Review: Those Old Masters could draw
By Laura Grimes
Mr. Scatter boarded a plane this morning when the sky was barely light so I’ll be his best blog buddy and post a link to his visual arts review that ran in The Oregonian this morning.
Here’s an excerpt teaser from his review of A Pioneering Collection: Master Drawings From the Crocker Art Museum, which is on view at the Portland Art Museum through Sept. 19:
German artist Johann Georg Bergmuller’s crowded and energetic 1715 drawing and watercolor “Saint Martin Appealing to the Virgin,” for instance, is suffused with allegory and religious phantasmagoria. It revels in the sense of a larger, ordinarily invisible universe just out of human grasp: the artist is chronicler of the real but unseen.
Johann Georg Bergmüller
German, 1688-1762
St. Martin and Other Saints Appealing to the Virgin, 1715
Pen and brown ink, brush and brown and gray washes, blue, pink, red, and orange watercolor, white opaque watercolor on cream laid paper
13 7/8 in. x 7 7/8 in. (31.0 cm x 22.0 cm)
Crocker Art Museum, E. B. Crocker Collection
*
Mr. Scatter recently wrote about how several artists through history have rendered the grisly tale of Holofernes, an invading general who lost his head to the beautiful and clever Judith.
June 15th, 2010 at 5:10 pm
Thank you, Mrs. Scatter! I am now resting in my hotel room in San Francisco’s Japan Town after BARTing across the bay today for a fascinating tour of the newly remodeled Oakland Museum of California, a place I’d never been before. Good space, well-designed installations, smart collection. Impressive!
Now I think I may slip into my room’s soaking tub for a spell before I wander out for some sushi and sake.
Incidentally, MAX boosters and naysayers alike: BART works. It works over a really wide territory. And it’s been working for a long time. The idea of going underground, as in London and New York, (and underwater, as in the Chunnel), is, well, a good one. Don’t tell PDX’s designerati, but it’s just possible Portland is not the center, let alone the progenitor, of all things wise and wonderful. Mr. Scatter wouldn’t want to commit to that observation, though.
June 15th, 2010 at 6:25 pm
Mr. Scatter is just pleased with himself that he figured out how to get across town without a motorcar.
Glad you made it to that little town some miles south of Portland known to locals as “San Francisco.” Enjoy lounging in your kimono. I hope the rest of the blog world doesn’t mind if we stay in touch this way.
The Large Smelly Boys have already bickered over who gets to make trail mix for the road tomorrow. I heard tell the educational system in these parts is done for the season now. We celebrated with dusty donuts. The Large Large Smelly Boy insists he has an extra long weekend. The Small Large Smelly Boy discovered that the language on Facebook can all be turned to pirate talk, and I wasted way too much of the afternoon being entertained by it. (Did I type that out loud?)
June 15th, 2010 at 9:19 pm
dear mr. scatter,
you’ll perhaps be pleased to know that i was employed at one time in a PSA for the oakland museum of art. infact, got my SAG card from said employment. and: what is more: said shoot occurred in the now obliterated fox theater, downtown portland. with portland diva-at-the-time jaque drew, no less. we had a wonderful day that day….
ahhhhhh. a bit of herstory. no?
and thank you, mrs. scatter, for keeping us all appraised. and entertained. and informed.
salute to all…. roses. martinis…
x t i n e
June 16th, 2010 at 12:12 am
Meant to tell you. Points for anytime you get phantasmagoria in a story.
June 16th, 2010 at 8:17 pm
I wish to congratulate Mr. Scatter for his Crocker drawing collection review, though if he continues to write with such loving clarity he’s going to be drummed out of the Society for Obfuscating Vis-A-Babble practitioners. I’m headed to Carol Triffle’s latest on Friday night; can’t think of a better way to celebrate a birthday. And to Ten Tiny Taiko Drums and Dances on Saturday, very curious to see how that will work. Meanwhile I envy Mr. Scatter’s time in Baghdad by the Bay and wish Mrs. Scatter good fortune at her family fete and also wish to God this unspeakable weather in the city of drooping, storm tossed roses would get the hell out of town.
June 18th, 2010 at 5:17 pm
Ah, Martha; the Society for Obfuscating Vis-A-Babble is good. Do you think we could offer dual memberships with the League of Tough-Guy Arts Observers?