M11 Art Gallery Visit
MASP
MASP - Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand
São Paulo, Brazil
I've never heard of this museum before. Its photo on Google Art Project intrigued me since I've never seen a gallery set up like this before. You can find their website here.
The Gallery
I took a virtual tour of their "Picture Gallery in Transformation" exhibition. The space seems to be light by track lighting mounted on the ceiling. The space is quite long with multiple rows of this lighting. Floor to ceiling windows make up the walls of the entire gallery. All of the windows have shades that are down, but light still filters in. The only color from the space itself comes from the floor, which consists of black square tiles, and the ceiling which is just painted a bright white. The viewer is meant to start from one end of the gallery and make their way to the far end. Works of art are scattered on easels throughout the floor.The Artwork
Artworks are arranged in chronological order. This specific exhibition focuses on figurative art. Since the artwork is arranged in chronological order, there's juxtapositions between art of different cultures spanning from the 4th century BC to 2008. Asian, Brazilian, European, and African art all merge together in this gallery. Each artwork has its own specific frame. Each artwork is displayed on a crystal easel. Each easel consists of a rectangular base and the actual artwork is mounted to a clear piece of glass coming from the base. Each painting is labeled on the back of the glass. Their proximity to one another varies from about 3 to 12 feet.
Art Criticism
Artist: E.F. Schute
This painting depicts a naturalistic scene of a waterfall from above. The sky takes up the top third of the canvas and a singular palm tree comes into the scene from the right. The rough terrain of the mountains and their texture contrast against the evening sky occupying the top third of the canvas. The empty space of the sky balances the whole scene.
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 Artist: Victor Meirelles
Title: Moema
Media: oil on canvas
Date: 1866
Size: 196.5 x 130 cm
This oil painting presents a woman washed up on shore. Her upper half of the body lays on the sand while her bottom half remains above the water resting on rocks underwater. The shoreline recedes into the upper half of the painting. The open space of the sea and sky above her body emphasizes her position on the shore.
Compositionally this painting reminds one of The Birth of Venus. Here a female nude is depicted within a landscape under tragic circumstances. I find the artist used a rich, warm, moody color palette to further depict tragedy over the dead body.
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Artist: Henri Matisse
Title: The Platser Torso
Media: oil on canvas
Date: 1919
Size: 113 x 87 cm
This painting depicts a still life. The foreground consists of a model of a females torso and a vase with florals sitting on a brown desk. The background contains various paintings hung on the wall and resting against the wall. The use of vibrant colors and the simplification of shapes create variety.
The objects in the foreground reflect those in the background. The torso on the table has the same position as the painting of the woman on the wall. The white and blue curtain also repeats the motif of the flower arrangement. I believe Matisse fused all of the elements in this scene, which seem to flow in a meandering manner, to create compositional balance.
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