Lee Ann Torrans Looks at Dallas Museum of Art

DFW Tours! Art in Dallas and Fort Worth. What to see and what to do.

Dallas Museum of Art

March 2, 2012

DFW Tours! Dallas Art and Fort Worth Art

Dallas Museum Art

Tuesday and Wednesday: 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Thursday: 11:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.
Friday*, Saturday, and Sunday: 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Closed Mondays

Late Night Fridays (third Friday of the month, excluding December), the Museum is open until midnight.

General Admission: $10 or less every day
Adults: $10
Seniors (65+) $7
Military personnel (with a current ID): $7
Students (with a current school ID): $5
Children under 12: FREE

First Tuesday of each month is Free although special ticket prices may apply to exhibitions

Thursday Nights, 5–9 p.m., are Free for students and educators with a current school ID.

There are four entrances to the Dallas Museum of Art. This is the South Entrance or the Ross Street Entrance to the Museum.

The North Entrance features the work of Henry Moore and Corravalis, Genesis of Life. This is the motor court entrance leading to underground parking for both the Dallas Museum of Art and the Nasher Sculpture Center.

You may also enter through the Sculpture Garden – which is always free! This is also a Ross Street Entrance. Perhaps this Sculpture Garden is one of the best kept secrets in downtown Dallas. The fountain’s splendid sound quiets the rushing traffic. If you have packed a lunch this the place to have it, under the trees, next to the fountain.

The Dallas Museum of Art ranks among the leading art institutions in the country. At the heart of the Museum and its programs are its encyclopedic collections, which encompass more than 24,000 works and span 5,000 years of history, representing a full range of world cultures.

This webpage is a work in progress. Please forgive the minimal text. It will improve!

Henry Moore. Two Pieces Reclining Figures. North Entrance Dallas Museum of Art.

Genesis, the Gift of Life, glass mosaic, 1954. Miguel Covarrubias (1904–57).

The design is based on the Indian concept of the four elements, seen from left to right: water, earth, fire, and air. This mosaic was originally commissioned by Peter and Waldo Stewart for the Stewart Building in Dallas. It was moved to the north entrance of the Dallas Museum of Art and restored in the 1990′s.

Genesis, the Gift of Life. 1954. Miguel Covarrubias. 1904-11957. Mexico. Gift of The Stewart Company.

Semiramis. Assyrian Queen. 800 B.C. See Featured Artist: William Wetmore Story

The Dallas Museum of Art is known for its arts of:

Ancient Americas
Africa
Indonesia
South Asia
European and American painting
Sculpture
Decorative arts
American and international contemporary art

The DMA contains thousands of works of art. Below, you will find a sample of the collection.

Reeves Collection

Re-creation of Villa Pausa, Coco Chanel’s home on the French Mediterranean, near Monaco Border including Reeves Stunning Art Collection.

Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) Sheaves of Wheat in the Reves Collection at the Dallas Museum of Art is one of thirteen canvases completed in the last month of his life.

A individual page exists for the Reeves Collection. Link Here.

European Art Collection

Fresh flowers changed every week at funding and request of Mrs. McDermott

Gift of Mrs. McDermott

Vincent Van Gogh. Riverbank in Springtime. 1887.

Prosaic Yellow Roses

Caillebotte, Gustave. Yellow Roses in a Vase (Roses jaunes dans un vase).

Edgar Degas. The Masseuse.

Paul Signac. Comblat-le-Chateau. 1887.

Emile Bernard. Bridge at Point Aven. 1891.

Still Life: Bouquet and Compotier (Nature morte: bouquet et compotier) – 1924- Matisse

This painting is part of a group of approximately fifteen important still-life paintings that Matisse produced in Nice in 1924?25. Matisse masterfully plays with the familiar studio props in his third floor apartment at 1 place Charles Félix. The painted standing screen, the tablecloth, and the compotier all reappear in other paintings.

The painting embodies all of the essentials of Matisse’s style. We see his ambitious play with decoration, creating elisions between painted patterns and three-dimensional objects. The undulating black garland of the painted screen seems to merge with a passage of disembodied flowers, somehow closer to abstract design than real flowers. This is a crucial passage in the composition, a point of tension and concentration, where Matisse “breaks” the gilt wooden frame of the screen.

The central part of the bouquet, however, is fully developed, with the artist’s deft touch conjuring unmistakable daisies, roses, and anemones. Examination of each flower reveals the authority with which he constructs his bouquet. Daubs of pale blue, peach, mauve, yellow, and deep red define the flowers, while freely applied brush-loads of vibrant green define the leaves.

Spatial ambiguity is a major theme in the painting through the manipulation of the standing screen in the background, its relationship to the section of wall visible at right, and the varied treatment of the table surface. It is, for instance, extraordinarily difficult to situate the bold black garland at left in space. The grand bouquet itself seems to float between planes and levels of reality. The wall at right, decorated with a print, also hovers ambiguously in space. The more densely painted section of the table directly beneath the still-life objects seems to designate its surface, while the passages in the foreground and at right exist in spatially indeterminate zones.

Matisse masterfully orchestrates a subtle palette of pink, mauve, silvery-gray, and ochre, all in bold contrast to the deep passages of saturated black in the painted garland decoration, in the vase or pot, and in the shadows that penetrate the bouquet.

The artist includes an unabashed homage to Paul Cézanne through the elegant compotier with five mandarins, the small twig of leaves providing a brilliant accent. The rim and foot of the compotier are furthermore delicately highlighted with streaks of gold or yellow. The painting is ebullient and bold. The “break” of the gilt wooden frame of the paneled screen is one expression of the artist’s profound self-confidence. The range of colors that constitute the play of shadows on the tablecloth is another compelling passage. The single red apple at right, outlined firmly in black, is an authoritative visual anchor for the entire right-hand portion of the painting.

In short, the painting is a brilliant work by one of the great masters of modern art. It is quintessential Matisse, balancing a freedom of paint application and spontaneity of composition with a sense of deliberateness and control.

18th and 19th Century European Paintings

Claude Joseph Vernet. Mountain Landscape with Approaching Storm, 1774-1775

Jean Antoine Theodore Giroust. Oedipus at Colonus, 1788.

Jacques Louis David. Apollo and Diana Attacking the Children of Niobe. 1772.

Francesco Salvatore Fontebasso. Family of Darius before Alexander. 1750.

Attributed to Simon Vouet. Madonna and Child. 1635-1640.

Pietro Riollini.

Eugène Delacroix. Portrait of a Woman in a Blue Turban c. 1827

American Art

Frank Church. The Icebergs. 1861

In the summer of 1859 Frederic Church embarked on a monthlong sketching trip aboard a chartered schooner exploring the waters off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador. Buffeted by high seas and afflicted with seasickness, Church sketched icebergs as they appeared on the horizon until the moment they threatened to capsize the small boats used to draw near them. These sketches inspired Church as he embarked on what was his largest canvas to date. Church’s interest in the Arctic stemmed from the disappearance of the Franklin Expedition, lost while searching for the Northwest Passage in 1847. The ensuing search for Franklin caught the American imagination and stimulated interest in the frozen North as an irresistibly beautiful yet deadly frontier.

Church completed this painting during the first months of the Civil War. A Union supporter, he exhibited it in April 1861 to benefit the Union’s Patriotic Fund with the title The North–Church’s Picture of Icebergs. Hailed in press accounts as “the most splendid work of art that has yet been produced in this country,” the painting nonetheless failed to find a buyer. In 1863 Church shipped the painting to London, where it was exhibited under its present title, The Icebergs in deference to Britain’s confederate sympathies. Between the New York and London showings, Church added the broken mast in the foreground, presumed by many to be a reference to Franklin’s ship. Enormously popular in England, Church’s painting was purchased by Sir Edward William Watkin, a railroad magnate and member of Parliament. The ambitious composition and grand scale of The Icebergs are a worthy legacy of the 18th-century tradition of the sublime.

Anne Whitney is one of America’s premiere women sculptors working during the second half of the 19th century. Lady Godiva was added to the Museum collection in June of 2011.

Joan of Arc.

Frank Duveneck, (German) 1848-1919. Lady With a Red Hat, Portrait of Maggie Wilson.

_______

Edouard Villard. Interior.

Contemporary Art

Wassily Kandinsky. Burggrabenstrasse Murnam 1908.

Cinderella at the Kitchen Fire. 1843

In the late 1830s, in response to financial problems, Thomas Sully began to create “fancy pictures” of literary and sentimental subjects for the open market. This painting-one of the largest and most successful of them-illustrates the fairy tale “Cinderella”.

Semiramis, William Wetmore Story. American residing in Rome.

Contemporary Art

Jean Arp. Classical Sculpture. (left) Star in a Dream. (right)

Pablo Picasso. Bust. 1907 to 1908.

Pablo Picasso.

Piet Mondrian

Juan Gris. Guitar and Pipe.

Fernand Leger. Three Women and Still Life. 1920.

Dancing on the Lily Pads of Life. John Alexander. See Featured Artist of the Week.

Decorative Arts

Ancient Mediterranean Art

Ancient American Art

Seated Ruler. Mexico. 900 to 500 B.C.

Mexico. 100 B.C. Ceramic

Asian Art

Japan. Saddle. Edo Period. 1615 to 1868.

Japan. Meiji Period. 1868 to 1911.

Jewelry

Aristide Maillol. Flora. 1911. Auguste Rodin. Jean D’Aire from the Burghers of Calais. Completed 1895.

African Art

The DMA is free the first Tuesday of the month although special ticket prices apply to exhibitions.

Thursday Nights, 5–9 p.m. are free for students and educators with a current school ID. The museum is open until ten each Thursday with live jazz from six to eight p.m.

Discounted joint tickets are available that include admission to the Nasher Sculpture Center,which is adjacent to the DMA.

The Museum offers eight to ten special exhibitions each year.
The Late Night program is on the third Friday of the month, when the Museum remains open until midnight.
The Center for Creative Connections is interactive space to engage in the creative process and experience works of art in a more direct way.