouched and it is very appropriate somehow. I am a big fan of "unfinished" works and I consider those more important and interesting works than "completed" words - for many artists. But here this did not look "unfinished" - it was very much conclusive and fitting the narrative of capturing the fleeting moment.
What got a hold of me and now follows everything I make or look at is the freedom and expressiveness of the depiction of hands!
I made a bunch of notes. My company for this visit and I enjoyed finding hidden images in many paintings. And on the way back we spent some time comparing highlights and planning our next visit - I think this show requires at least one more run for us! 

100 Views of Silicon Valley: Downtown San Jose State - University Campus and Art Museum

San Jose is a lovely city - constantly changing and evolving - at least that's how I feel. Every time I visit it I am a little lost and frustrated about something not being "as it was last time" but by the end of the visit there is usually something new I love. This time I was painting with Suhita and we saw that city was flooded with scooters to ease traffic in the downtown and people were really having fun riding them :)