MO Day 4 - Art, Animals, and Antiquities
Today started with a trip to the St. Louis specialty coffee roasters, Blueprint Coffee, for one of their mighty fine and might strong cold brews to help me get a start on the day.
After caffeinating, I made my way to Forest Park, a spacious public park that was once the centerpiece of the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair and continues to be home to beautiful greenery and most of the city’s major museums.
My first stop was the St. Louis Art Museum, a grand and spacious building that began as the World’s Fair’s fittingly named Palace of the Arts. The ornate palace (after some recent expansions) clocks in at 110,000 sq. feet making the museum one of the largest art museums in the country. That means this is gonna be a pretty long post mostly consisting of pictures of art I liked, so strap in and feel free as always to just skim the words and enjoy the pictures.
My time in the palatial museum started in the European Wing with a collection of European art from pre-1800. Early highlights for me included these gorgeous paintings primarily focused on stunning scenery (both manmade and natural) without sacrificing the character of the little figures running around. My favorites included Joseph Vernet’s A Harbor at Midnight which is inspired by Naples but fully a work of imaginationa; a series of beautifully dreamlike landscapes of Roman ruins by Hubert Robert; and a labyrinthine, tremendously detailed painting of St. Peter’s basilica by one of my favorite painters with one of my favorite names, Giovanni Paolo Panini.
The paintings were accompanied by some equally impressive three dimensional works. Highlights for me included: an impossibly curly-haired bronze bust of King Louis XIV by Franocis Girardon; a stunning marble fireplace panel depicting The Muse Euterpe (the muse of music) attributed to John Bacon I; and an impeccably decorative vase attributed to Dihl and Guérhard Porcelain.
Next I went a little further back in time with some paintings capturing classic subjects: rich people portraits and biblical scenes. My favorites in these galleries included: a very lavish portrait of a particularly fancy lady by Nicolas de Largillière; a dramatic and energetic painting of The Crucifixion by Giambattista Tiepolo; and a really wild scene called St. Helena and the Emperor Constantine Presented to the Holy Trinity by the Virgin Mary painted by Corrado Giaquinto which mostly features its titular scene but also casually includes a whole battle between the archangel and a hellish horde seemingly trying to force their way into heaven which is quite a thing to not even mention.
As we moved into the 1800s, the paintings got a bit more modern but with distinct elements of romanticism. Highlights for me included: a richly textured orientalist painting called The Sentinel at the Sultan’s Tomb by Jean-Léon Gérôme; some fanciful portraits of the artists’ children by Karl Friedrich Schinkel that are a fun blend of cute and creepy; a gorgeous scene called Interior with a Young Woman Tracing a Flower by Louise Adéone Drölling that also features the weird detail of the young artist having a pet squirrel hanging out on the chair; an almost biblical painting of Scotland’s Loch Lomond bathed in rays of light by Gustave Doré; a dramatic rendering of a scene from the novel Tales of the Genii called Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion by John Martin featuring an incredible imaginary landscape; and a lovely, melancholy painting called the Colossal Pair by Frank Dillon depicting the grand statues of the pharaoh Amenhotep III and his wife that stand along the road to the former city of Thebes.
Amid these paintings there was a beautifully strange sculpture by the great French wildlife sculptor Antoine-Louis Barye of a muscular tiger fighting a weird crocodile-like creature called a gavial.
The next gallery featured more realist works but with hints of the Impressionist movement on the horizon. Highlights for me included: a pleasantly serene river painting called Banks at the Oise of Auvers by Charles-François Daubigny; a sweetly idyllic portrait of two cherubic children called Peace by Adolphe-William Bouguereau; a charming scene of a rural French mother teaching her daughter how to mend a sock called The Knitting Lesson by Jean-François Millet; and a crowded scene called The Reading of the Bulletin of the Grand Army by Louis-Léopold Boilly which features one very sassy baby resting on an old man’s knee.
These paintings were accompanied by another wild sculpture this time of a nude man wrestling a python (as all nude men are wont to do) by the artist Frederic, Lord Leighton.
Next up I moved into Impressionism proper which was right in my sweet spot of being formally interesting while also being plain old pretty to look at. Some highlights for me included: a stylish portrait of a St. Louis aristocrat named Lucy Turner Joy by Anders Zorn; a charmingly wiggly painting by Van Gogh called Vineyard at Auvers; a gentle, soothing pointillist painting called Port-en-Bessin: The Outer Harbor (Low Tide) by Georges Seurat; a beautifully regal portrait of a postman’s wife named Madame Roulin by Paul Gauguin; a tender scene of the artist’s wife and son walking along a riverbank called The Promenade with the Railroad Bridge, Argenteuil by Claude Monet; an interestingly geometric yet flowing painting of a Seamstress by Édouard Vuillard; some classic Water Lillies by Claude Monet; and a sort of melancholy scene of a woman and her dog called In Deep Thought by Alfred Stevens.
My absolute favorites by some out-and-out masters: the superbly colorful The Dreamer by Renoir; a psychedelic landscape called Stairway at Auvers by Van Gogh; and an utterly serene painting of The Louvre at Morning Sunlight by Camille Pissarro.
Next up was a gallery dedicated to the works of the great German Expressionist painter, Max Beckmann. Beckmann was a happy discovery to me over the course of this road trip, because I had never heard of him before but he fully operates in my favorite artistic zone of still being representational while also being super strange. He rejected full abstraction, but he distorted figures and scenes to their absolute limit so its always interesting to see how renders things almost like a mix of the Dutch masters, the cubists, and the surrealists all rolled into one. This unique style has made Beckmann an influential and important figure for 20th century art, but we almost got never got to see any of it because Hitler absolutely hated him (which usually means you’re doing something right) and labeled him a Degenerate Artist and banned or destroyed much of his work. Fortunately Max was able to get out of Germany, and between his own efforts, notable European art dealers, and smugglers a good amount managed to be saved. Later in life, Beckmann taught at the University of Washington in St. Louis, which is how so much of his art ended up in the city, and the St. Louis Art Museum actually has the largest single collection of his paintings in the world.
After the Beckmann gallery, I took a big jump backwards in time to Ancient Greece and Rome. These vases, sculptures, mosaics, and pieces of jewelry were a fantastic mix of incredible craftsmanship and improbably preserved history because I doubt any of the artists had any concept of Missouri at all let alone that their work would end up there a few thousand years later.
After the ancient art, I got with the times and moved on to the contemporary wing. The first gallery I went to was all dedicated to abstract pieces. For whatever subconscious reasons, the paintings that really jumped out to me the most were: the minimalist Fatal Plunge by Jules Olitski; the charmingly blobby Stone and Star by Grace Hartigan, the only woman included in the influential New American Painting exhibition by the Museum of Modern art; the coolly boxy Red, Orange, Orange on Red by Mark Rothko; the gauzy hypnotic Group 1 by Phillip Guston; dizzying, geometric Double Exposure by James Little; the strangely lonely Catalonia by Robert Motherwell; the starkly monochromatic Bethlehem by Franz Kline; the kaleidoscopic and intriguingly shaped Madinat as-Salam III by Frank Stella; the deceptively simple Spectrum II by Ellsworth Kelly which subtly messes with your expectations of a color spectrum by feeling not going from red to violet and also appearing to be one long piece when it is actually 13 individually painted canvases carefully painted to give the sense of a gradient which is a lot of work for something that seems initially so inconsequential; and the cool blue and gray Model by Thomas Scheibitz which really messes with your sense of perspective as the more circular form seems to go in and out of the foreground.
Perhaps the mosts striking abstract piece was a massive painting called Grey Space by Julie Mehretu which seems to contain an almost impossible amount of motion and depth for a still, 2-dimensional image. Her works are inspired by architectural drawings and maps which does give the sense that there is some order in all the chaos. I can’t say that I necessarily “get” what her work is “about” but every time I see a drawing or painting by her I find it spellbinding and hard to look away from.
After the abstract art, I moved on to some Pop Art. My favorites included: a highly stylized painting of two advertising men (somehow the one on the right is not Al Pacino) standing in front of a new printing press called Fresh News (Men and Machines) by Rosalyn Drexler; the hilariously morose and cartoony Why Can’t I Stop Smoking by Sigmar Polke; a silkscreen print of the mug shot of a convicted murdered taken from the NYPD’s Most Wanted Men list by Andy Warhol; an Untitled painting by Christopher Wool that features a commercial floral print silkscreened from wallpaper and applied in layers to the point of abstraction; a surprisingly elegant and sort of ominous painting called Curtains by Roy Lichtenstein; and a piece by Jim Dine called Flesh Bathroom with Yellow Light that seems like an abstract expressionist painting until you see the toilet paper roll, toothbrush holder, hand mirror, and light fixture mounted onto the canvas making it more of a strange and humorous sculpture of a bathroom wall.
Up next were some interesting contemporary sculptures. Highlights for me included: a sleek minimalist sculpture by Donald Judd that consisted of four aluminum squares coated in a layer of blue plexiglass on the inside that makes them draw the visitor’s eye to look at the strangely reflective surface; a weirdly captivating sculpture called Paganini’s Soul by Arman which is made of pieces of an actual charred violin encased in hard plastic like an odd science experiment; a minimalist piece by Georg Herold consisting of buttons sewn to a canvas in a random order designed simply to frustrate viewers who want to find some pattern to the arrangement; and the truly bizarre but delightful Chocolate Gnome by Dieter Roth which consists, as the name implies, of a gardem gnome submerged in a block of chocolate with just his little hat peeking out.
Next up I moved a little bit further back in time to the European modernists of the 20th century, which included a number of my favorite painters. Highlights for me included: the starkly geometric painting of a Factory by Emilio Vedovo; a cubist still life called The Blue Mandolin by Georges Braque; an adorably minimalist painting of tiny animals grazing by some mountains called Sandstorm by Alice Rahon; a dreamlike (or nightmarish depending on how you look at it) scene of nude figures completing some kind of ritual called The Fire by Paul Delvaux; a dramatically expressive painting of a Bullfight by Pablo Picasso; a minimalist painting of an ethereal mustachioed creature by Joan Miró; a cartoony painting of an insect-like bird called Aviatic Evolution by Paul Klee; a very calm and minimal cubist still-life intriguingly named Half Moon by Ben Nicholson; the hilariously, but somehow very fittingly named, Man of Confusion by Paul Klee; the energetically colorful still life Mandolin and Vase of Flowers by Picasso; a flowing expressive painting of a train passing through the Alps called Murnau with Locomotive by Vassily Kandinsky; and the surreal banana-centric still life The Transformed Dream by Giorgio de Chirico.
The pieces I liked best though were by my favorite under-appreciated surrealist Max Ernst: the Dali-esque painting of a couple entwined in what appears to be a hollowed out tree called Long Live Love or Charming Country and the somehow simultaneously beautiful and repulsive imaginary landscape of a piece called The Eye of Silence
Next up was an impressive gallery of German expressionist paintings that the museum purchased to complement their Beckmann collection. Highlights for me included: a painting called Evening by Max Pechstein featuring oddly angsty people in front of a beautiful sunset; the appropriately named Still Life with Two Large Candles by Max Beckmann; a gorgeously moody street scene called View of Basel and the Rhine Ernst by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner; a charmingly minimal painting of a large gathering of nude bathers (apparently in the earliest 20th-century nude baths were a huge wellness craze in Germany) by Erich Heckel; a hypnotically hazy painting of a Tavern Ernst Ludwig Kirchner; the dramatically angular Burning City by Ludwig Meidner; the equally dramatic reverse side of the same painting by Ludwig Meidner; a wonderfully strange painting of bathers being flipped all around by waves called Lido by Max Beckmann; the slightly horrifying cubist family portrait called The Felixmüller Family by Otto Dix (note the demonic baby front and center); a serene nature scene called Steely Day by Max Pechstein; an amusingly unflattering but captivating paining called the Woman in the Green Blouse by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner; a beautifully colorful cubist painting called Bucolic Landscape by Heinrich Campendonk (incredible name); an adorable painting called The Little Mountain Goats by Franz Marc; a strikingly unusually colored portrait of a woman entitled Spring by Alexei Jawlensky; and a painting of the artist’s studio including a reclining nude figure and a sculpture by Max Beckmann
My favorite piece because of how hilariously grotesque it was was called Cafe by George Grosz.
Up next was another gallery of more impressionist 20th-century pieces. Highlights included: the sweetly peaceful Interior at Nice by Henri Matisse; a cubist rendering of Adam and Eve called Temptation by Marc Chagall; a lively, colorful scene of sailors in a french port called Le Havre Grand Quai by Maurice de Vlaminck; an amusingly odd paining of nude bathers seemingly not knowing how to react to a turtle by Henri Matisse; a highly angular yet weirdly pretty painting called Three Women in a Wood by Otto Mueller; and the extravagantly painted but so strangely posed painting Nana, Female Nude by Lovis Corinth.
My favorite piece here was a portrait of a singer by the very vowel-y named Georges Rouault that was such a weird mic of child-like simplicity and rich emotions.
The paintings were complemented by some sculptural pieces including the incredibly life-like and almost unbearably emotional Despair by Rodin and the more light-hearted and cubist Organic Forms by Rudolf Belling.
Leaving the gallery I passed by this massive painting of some kind of burial at sea, which was both really creepy and beautifully rendered. Unfortunately I didn’t write down who painted it or anything about it, so it’s just a fun mystery to me.
Next, I passed by a dramatic 7-ton sculptural piece called Breaking of the Vessels by Anselm Kieth that combines broken glass, a steel book, copper wires, and lead book folios to energetically combine references to Jewish mysticism from the Kaballah and more recent history, namely the terrible Kristallnacht (literally Night of Broken Glass) when Nazis and German civilians destroyed thousands of Synagogue windows and Jewish storefronts. The piece at once expresses a great deal of fragility and trauma but also a towering strength which is sort of a lovely metaphor fo a complicated history.
Up next, I made my way into the grand museum courtyard which was a beautiful space that also featured some impressive floral arrangements and some giant sculptures that served as a preview for the big Ancient Egyptian art exhibition that served as the featured exhibit while I was there.
Next up was some older European art primarily consisting of religious iconography. This isn’t usually my favorite period of art history but I do always enjoy when things get a little weird. The highlights for me included: this sculpture of the Madonna sort of posing like Michael Jackson called Mother of Sorrow by Andrea Della Robbia; a wild painting by Blasco da Grañén that is supposed to be the Miracle of St. Stephen raising people from the dead but which just looks like a bunch of people hanging out in a hole in the ground;
a beautiful altarpiece by Piero di Cosimo with several panels depicting various saints encircling a central painting of the Madonna and child; and a painting of the Madonna with an adorably wrinkly baby Christ by Davide Ghirlandaio.
The next gallery had some works by the Dutch Masters which are always so jam-packed with tiny details. My favorites were two lush seaside scense: Travelers Awaiting a Ferryby Philips Wouwerman; and Extensive Landscape With Travellers on a Country Road by Jan Brueghel.
Next up was some religious art of a different provenance with these beautiful bronze sculptures of different Hindu gods from 11th and 12th century India.
The next few galleries I visited were dedicated to decorative arts and featured a pretty stunning blend of artistry and craftsmanship. First up, was a series of incredible ceramic pieces from China and Japan which spanned several centuries but would look classy in any of them.
The ceramics were followed by some beautifully intricate bronze pieces from China:
Next up was a special exhibition called Time Spy by the contemporary Chinese artist Sun Xun. The exhibit was amazing and consisted of over 10,000 surreal woodblock prints ranging from small weird characters to sweeping dreamscapes. The prints were then used to make a short 3D animated film, for which the museum supplied 3D glasses. Each piece was so strange and captivating on its own but when they came together in the film it was really sort of magical.
I couldn’t find the whole video online but I found a clip of one of the museum curators talking about the exhibit that provides some interesting context and features some great footage (even if loses a little something in just 2 measly dimensions).
After the contemporary exhibit, it was back to older European art. This time there was a bit more mythology mixed in with the religious scenes which is always fun for me. Highlights for me included: a slightly ridiculous painting of the incredibly ridiculous story of Zeus seducing Danaë visiting her as a shower of gold as painted by Artemisia Gentileschi (who was only 19 at the time!); a very lavishly painted scene Cephalus and Procris (the Death of Procris) by Joachim Anthonisz Wtewael which is oddly sexual considering Cephalus just accidentally shot his wife with an arrow; an impressively subdued painting of the horrific scene of the god Apolo skinning the satyr Marsyas alive (for daring to claim he could play the flute better than even the gods) by Bartolomeo Manfredi; a colorfully detailed painting called the Marriage of the Virgin by Jan van Doornick; an interestingly flat painting of the Judgment of Paris by Lucas Cranach the Elder; an impressively ethereal portrait of St. Paul by El Greco; a hilariously dandy painting called Portrait of a Florentine Nobleman by Francesco Salviati; the wild and wildly named Suffer the Little Children to Come Unto Me by Jacob Jordaens; a painting of the amusingly cowardly looking Pontious Pilate presenting Christ to an unseen crowd by the artist Titian.
The paintings were accompanied by some crazily detailed three-dimensional works. These included a dramatic silver engraving in a gorgeous wooden altarpiece; a series of small but crazily detailed paintings on little metal plaques by Jean III Pénicaud and Pierre Reymond; a wonderfully expressive sculpture of a Fowler cautiously waiting to recapture his falcon by Giambologna; and an immaculately painted triptych of wooden panels by Jan Gossaert which features a sweetly odd scene of St. Joseph giving the baby Christ a pomegranate (a fruit that seems particularly bad to give an infant but who are we to question the will of saints).
Two larger sculptures also stood out to me for being fantastically lifelike: a beautiful and uncommonly sensitive (for the 17th century) bust of an unknown African man by Melchior Barthel; and a simply wild marble sculpture of a Reclining Pan attributed to Francesco da Sangallo who put so much crazy attention to detail into what is ostensibly a silly goat man.
Next up was some centuries-old stain glass pieces. I liked these pieces because they had the weird flat figuration of a lot of Medieval European art but the glass itself was so pretty so clearly the artists just had a lot more knowledge of their medium than human anatomy. I also learned from reading the description of the middle piece that Adam and Eve’s third son was named Seth, which feels hilariously mundane.
Next up I moved to the collection of Indigenous American Art. I liked that the collection had a lot of breadth and included artwork from all over the continent. Highlights for me included: a Dzunukwa Mask from the Kwakwaka'wakw people which depicts a mythological figure who’s a wild bearded woman of the woods who either bestows great wealth or eats children (she contains a multitude); a rattle carved by a Tlingit artist depicting a man resting on a giant raven and seemingly smooching a smaller raven; an impressively psychedelic platter carved from a stone called Argillite by an artist from the Haida people; some amazing woven baskets with sleek geometric patterns; a painting of a battle on an animal hide; a beaded pouch featuring a particularly adorable goat from the plateau region; a Miniature Tipi painted by a Blackfeet artist possibly intended as a toy or to make money off tourists; an incredibly vibrant Martingale (a decorative coat hung from a horse’s neck) by a Crow artist; and a Crow rifle case that feels almost too pretty for its function.
Some of my favorite Indigenous American art that I’d never seen much of before my road trip are carvings from what is now Alaska. The museum had some excellent pieces from northern tribes including: a sweetly decorative ivory cribbage board by an Iñupiaq artist; and an amazing carved wooden Nepcetaq Mask by a Yup'ik artist which depicts a shaman reaching through different spiritual realms.
After the Indigenous American art, I moved to post-colonial American art. I’m not always crazy about pre-20th century American art, but there were a few gems here and the nature scenes of largely undeveloped America really stood out. Highlights for me included: a moody Moonlight Coastal Scene by Robert Salmon (fantastic name); some gorgeously vacant landscape paintings of surveyor’s wagons traveling out west by Albert Bierstadt; a sweetly boxy family portrait by Deborah Goldsmith, one of the earliest recorded American women to make a living as a professional painter; a boisterous, energetic painting of a crowd gathering for a county election by George Caleb Bingham; a lush painting of Winona Falls in Pennsylvania by Hermann Herzog; an idyllic painting of Olevano in the Italian countryside by Albert Bierstadt (one of the only paintings by him I’ve seen that doesn’t depict America); a misty, ethereal painting of the Lousiana bayou called The Land of Evangeline by Joseph Rusling Meeker; an exuberant painting of riverboat workers called Jolly Flatboatmen in Port by Geroge Caleb Bingham; an extravagant and richly textured portrait of Connecticut socialite Thaddeus Burr by John Singleton Copley.
One of the most powerful paintings was the dramatic and ominous Ship Trapped in Pack Ice by William Bradford, which seems to depict a particularly horrible day at sea.
The two pieces that stood out the most to me for being absolutely batshit insane were a painting called Sea Captains Carousing in Surinam by John Greenwood (presumably not the Radiohead guitarist) which features one drunken sailor vomiting on a sleeping man who also seems to be having soup poured on his head by another drunken sailor (classic carousing) and an earthenware vessel that shows George Washington ascending to the heavens above the word Apotheosis.
There was also an equally crazy, albeit in a much more aesthetically pleasing way, ceramic pitcher by the United States Pottery Company in Bennington, VT designed to look like rushing cascades of water.
Next up, I moved into some more modernist early 20th-century American art which was more up my alley. Some favorites included: a street scene of Tioga, PA by Stuart Davis in a more realistic but still quite funky style than I’m accustomed to seeing from him; a cool minimalist painting by the great Georgia O’Keeffe called shell and Old Shingle; an expressively painted scene of a waterfall seeming to flow and freeze at the same time called Smelt Brook Falls by Marsden Hartley; and an interestingly geometric city scene called Gas House District by Niles Spencer.
The next gallery was a bit of a left turn into Ancient Egypt as I checked out the main special exhibition entitled Sunken Cities: Egypt’s Lost Worlds. The exhibit comprised of over 200 artifacts recovered by underwater archaeologist Franck Goddio after some incredibly fruitful excavations in the Mediterranean. The artifacts included beautiful sculptures, religious objects, mummies, jewelry, and objects from daily life, all in shockingly pristine condition after over 1000 years underwater. The artwork was pretty incredibly but my favorite part of the exhibit was overhearing a little kid ask a museum worker if one of the statues was dead only for the employee to laugh and say “Oh yeah, he’s long gone”.
After my little sojourn in Ancient Egypt, it was back to 20th-century American art. First up were some pieces of rural expressionism that captured the feeling of western landscapes more than their exact dimensions. Highlights for me included: a sharply angled yet pleasantly serene painting of a church supper by James Baare Turnbull; a painting called Cradling Wheat by Thomas Hart Benton that really captures the mood of a long day of work; an ominous painting of an oncoming dust cloud called Black Blizzard by Alexandre Hogue; a beautifully barren piece entitled Cloud Trails by John Rogers Cox; a study for a sweeping mural of Missouri history called Politics, Farming, and Law by Thomas Hart Benton; and an allegorical scene entitled Swing Low Sweet Chariot by John McCrady that features a heavenly entourage (and one random devil) descending upon a small farmhouse where a family gathers around a dying man.
After the rural scenes, the next gallery had some more urban environs. Highlights for me here included: a painting called Martial Memory by Phillip Guston featuring a scene of children playing soldiers with whatever they could find lying around invoking both sweet nostalgia and a foreboding sense of violence; a haunting painting of a single Red Stairway standing amidst the rubble of a war-ravaged European city by Ben Shahn; a jazzy painting of a lone woman standing in front of abstracted symbols of urban struggle entitled The Eviction by Eldzier Cortor; an emotionally charged painting of police officers participating in union-busting called the Uneeda Biscuit Strike by Alice Neel; and a noir-ish painting of a steamy rendezvous entitled Encounter by Isabel Bishop.
Next up were some more surreal works from early 20th century American artists. These included: a very Dali-esque painting of one naked woman with a burning head looking at another naked woman covering her face with a veil while being embraced by a sludge man called Veronica’s Veil by Federico Catellon; a sort of hilarious abstract face called In Beige with Sand by Robert Motherwell; a tenderly cubist family portrait called Interior and Exterior by William Zorach; a noodly abstraction called Driftwood on the Bagaduce by Marsden Hartley; a mysterious and psychedelic painting of a writer seemingly mutating into a monster called Micenic by Siegfried Reinhardt; and a bare, gray imaginary landscape entitled For the Wind to Tear by Kay Sage.
Walking to the next gallery, I passed by an exceptional fireplace that had been donated from the home of Missouri native, James J. Meacham and featured remarkable tiles designed by Frederick Hurten Rhead depicting various landscapes.
Next up were some gorgeous works of late 19th and early 20th-century American artists emulating the European impressionists. My favorites were: a sweetly somber painting of an evening church service called Vespers by Gari Melchers; a contemplative portrait called Girl with a Dog by Frank Weston Benson; a bold, colorful portrait of the Spanish dancer Betalo Rubino by Robert Henri; a nostalgic night time scene called Old Homestead Connecticut by Willard Leroy Metcalf; the beautifully hazy The Plaza After the Rain by Paul Cornoyer; and a very Renoir-esque painting entiled Young Woman in Green by William James Glackens.
Next up was some art from indigenous peoples of central and southern America. I was particularly drawn to textile art from different Andean tribes in what is now Peru. Some favorites included an intricately patterned Poncho by an artist from the Paracas culture which almost looks like a game of Pac-Man despite predating the game by a good 2000 years; a panel made by Wari artists featuring carefully sewn blue and yellow macaw feathers which have retained their color shockingly well; a textile from the Chimú empire featuring a fun pelican print presented above a stylish Incan sling; and a large adorably spooky Wari Mummy mask.
Next up I moved into the wing of decorative arts and design. First up were some fancy pieces from 19th century Europe. Highlights here for me included: a large intricately designed clock with a creepy little specter of death on top to really hit home the passage of time; a snazzy little desk with weird golden heads carved in near the latch and little silhouettes carved into the frame; and a lovely little chair with a cute floral print on the upholstery.
One of the craziest pieces was a mesmerizing decorative spiral made from a single piece of ash carefully bent using a technique developed by Austrian furniture maker Gebrüder Thonet.
The next few displays featured some pretty crazy decorative silver pieces. The material is so naturally pretty and it’s just crazy what some artists are able to do with it. Naturally my favorite piece was a serving dish in the shape of a small turtle hanging out on the belly of a larger turtle who seems to be screaming.
Next up were some beautiful ceramic and glass plates and vessels featuring all manner of incredible designs and patterns.
The next galleries featured an odd assortment of weapons and armor from early European warfare. I wouldn’t normally think of putting crossbows, swords, and lances in the decorative arts sections but once you stop thinking about what they were made for the pieces had some really creative and striking designs indicative of excellent craftsmanship.
After the weaponry it was back to some more traditional but nonetheless stunning decorative arts. Playing with the reflection and refraction of light respectively, two pieces that really stood out were an ornate dressing table and mirror originally made for a New York Mansion and a dazzlingly floral stained glass window designed by John La Farge.
On the more modernist side of designs, some highlights for me included: some visually fun but more than a little ridiculous pop-art furniture; an amorphous but oddly beautiful wall clock designed by the great Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi; a sort of mesmerizing lotus inspired Tiffany glass lamp; and a playfully chaotic riff on a traditional chest of drawers called the You Can’t Lay Down Your Memories Chest of Drawers by Tejo Remy.
Next up were a series of period rooms arranging various pieces of elegant furniture to recreate various high end spaces.
Some pieces that really stood out included: a wooden box where you can place a pocket watch so that it serves as a clock while you’re not wearing it; an armchair with snazzy green silk upholstery; and a magnificently well-crafted black walnut sideboard.
Up next was a display of very stylish Wedgwood pottery, which always blows my mind whenever I see it. Their house style simultaneously feels so inspired by ancient forms yet modern and pop-y with their bold color choices. I never really paid much attention to decorative arts and design before this road trip but the exhibit on Wedgwood pottery I saw in Alabama was definitely a big turning point for me so I’m always excited to see them whenever they pop up.
After the Wedgwood pottery, I moved to a series of displays on Middle Eastern pottery which featured a really remarkable blue glaze that lost none of its dazzle even after a couple hundred years.
Moving to the next wing of the museum I passed by an incredible Chihuly glass chandelier hanging above the lobby:
Also in the lobby was a giant mural by Roy Lichtenstein called Sailboats which featured his own Pop Art-y riff on impressionism:
The next gallery featured artwork by local high school students which were all just so impressive. I can’t imagine being so talented at such a young age but it was very exciting to see. Some pieces that stood out to me were: a dramatic surrealist portrait of feminine beauty called Saturation by Hannah Munz; a collage by Grace Bolesta combining pen and ink drawings with newspaper clippings linking ideas of city planning and race; a wonderfully simple woodcut of print of trees by Yesenia Garcia; and an emotional and strikingly posed painting of dancing boy and a flower called 10.13.75 by Izzy Sanchez.
My favorite pieces were both by a young artist named Kaitlyn Ying (only in 9th grade!) and they included a clever collage featuring a wonderfully confident photograph of a young boy wearing aviator sunglasses which the artist painted over with imaginative visions of the future and a humorously recursive painting of people looking at painting of people looking at a painting of people looking at a painting ad infinitum (I particularly loved that the final set of viewers included a penguin in a little aviation helmet)
Up next I passed by a special site specific piece created by the artist Andy Goldsworthy in honor of the museum’s 2013 expansion called Stone Sea. The piece consists of 25 stone arches made from locally sourced limestone and arranged to look almost like rolling waves. It was very odd (especially if you miss any text explaining the piece and just see a courtyard filled with overlapping arches), but kinda magical in its own weird way like a sort of fairy tale labyrinth.
Last but not least (I told you it was a huge museum), I visited the museum’s collection of art from Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. Highlights for me included: carvings of different figures used in rituals by the Madak people from near curent Papua New Guinea; a delightfully wild Peruvian vessel depicting a man happily being eaten by four wolves as part of a human sacrifice; a cute little stone faced believed to have been part of a Teotihuacan dwelling in Mexico circa 250 BC; a series of beautifully patterned ceramic bowls from various tribes along the American Southwest; several Zapotec sculptures in form of various seated men in ceremonial garb; some Oceanic art designed to adorn and shield canoes; a gorgeously ornate silver disc by a Chimú artist; and several thinly hammered metal figures (though sadly I didn’t write down and couldn’t find out any more information than that).
After the museum, I made my way to another of Forest Park’s major attractions: The St Louis Zoo. The zoo’s origins can also be traced back to the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. The Smithsonian Institute supplied the fair with a walk-through birdcage called the Flight Cage. Clocking in at 228 feet long, 84 feet wide, and 50 feet high, the cage was at the time the largest birdcage ever built, and it remains one of the largest free-flight aviaries in the world. When the fair was over, the city bought the cage from the Smithsonian rather than dismantling it and sending it all the way back to DC. It proved to be a popular attraction, sparking interest in expanding into a full-fledged zoo. The city set aside 77 acres in Forest Park, and in 1914 the Zoo was opened to the public. Since then it’s gone through several expansions and has been ranked by USA Today as the best zoo in the country. Best of all, like the art museum, the zoo is completely free thanks to funds set aside from city taxes.
My first stop in the zoo was Grizzly Ridge, a state-of-the-art bear habitat that provides plenty of space for the big guys to just spend their days lounging on warm rocks and swimming around, which looked like a heck of a way to live. I always think bears are so fun to watch because they’re almost like enormous dogs, and it’s funny to watch them look like big lumbering predators on land only to become big ol’ playful goobers as soon as they hit the water.
After watching the bears, I went to what is always my favorite exhibit in any zoo or aquarium: the penguins. I love penguins because they are just such improbably animals. They’re squat and pudgy yet filled with attitude, they walk funny, they sound funny, and even though they’ve had millions of years of evolving to walk on icy terrains they slip and fall all the time. They’re ridiculous and I always enjoy taking a minute to check out their antics. I got a big kick out of the biggest, fattest penguin just standing in front of the fan in the enclosure and thus blocking it from blowing on anyone else. He had it all figure out.
At this point, my phone died, and it started to rain pretty heavily so I cut my visit to the zoo a little short and I sadly don’t have any photos of what I did continue to see. The big thing I made sure to see was the primate house because they were both indoors and very fun. The one thing I made sure to put in my notes was that I saw a chimpanzee lying in a hammock, not letting the rain ruin his chill out time. Boy, do I wish I had a photo of that.
After the zoo, I recharged with a trip to the Northwest Coffee Roasting Company, a St. Louis coffee shop that prides themselves on their coffee bean roasting expertise. They had a relaxed old-fashioned aesthetic and a very tasty house brew that made them a very welcome stop.
After coffee, I got a late lunch/early dinner at a fantastic Irish Pub called John D. McGurk’s. I was still a little soaked from the rain, so hearty pub food was just what I needed. For maximum heartiness, I got a Guinness Beef Stew which consisted of a perfectly fluffy sourdough bread bowl jam-packed with tender steak tips braised with Guinness, fat chunks of roast potatoes, and carrots all in a wonderfully savory stew. It was everything I wanted in that moment.
After my stew, I hung out with one of the comics I had met the night before and really liked, Ella. We met up at a cute local bookstore called Left Bank Books, and perused there for a bit while chatting. We became fast friends bonding over all sorts of shared pop-culture and comedy obsessions, and she was able to give me lots of helpful St. Louis suggestions for the rest of my week.
Ella was also hosting the night’s open mic, so it was a pretty smooth transition from hanging out to comedy-ing. The mic was in a nice little Thai restaurant called My Thai that was pleasantly super on bored with a bunch of strange people taking up the front of their space to try out jokes. Restaurant mics can sometimes be weird because they tend to have more “normal” and unsuspecting patrons than bars or comedy clubs, but when everyone’s into it, it’s like having a bit of an audience and fortunately tonight’s mic was like that.
I loved Ella’s host set, but since I singled her out from last night’s mic in the interest of fairness I’ll spotlight another comic I really liked from the mic. I think my favorite joke of the night came from a very funny and just naturally likable comic named Jeremey Hellwig with his bit: “They say Batman’s the World’s Greatest Detective but he’s not actually good at detecting things. The Riddler? His main thing is leaving additional evidence.”
Other highlights:
Ella Fritts - I used to think, “Mary Kate and Ashley, how do you always get such cute boys? But it’s those movies happen inn a twelve year old girls fever dream”
Chad Wallace- Air Mattresses are the air bags of failed relations ships
Corey - I never thought it was douchey to wear sunglasses inside until I saw someone wearing sunglasses inside of my girlfriend
Tommy Moslander - I had a wheelchair growing up and because of that I got pushed around a lot. Not pushed around pushed around but like bullied
My own set went really well, and I also got some egg rolls from the restaurant so it was really a double win. All of the comics were really nice and supportive and hung out chatting for a bit after the mic. Ella had to run to a show after the mic, and another comic, Chad, needed a ride home so I offered to give him a lift and then catch the tail end of her show.
Ella’s show was at a hip artsy dive bar called the Way Out Club which has sadly closed since my road trip. It was a gleefully strange space with bowling pins hanging from the ceiling and all kinds of random posters on the wall. While I was ordering a drink, a woman with two tanks tattooed above her chest noticed I was wearing a Slackers t-shirt and started geeking out with me about this NY ska band that I love. The place had a fun vibe.
Other than Ella I caught two comics’ sets but they were both really good. A guy named Chris Cyr did an amazingly surreal extended bit where he pretended to be doing a YouTube Meditation video that just became more and more unhinged as it went along. I really can’t do it justice in writing but it was an incredible performance. The other comedian was a guy named Alex Frank who did about how it is an honest to god true fact that Biblical scholars have been debating for years about what happened to Jesus’ foreskin because he was Jewish so he must have been circumcised but he was also God and not fully human so there is a lot of room for really smart people to have deeply silly arguments about whether the foreskin is here on Earth somewhere or if went to Heaven with the rest of Jesus. This reached its craziest when one theologian just made the claim that the foreskin must have become Saturn’s Ring. All of this is somehow true (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Prepuce) so Alex’s set was both hilarious and informative.
Favorite Random Sightings: an insanely named costume store called Johnnie Brock's Dungeon Party Warehouse; a barbershop called Jack of all Fades; a place called Mi Hungry burgers; and a hot dog restaurant called The Wacked out Weiner
Regional Observations: Forest Park is really quite beautiful and it just feels like its own totally separate entity from the more bustling city proper.
Random Joke Of the Day: A woman got on a bus holding a baby. The busdriver said:"That's the ugliest baby I've ever seen." In a huff, the woman slammed her fare into the fare box and took an aisle seat near the rear of the bus.
The man seated next to her sensed that she was agitated and asked her what was wrong.
"The bus driver insulted me." she fumed.
The man sympathized and said: "Why, he's a public servant and shouldn't say things to insult passengers."
You're right." She said. "I think I'll go back up there and give him a piece of my mind."
"That's a good idea." the man said. "Here, let me hold your monkey."
Song of the Day:
Who knew French superstar Josephine Baker was born in St. Louis?