and more panel painting from the Getty...

--------------------- THE GETTY, LA. HANGIN' WITH THE OL' TIMERS ---------------------------------

While visiting my good friend in Los Angeles this past September, I spent an entire morning & afternoon happily treading along the sunny unconfined confines of the Getty Museum.  I say 'un' because this museum's ability to have its interior and exterior (inside - where the art is and outside - where nature's art is) interact and flow is quite successful and enjoyable.  It reminds me of the museums of Southern Europe: hillside semi-tropical locales where sky and window merge and outdoor/natural light acts as a key player in the drama of the artworks.  This is as opposed to many, say Northeast U.S. museums (save parts of the MET and some other spaces), where the spaces are dark and cavernous and infused with artificial everything.  There are appeals to this kind of set-up, but there seem to be even more appeals to something like the Getty - especially on a wonderfully bright warm, but not too hot kinda L.A. day...

But, I digress: let's talk about panel painting.  This stuff was never a big fave amongst my college art history teachers.  It was always kinda blown past en route to the High Rennaisance with its Teenage Mutant Ninja turtle names, but, nowadays I find its sense of the decorative, its flatness, and its naivete infinitely endearing.  Ornament weaves through strange, abstracted spaces and framing devices create worlds within worlds within worlds.  I don't care about the (Biblical) themes, to be honest - but the formal devices investigated during this time period - their folky magic - hypnotize me.  Although, I do suppose the religious themes do instigate this "magic" - the angels, the bolts of lightning from above, the halo's and gold-leafed auras.  The frames and their folded out/citied structures make these pieces less paintings and moreover ritual devices.  This, i am immensely interested in... and some of the attention to decorative detail - check out that cloth pattern in the last pic of my first post!!  Total wowsertown...