Word: watercolor
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...Watercolor: today, the word seems prim and dilute. It suggests Aunt Mabel, poking at her holiday sketchbook in some Tuscan piazza. Oils for real artists, watercolor for amateurs-so the common prejudice runs. Yet in the 18th and 19th centuries, some of the best painting in Europe was done in watercolor. The brilliant achievements of English art in particular, from Rowlandson to Turner, were largely based on the freedom, speed and unique sparkle of the transparent wash. One forgets what the medium could do. Last week the Pierpont Morgan Library produced a salutary reminder, in the form of a show...
...been claimed by feelings." It has always been thus, even when the U.S. was a complete wilderness and artists were merely its sensitive surveyors. In 1585, for example, John White was sent to the New World to "bring back descriptions of beasts, birds, fishes, trees, townes, etc." His watercolor of Indians fishing in Virginia gives not only the basic facts but the artist's response as well-enchantment...
Stage, you gave me the light in which to scintillate but took away the soft shadow and the subtle gleam...I was painting great placards, rationalizing slyly that a watercolor can hardly be seen in a large hall...I began to cherish not quietness-- but thunder, and when you do this it is easy to go wrong. --Yevgeny Yevtushenko, from "The Stage...
...same mood are Paul Klee's Collection of Signs. Southerly which illustrate the inventive variety of the ways two lines can be crossed to indicate a direction. Many of the signs bleed their black edges into the watercolor of yellow and orange warmth. Matta, represented here by a large crayon and pencil drawing from 1939, brings into view the biomorphic qualities of his surrealism...
...Beatrix Potter." Instead of dissecting the stories of Beatrix Potter with words, choreographer Frederick Ashton and the Royal Ballet delve into them using the more eloquent medium of the dance. Five of Beatrix Potter's better known tales are recreated through mime and ballet, with the spirit and watercolor beauty of her books intact...