Holy Toledo!

I was off on a road trip this morning. And just if you are wondering, the distance from my house (after stopping by and getting a Starbuck's for the road) to Toledo is exactly the distance it takes to listen to the complete Monster In A Box performed by Spalding Gray.

What is it about stained glass that when standing in front of the most secular image you can imagine, everyone is hushed and in awe and acting with reverence, as if it was a religious experience?

The Toledo Museum of Art was hosting an exhibition entitled Louis Comfort Tiffany: Artist For The Ages. What was great about this show, was it incorporated so many aspects of his creative life. It included some rather severe, yet elegant and practical, furniture he designed from his own home, paintings, watercolors, jewelry, decor items like vanity sets, one of only two known etching plates he made, and of course, lots of glass - vases, lamps, windows. The exhibit gives lots of space to the many periods, or influences, Tiffany had such as his fascinations with the sea, Persia, Egypt, China, and nature.

In the Chinese section, there was a fireplace screen he had designed using small squares of creamy glass connected with very small metal rings, duplicating early Chinese armor. Truly extraordinary.

I doubt if anyone could ever be fooled by a "fake" Tiffany lamp. There is a tangible rightness to his functional, elegant designs that no copy can ever duplicate. His lamps have life.

I learned that favrile (as in Tiffany's favrile glass) was a term he coined, using the Saxon word for handmade. Cool.

I also was very enamored by his agate glass, where he would take lots of colored glass, and make a very think vase or something. Then he would have it carved to reveal the striations in the glass. The finished vases look like pottery. I loved them.

But to me, the very best item was a favrile glass vase, which in itself was lovely, but I can only get so excited about glass. But this one was displayed in its original box from Siegfried Bing's Paris store, L'Art Nouveau. The detail of the box, hinged on the top, and with two front panels that swung back around from each side was unbelievable. It was lined in luxurious satin, and the base of the vase was held securely in a velvet pedestal. There was no doubt that even in the day, these glass items were treated was rare art objects.

Beats the heck out of Styrofoam and a cardboard box.

Next was a small exhibit of Rembrandt van Rijn etchings and I really wanted to see this solely because of the title:

Rembrandt: What Was He Thinking?

Anyone familiar with the great Christine Lavin will get the joke that her song really has become the new catch-phrase she was hoping for! And as an aside, Chris has put up a free mp3 download of a live performance of What Was I Thinking with new verses, including a great verse about Dick Cheney. Highly recommended listening!

But back to RembrandtRembrant. There is absolutely no doubt that his etchings are beautiful. But what I remember most of this show was a small book that was showing one of his very few book illustrations. The book was Elias Herckman's In Praise of Sailing (Der Zee-Vaert Lof) from 1634. According to the information, the book details the history of sailing - starting with the father of sailing, Noah. Cracked me up.

I still don't know what Rembrandt was thinking. Maybe Chris can write a verse about it.

The museum includes some rooms from old European houses that were incredible ( a room from a Lake Zurich house in Switzerland, 1630, and a room from the Chateau de Chenailles, France from 1650) as well as an area called The Cloisters - very medieval and wonderful. There was a wool and silk tapestry hanging there that I loved. It was from 1400, designed by Jean Fierret entitled Entombment.

Highlights of the permanent collection:

The Egyptian Book Of the Dead: Funerary Book of Tamesia, ink on papyrus - it makes your head hurt to see something that lovely, that old, and that mysterious.
A magnificent Roman mosaic floor
Pieter Brueghel the Younger's Winter with Bird Trap (1600), which I could study for hours. Isaak van Oosten's highly detailed and gorgeous Garden of Eden.
Benjamin West's St. George and the Dragon (1797) which shocked me because it looks like it came from the pages of a comic book - great violence and energy in vibrant colors of pink and yellow. Exceedingly modern!
James Tissot's surprisingly large and completely beautiful, London Visitors (1874)
A big surprise was the gorgeous Salutation of Beatrice (1880) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. I am thinking I have never actually seen a Rossetti in person before. A breathtaking work.
The wonderfully Halloween-y Death of A Pilgrim (1887) by Felix Joseph Barrias.
One of the most beautiful women I've ever seen portrayed in a painting, Shepherd's Star (1887) by Jules Breton - the jpeg does not do it justice.
Pablo Picasso: Woman with Crow (1904) - the most magnificent use of blue until Yves Klein.
Louis Sullivan - Bank Teller's Wicket, an unbelieveably gorgeous use of decorative wrought iron, but more fascinating because it was from the National Farmer's Bank in Owatonna, Minnesota! It looks like something that should have been for the main branch of a major bank in New York City.
Edward Hopper's evocative Two On The Aisle (1927), which was bigger than I imagined, but I fell in love with it as expected.
A Georgia O'Keeffe I was not familiar with, Brown Sail, Wing on Wing, Nassau (1940).
I think my favorite piece in the museum might have been Jim Dine's Sickle (1962).
Marisol Escobar : The Cocktail Party (1965) No picture can ever do this installation justice.
A great surprise was a small, perfect sculpture (Cherie, 1980) by Robert Graham. I had never seen anything of his in person. The body is absolutely perfect, but the face has an almost android-like blankness to it that is unsettling. I really enjoyed the simultaneous feelings of repulsion and adoration.
Juan Munoz 's Broken Nose IV (1999) was a fascinating sculpture based on the sculpted head of an Egpytian priest known as the Berlin Green Head. The sculpture's nose has not survived. Munoz has sculpted two small figures, clothed in metal workers garb, facing each other. One holds a measuring stick up against the other. They have the arms and hands of mummies, and each has the same head, the Berlin Green Head. Both even display the post that museums use to mount disconnected heads. Since the bodies are in different attitudes, and facing each other, the faces do, at first, look different.

Outside, they have a small sculpture garden and I got to see works by two sculptors I admire: Deborah Butterfield's Second Daughter, a sculpture of a horse which looks like it is made of driftwood, but is actually bronze and Magdalena Abakanowicz's terrific Figure on Trunk with Wheels-Big (2000).

But what I was dying to see was Hector Guimard's Paris Metro Entrance. What a beautiful, practical, functional addition to the city. I think all transit stops should look like this.

Well, that was my day. I have to make a return trip, as after four hours I couldn't look at anything else. And I still didn't make it to five rooms! A wonderful, manageable museum with lots of treasures and surprises.