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soft
wonderfully tactile mosses and lichens abound in the Ardennes woods
linear
geometric stained glass windows in the La Roche-en-Ardenne church
a small (!) selection of Belgian beers
chevrons
pine forest abstract, bird’s eye view
A is for…
angular
crows congregate around the belfry in La Roche-en-Adenne
the town’s higgledy-piggledy rooftops
concentric
mallard drakes frolic in the Ourthe River
the beginning & end of a tree laid bare
stacked
stone walled garden in the town of Durbuy*
view through the ruins of La Roche-en-Ardenne’s 9th-18th century castle
reflected
warm, earth-tones reflected in the Ourthe River
filigreed
old growth and new in the Ardennes woods
cross-hatched
beautiful building in the centuries old town of Durbuy
*(oops, apparently that should be ‘centuries old city‘!)
A previous instalment of ‘shapes & colours gathered’ can be found here >
Like this:
I cannot resist a natural history museum, but visiting one is always a very conflicted experience for me*. On the one hand I’m filled with awe and wonder at the beauty, diversity and downright magnificent strangeness of nature, and on the other hand I’m wholly overwhelmed by the collective weight of all those dead creatures – thousands upon thousands skinned, stacked, bottled, tagged, pinned, preserved, shellacked and mounted for our edification and viewing pleasure.
My experience at Vienna’s Naturhistorisches Museum was no different. Complete and utter absorption coupled with a persistent and unshakeable sense of loss…
In our endless search for answers we’ve got a lot to answer for.
sunfish, inside and out
(A beautiful sunfish skeleton photo, taken by Lewis Carroll in 1857,
can be found here)
* I’ve recently started reading Stephen T. Asma’s ‘Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads: The Culture of Natural History Museums‘, and am hoping this will shed some more light on the whys and wherefores of the very polar responses I (we?) have to natural history museums.
… and the stripes, splotches, stitches, curlicues, chevrons, colour-fields, drips, daubs, grids, meshes, patinas etc.
(t) ‘Untitled (Multicolored Nest)’ (detail), Judith Scott, 1988-89, yarn and twine with unknown armature – American Folk Art Museum | (b) Well-worn record store floor – Other Music, Greenwich Village
(t) Paint splattered pavement (beneath graffiti encrusted wall) – Williamsburg | (b) ‘One: Number 31, 1950′ (detail), Jackson Pollock, 1950, oil and enamel on unprimed canvas – MoMA
After finding an abundance of textures, colours and patterns in New York’s many awesome museums and galleries and on every street corner, I’ve been enjoying discovering the connections between them…
(t) Surface of the moon – American Museum of Natural History | (b) Exterior wooden door detail, Grace Church – East Village
(t) Crewel bedcover (detail), artist unidentified, New England or New York State 1815-1825, wool with wool embroidery – American Folk Art Museum |
(b) Delicate shadows cast by wrought iron fence – Upper East Side
(t) Banded iron formation, “red jasper and iron magnetite… formed billions of years ago” – American Museum of Natural History | (b) Eroded & paint splattered wall – Williamsburg
(t) ‘No.10′ (detail), Mark Rothko, 1950, oil on canvas – MoMA | (b) Light, shadow and rust on backyard wall – City Reliquary Museum
(t) Corrugated iron fence at dusk – Greenpoint | (b) Stone sculpture detail (title unknown?), Isamu Noguchi – The Noguchi Museum, Long Island City, Queens
(t) Sunbathing(!?), high above the High Line – Meatpacking District | (b) ‘Serial Project, I (ABCD)’ (detail), Sol LeWitt, 1966, baked enamel on steel units over baked enamel on aluminium – MoMA
(t) ‘Mme Kupka among Verticals’ (detail), František Kupka, 1910-11, oil on canvas – MoMA | (b) Building facades – South Street Seaport
(t) Marble wall in the lobby of the Chrysler Building, 1930 – Midtown | (b) ‘The Sleeping Gypsy’ (detail), Henri Rousseau, 1897, oil on canvas – MoMA
(copyrights of all artworks included above remain with the copyright holders)
