Education - Art Tales - Matthew's Dream

Royal-blue, sunshine-yellow, kelly-green, deep pink, and orange petal-like shapes and other geometric forms are arranged in a grid-like pattern against a cream-white field in this abstract, horizontal artwork. Applied to five joined, vertical canvases, the design is anchored at the center by a vertical blue pillar encasing a vertical row of four flower-like forms. Flanking the central column to either side, flowers are arranged in four rows of five blooms. Each bloom is a single, flat color, created with four cut pieces of painted paper. The arrangement of the colors vary so the flowers do not create a rigid pattern, though it seems like a pattern at first glance. The flowers are separated by clove-like forms creating X-shapes at the corner of each bloom. A stylized face takes the place of one flower near the center of each panel. Each oval face, eyes, nose, and mouth are drawn with black lines. Column-like forms in royal blue encase the composition along the left and right edges, and a row flicks like inverted commas lines the top edge. The flicks over the left half are blue and the flicks over the right half are green. The artist signed and dated the work with blue paint at the bottom right: “HM 53 53.”

Henri Matisse, Large Decoration with Masks, 1953, gouache on paper, cut and pasted on white paper, mounted on canvas, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, 1973.17.1

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Black lines and one small, black triangular shape stand out against patches of color, in indigo and sky blue, pumpkin orange, butter yellow, emerald green, and ruby red, against a white background in this vertical, abstract painting. The paint seems thinly applied, resembling watercolor. Near the lower right corner, the black shape is roughly triangular and has five curving, parallel lines emanating from the bottom. Given the title of this painting, Improvisation 31, Sea Battle, the black lines could represent tall masts and outlines of sails amid areas of vibrant color that make up a boat and water around it.

Wassily Kandinsky, Improvisation 31 (Sea Battle), 1913, oil on canvas, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, 1978.48.1

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The outline of a fish is made with bent, colored wire and then hung with fragments of colored glass to loosely resemble scales in this free-floating sculpture. In this photograph, the open mouth faces our left. The body is made with a thick gauge, mustard-yellow wire. Finer, gold-colored wire creates a honeycomb-like pattern within the body. Pieces of colored glass hang within most of the cells. The irregularly shaped pieces are clear or in tones of brick red, indigo or sky blue, amber brown, pearl white, or emerald green. A few cells have little bits of metal, including a washer, a disk pierced with holes, and a spiraling piece of wire. The thicker yellow wire makes a circle near the mouth, creating an eye, which is hung with two pieces of glass in plum purple and pale lilac. To our right, the tail is as tall as the body and half its length. It is outlined with thick, red wire. Another piece of wire runs along the middle of the tail, and thinner red wire is strung from the central wire to the upper and lower edges, mimicking the rays of the fish’s fin. A fin along the bottom center of the fish’s body is made with thick, royal-blue wire that balances across the bottom rim of the fish. On the side closer to us, the blue wire is bent into a boomerang shape. It is suspended within a cell close to the bottom of the fish’s body, and is balanced on the far side with a piece of cobalt-blue glass. A hand-shaped pendant hangs from the point of the fin closest to us. The wall behind the hanging sculpture is fog gray.

Alexander Calder, Finny Fish, 1948, steel rod, wire, glass, objects, and paint, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Klaus G. Perls, 1996.120.15

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Geometric and wavy shapes in areas of flat color come together as a person holding a small guitar, sitting on a green chair, in this vertical, abstracted painting. Some of the forms are outlined in black. Two dots and a curving line read as a modern smiley face on the person’s head, but a circle to our left and a tall, long oval to our right could be the eyes. The tall oval has short, cilia-like rays at the top and bottom, perhaps eyelashes. Pointed triangles along the bottom of the head area could be a beard or mustache. A shallow, upside-down, black U over the head is filled in with slate blue, and is presumably a hat. Areas on the torso have black grids creating diamond patterns against tomato red or bright yellow. Another area has vertical red and yellow dashes against a black background. Together they read as a diamond-patterned costume. The guitar is held vertically on the lap. It has an oversized neck vertically striped with black and white, an orange body with slivers of white to our left and black to our right. One hand holds the guitar near the tuning pegs and the other, represented with three wavy lines for fingers, touches the strings below. The chair behind the musician is grass green, and has curving sides and scrolling arms. The background behind the chair has vertical petal-pink and ocean-blue rectangles, against a wall that is off white above and rust brown below. The two zones of the wall are separated by a band with a Greek key pattern in charcoal gray and black. The artist signed and dated the top left corner, “Picasso 24.”

Pablo Picasso, Harlequin Musician, 1924, oil on canvas, Given in loving memory of her husband, Taft Schreiber, by Rita Schreiber, 1989.31.2

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Examples of Works Featured on Tour