Who else can bring it like this??? Tell
you whut, I know what I’m talking about. I just need to stop starting
conversations with tidbits from politico. Somehow, "Did you know that 3
out of 4 white supremacists support Obama?" is not a good way to
introduce yourself to people. I don’t even know from which direction I fumbled
with that art teacher from Rice. Good grief. I should just stay home.
Thursday’s opening at the Menil Collection for Max Ernst: In the Garden
of Nymph Ancolie brought out Ernsts from the Menil vault to mix freely with
ones drawn from the world over, all beholden to the Pétales et jardin de la
nymphe Ancolie, 1934, a wall drawing transferred to panels and preserved by
the Kunsthaus Zurich. The gigantic gray painting is mesmerizing; the amorphous,
anthropomorphic forms of his smaller works are intact, but the change in size
gives them more freedom to roam. Unencumbered by crowding, the nymph lies in
her own world, a spiritual presence in yellow and insect-flower-human
appendages sprouting from its center. I was totally enthralled. The gray is
new, as far as I’m concerned, in Ernst’s oeuvre. It gives his characters a more
neutral background and highlights their personalities. Going back to look at
small paintings and drawings familiar from the collection and added works that
are traveling with the show, I could see his bodies more clearly, and separate
their entrails and appendages from their bright, hallucinatory
backgrounds.
I was so into the big ‘ol centerpiece to the show I walked right up to it,
unknowingly stepping between a photographer and the mayor. Yup, Bill White came
to the opening. That was cool. I got a Bigfoot style photo of him, so commence
with the doubting his existence.
