Last weekend was one of a rare two day weekend for me. I often work on Sundays and my day off is a moving target. On Saturday I luxuriated in doing nothing--I spent much of my time on the sofa finishing up Winter by Marissa Meyer--the last book in the Lunar Chronicles. But by Sunday, I was recharged and wanted to get out. I didn't feel like a hike as my ankle--sprained in November--was giving me grief. But hiking is just one of my agenda items for making my weekends more meaningful. Museums are also worthy of adventures. I consider Pasadena in my backyard and Pasadena is chalk full of quality museums. One of them being the Norton Simon. Formerly knows as the Pasadena Art Institute, in 1974 industrialist Norton Simon and a board of trustees assumed control. The Norton Simon is known as one of the largest privately assembled art collections in the world. With the Huntington just a neighborhood or two away, the amount of art at my fingertips is mind boggling.
I hadn't been to Norton Simon in a while, so with a perfect day awaiting me, I gathered up the essentials--camera, wallet, & book, hopped in my car and was purchasing my entrance about 20 minutes later. The first thing that catches your eye when you walk through the doors is the statue of Buddha. Since Buddha's serene expression set the tone for my visit as I wandered from gallery to gallery just letting the experience flow over me.
From Degas to Van Gogh, I meandered through the Impressionists moving on to Picasso and others from Cubism to Abstract. A walk through history in 100 feet with my own memories of travels--both armchair and actual keeping me company.
And then I stopped, jolted back to the here and now.
Kandinsky. Surely I had seen Kandinsky's work before, the name is familiar. But today, his work resonated deep within. The simplicity, the beauty of colors, the harmony of what I was seeing and my mood within. Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) hailed from Russia but later immigrated to first Munich and then to France. Known as both an artist and a art theorist, he is credited with creating one of the first purely abstract works. And it was the abstract that was on display. The first piece I saw was Unequal (1932). The information next to the work confirmed what I was feeling--a spiritual quality...always rested at the core of his abstract painting. I felt that I was in a sea of tranquility floating in time and space.
Moving on to Heavy Circles (1927), I found what I had left the house looking for. Reading Kandisky's thought, I felt I understood him perfectly.
Why does the circle fascinate me? It is:
1. the most modest form, but asserts itself unconditional,
2. a precise, but inexhaustible variable,
3. simultaneously stable and unstable,
4. simultaneously loud and soft,
5. a single tension carries countless tensions within.
The circle is the synthesis of the greatest oppositions. It combines the concentric and the eccentric in a single form and in equilibrium. Of the three primary forms (triangle, circle, square), it points most clearly to the forth dimension.
The remainder of my visit was in contemplation of Kadnisky and how moved I was by his work. I wandered through the gardens with my camera capturing images that caught my attention.
I am not an artist in the normal definition. But I do enjoy sparking the artist within with photos.
It was with great joy that I spotted my own personal way of being able to pay homage to Kandinsky in the garden. A modernist sculpture of a woman with holes for eyes. I loved the contrast between the dark patina of the bronze and the garden visible beyond.
Afterward I sat in the garden, relaxing into my surroundings with a cup of coffee. I pulled out my book, letting all that was going around me, fade around me as the story unwrapped in my head.
Eventually, I came back to myself, toured the remainder of the museum and left feeling that my Sunday was well spent.