The Must-See List
CMA Quick Tours
CMA Quick Tours
A true rarity, Juan de Pareja’s portrait of King Philip IV of Spain is one of only 10 signed pieces by the artist. Pareja was an enslaved worker in the shop of Spanish Golden Age painter Diego Velazquez. After being freed, Pareja became a painter in his own right. This portrait of Philip is a composite of some of Velazquez’s portraits of the monarch over the years.
Sandro Botticelli’s workshop painted this scene as a true fresco. Dry pigments ground into lime water were applied to a thin layer of wet plaster. As the plaster reacts with the air, it is converted into a lime crust. Frescoes literally become trapped in place. This is the only Boticelli fresco outside of Italy.
In Buddhism, a bodhisattva is someone who is able to reach nirvana but delays doing so to help others on their journey to enlightenment. This bodhisattva represents Guanyin, a merciful goddess who can take on both male and female forms. Guanyin has spiritual gifts and can bestow health, wealth, and children.
A social realist, Kyra Markham painted scenes of American life like to this Post-war scene. The vibrant colored clothing and jovial expressions of the community members contrast the restrained expression of the lone figure in the center of the room. What do you think her expression might mean?
Illuminated manuscripts are embellished texts decorated with gold or silver leaf. The artist used inks and tempera paints to create books like this by hand. This Book of Hours centers around the Virgin Mary, with a set of prayers to be recited in the home at eight different times of the day, just as monks publicly chanted prayers during the eight monastic hours.
Robert S. Duncanson became esteemed as a landscape painter in the mid 19th century, a time when this feat was particularly impressive for an African American man. Here, he has painted the mountains in the background paler to give the piece depth, a technique called aerial perspective.
Architect and Designer Frank Gehry used a bentwood technique to create this chair. Wood is soaked or steamed to make it pliable and then shaped. Once dried, the wood retains its bend. Gehry—a Canadian—named the chair Cross Check because it reminded him of hockey sticks.
Louis Majorelle’s armoire embodies Art Nouveau style with a natural theme, organic shapes, and asymmetry. Marquetry, a technique in which pieces of wood are put together like a puzzle, creates the images of birds, flowers, and the grasshopper (which the CMA has adopted as our childrens’ mascot, Gladys).
Inspired by the nature of Louisiana, Sadie Irvine drew scenes such as this landscape directly onto leather-hard ceramic vessels. She would then free-hand carve into the clay to reveal a relief of the image. Irvine studied and taught at Newcomb College in New Orleans, which had been founded expressly to instruct young women in pottery, printmaking, embroidery, and bookmaking.
Although not an organized movement, the Washington Color School of the 1960s represented a very important evolution in abstract art through the possibilities of clear, bright color. Painter Sam Gilliam experimented by taping and pouring colors, and staining and folding canvases. Around 1965, Gilliam became very influential by introducing the idea of unsupported canvases by draping them from ceilings and piling them on floors, adding a sculptural element to his work.