None of us knew what to expect except for Impressionist paintings and a Mondrian exhibit.
The Mondrian exhibit walks viewers through his Romantic, Impressionist, Expressionist and Cubist periods before he hit the squares and primary colors and "Neoplasticism" (breaking abstract art down to its purest form). But the prize winner was what they had left of their regular collection. We crossed into the manor house and ran straight into four Gauguins. Be still my beating heart. They also had some stunning Pisarros and an early (1865) Monet of a tree in a park with bright light that you don't see in his later work. That was hanging across from a nice later Monet Parisian bridge piece. One rare Gauguin from 1881 featured a boy sleeping in Tehamana's pose in Manao Tupapau, painted ten years later. That was a painting I don't remember ever seeing before, even after studying Gauguin for a full year, so that got a big "wowwee!"
Further into the manor house part, there's a sculpture from Jean Gauguin (Gauguin's son) of a mermaid and merman. Gauguin's wife, Mette, was Danish, by the way. It seemed to be Jean's first commissioned work. I liked it, but he was under a big shadow from his dad--you never really hear about Jean Gauguin.
They had a collection of Danish painters from the 1800s. One painter named Skovgaard did realistic travel paintings in the 1880s of places like Italy, Greece and Java that looked like photographs.
Next, we headed up the coast to Louisiana, another art museum. This trip showed us a different side of the strand and a few more places where family has lived. Denmark is a small country, but just like other parts of Europe, a short-ish drive takes you into a different landscape. The Køge Bugt area south of Copenhagen is full of cozy cottages. The part of the coast we drove was north of Copenhagen on Øresund. Øresund is the sound between Denmark and Sweden where sailors used to pay an øre to pass. This area's housing is like Charlotte's Myers Park (with substantially more statuary). Then a field would pop up with a huge manor home or castle peeking out in the distance.
Louisiana is just as much of a must-see for the exhibits as it is for its architecture and the fact that it's positioned on a cliff over the sound. We started in the cafe, overlooking the sound and the Calder mobiles, with open faced sandwiches and hot tea. Here's another explicit sandwich pic:
There seems to be a smaller and smaller permanent collection here. The Giacometti sculpture and this Debuffet are part of what's always here, so we could take pictures.
The best part of this Louisiana trip was a visiting exhibit of Richard Avedon portraiture. Very well installed. Started with work from his Harper's Bazaar period in the 50s with models like Carmen and Suzy Parker in Paris. They had his Charlie Chaplin, his Marilyn Monroe, some Warhol, tons of authors, a 1970s American politicians collection, a 1980s trip to Colorado/Montana/Texas, and ending with his fall-of-the-wall pictures in Berlin.
Here's our general feeling about a day of art and our weeks in Denmark. Thumbs up! Or, er, one BIG thumb up.
