#l:nyc

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The Little Theater

1934

Salvador Dalí

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Man at the Fountain

1946

Honoré Sharrer (American)

Sharer's paintings often ennoble working-class subjects through a studied precision evocative of the Renaissance artists she admired. This example presents a man in work clothes sitting on the edge of a fountain (based on one in Bryant Park). Apple tree branches enter the composition from both sides, framing him like a saint, while delicately rendered flowers sprout from the ground. Most unusual is the violet band running along the bottom of the composition, on which more flowers (now cut) appear with ladybugs, red onions, and a large blue butterfly, suggesting metamorphosis. Ripe with potential symbolism, this panoply of forms drawn from nature gives Man on a Fountain the appearance of a devotional image.

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The Lovers

1913-14

Marc Chagall (French)

Fairy-tale details of a Russian town can be seen through the window of Chagall's imaginary scene of his room in Vitebsk, painted in Paris. The lovers represent the artist with his fiancée, Bella Rosenfeld. Mainly self-taught, Chagall developed a unique style that blends sentiment and fantasy—an effect the poet Guillaume Apollinaire called "supernatural."

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From Green to White

1954

Yves Tanguy (American, born France)

Uncertain reflections of the material world hover in the expansive sky of this late work, painted one year before Tanguy's death. The totemic objects suggest the architectural ruins of a lost civilization.

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Meeting (The Three Graces)

1912

Manierre Dawson (American)

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Summer Night

1913

Albert Bloch (American)

In the distinct brand of Cubism that he developed while living temporarily in Paris, Rivera used small dots of color, a technique known as Pointillism, to amplify contrasts in texture and pattern. Here, the sleek bottle of green liquid, presumably absinthe, and shiny metal spoon, necessary for preparing the potent drink, are paired against a strip of camouflage tablecloth, a reference to World War I. Additionally, he includes references to his homeland, such as the cigar box with a partial label reading BENITO JUA underneath a miniature Mexican landscape. This label refers to Benito Juárez, the President of Mexico from 1858 until his death in 1872.

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Between Earth and Heaven

2006

El Anatsui (Ghanaian)

This work by an African master of international renown is a highly original creation that constitutes a response to a classical form of expression. It is a powerful assertion of the vItality of contemporary expression in Africa and the continuity that exists with the historical legacy that is the focus of The Metropolitan Museum of Art's African collection. The recent series of works that Between Earth and Heaven relates to refer to the celebrated West African traditions of strip-woven textiles, namely that of Kente developed by Akan and Ewe weavers in Anatsui's native Ghana. Such traditional textiles are at once monumental in scale and highly sculptural in the way they drape the body as the apparel of leaders. The undulation of this work evokes that tactile quality, and its resplendent color scheme of gold, red, and black translates and transposes the aesthetic of finely woven silk into the medium of base metal recycled from liquor bottle caps.