Check this out: Recent Art Gallery Visit

My Spring Break 2017 was one of the quickest and laziest spring breaks I've ever had. I didn't go anywhere hot, I couldn't visit my family in Massachusetts instead I just hung out with my best friend, bought food all day, spent time with my dad and my half siblings and caught up on Netflix. My recent trip to the Metropolitan Museum of art has been quite a mission but it was a success. It all started with this crazy weather that went from 65 degrees to 65 inches of snow.

Anyway, this was my first time going to the Met and I loved it. I mostly tried to get a little peek of each and every part of the museum before it closed at 5:30 pm. The first exhibition I entered was upstairs and majority modern art paintings which caught my attention; since I don't have any knowledge of art history whatsoever. I saw themes ranging from cubism by a majority of french painters and surrealism which is my favorite. My goal was to see all paintings and ceramics for another class. Since it was my first time going to an art museum all together it felt amazing to be exposed everything being displayed. I loved seeing the European paintings and sculptures as well as the contemporary exhibit.

I came to the museum on a day with a pretty decent temperature outside and only 3 hours to spare till it was time to close. My first piece of art I took a photo of automatically caught my attention because it reminded me so much of the first artist photographer that I ever learned about. Cindy Sherman. Her photographs were so powerful and spoke with words that haven't been said but were able to heard through visual messages. Although the artist isn't Cindy Sherman she did seem to embody a lot of her style in her photographs. I turned to look at the captioned information and to my surprise I saw that it was not only a self-portrait but also mentioned Cindy Sherman who had similar photography as her who would be discovered about a century later. I knew this some how had to be connected to each other but I was more shocked to know that Cindy Sherman could have been inspired by this artist first. In the description it talks about how in the photograph Hase either has tripped or thrown herself down a flight of stairs.

Elisabeth Hase "Downstairs" 1948

 Just like Sherman, Hase had also been experimenting with  staged scenarios that had been exploring feminine identity. In this photograph, I perceived it as if she had thrown herself a flight of stairs purposely in a way to make fun of the way how silly women look when they are in peril. Just like in movies that show women, they are almost always in need of help by the male hero that is going to save them. In Hase self-portrait I think she sets the stage for many more feminist photographers like Sherman to expand on. One important I also noticed about Hases' self portrait was that there was no gaze into the viewers eyes like most females in art itself just as John Berger points out about the "male gaze" in his book 'Ways of Seeing'.

Fildelma Cadmus Kirstein "Self Portrait"

The next artist I found happened to be in front of the contemporary art exhibit gallery 913. The artist happened to have a self-portrait of her and what looked like her husband next to each other. Besides the fact that the portraits literally were the first two paintings I saw upon entering the exhibit, the women in the portrait looked so intimate with a towel covering her head. The artist's name is Fildelma Cadmus Kirstein, an american painter whom I haven't heard of. In the description next to her it says first and foremost says her life and work has always been overshadowed by her brother Paul Cadmus who was also a painter, and her husband Lincoln Kirstein who was very well-known at the time being the co-founder of the New York Ballet. So automatically this women already had felt the need to be extraordinary, even more than the men near to her in order to be remembered by. In the painting itself, the description describes her gaze as bold and returning straight to the viewers eyes. She has her shoulders bare, which was probably very "taboo" at the time. She has her plush towel wrapped around her head. The bright sky blue color background sugge sky.  The description also provides that Kirstein had been sunbathing as a way of having leisure time with her husband and brother at the time in Fire Island. Kirsteins own work is a very interesting portrait that had a very good spot in the exhibit where everyone can see upon entering. She was probably a very underappreciated artist especially with having an iconic husband at the time to overshadow her talents that are now displayed in the museum.