Art

Big, really big, Sargent ...

John Singer Sargent, Self Portrait, 1906,
Ufizzi Gallery, Florence

John Singer Sargent is among my favorite artists. Up where I live, the opportunities for viewing a Sargent painting in its museum habitat are about as rare as iguanas in Finland. Maybe the Seattle Art Museum has one or two, but Seattle's a seven hour drive away.

I've examined several Sargents at the MET in New York and anyone watching me do so would probably write me off as a hyperactive weasel. I stand close enough to count dust motes in the brush strokes, then stride quickly to the other side of the room to get the full picture, back again to the brush strokes, then once again to the far wall ... over and over. Up close you see pretty much a mess of color strokes and swirls, but from a distance the strokes and swirls blend into coherent beauty. His rendering of drapery fascinates me especially: How can a white zig-zag be a fold in an evening gown? I step away and savor the "aha" moment.

One day, while not doing much of anything at our place in Mexico, I was sifting through some Facebook detritus when a message from the World War I Museum in Kansas City popped up. Sargent's painting Gassed, it said, would be on loan to the Museum from February 23 through June 3, 2018. Leaving its home at the Imperial War Museum North in Manchester, England, the painting would be on display at various sites in North America.

After some laborious mental math (any mental math is laborious for me) I discovered that we would be in Kansas City visiting our daughter and her husband from April 10 through April 22. Applying my Sherlockian deductive skills, I concluded that that span of time was smack in the middle of the painting's sojourn at the WWI museum. Is that you knocking, opportunity? Come on in, take a seat.

Gassed

Gassed, John Singer Sargent, 1919

The painting is a colossus.  Measuring 9 feet by 21 feet, it shows a line of soldiers, gassed on the battlefield, their eyes bandaged, being led to a dressing station near the small village of Bailleulval in northern France.

View of Gassed with museum guard for scale.

While the painting presents one of the many horrors of a WWI battlefield in vivid detail, it also hints at how inured some combatants had become to the carnage. In the background, you see a soccer match being contested, the players dressed in blue and red kits.

A soccer match in progress

We spent over an hour looking at this incredible work, I, of course, counting dust motes in brush strokes and backing up to take in the entire painting. Also in the gallery were charcoal sketches and studies Sargent did while visiting the battlefield in late 1918.  

If you appreciate Sargent's work and if you're near a place where Gassed will be exhibited on its North American tour, make the drive and pony up the entrance fee. Money well spent, I'd say.

Bonus: Thomas Hart Benton

Rachael's husband, Andy, signed up for a charity horseshoe toss in Independence, Missouri. He tried to explain how the event worked and who got the proceeds but it got somewhat Byzantine and I checked out. 

After the shoes had been tossed and a lunch at the local greasy spoon, we headed over to the Harry S. Truman Library and Museum. What the heck why not, it's not everyday I turn up in Independence, Missouri. 

I noodled around the lobby while Mary paid the admission fee and I sort of looked without seeing at the entrance wall. Then I kind of thought without thinking that 'hey, that looks familiar. I know that artist.'  

Independence and the Opening of the West, Thomas Hart Benton, 

right side of the entrance to the Harry S.Truman Museum

Independence and the Opening of the West, left side

Benton started work on the mural in early 1960, three years after the Truman museum opened its doors. I wonder how many people walk past this work without realizing that it's by an outstanding regional American artists. I damn near did.