We drove up to Williamstown Massachusetts yesterday to see the Gerald and Sara Murphy exhibit at the Williams College Museum of Art. All the pictures above are from the grounds of the Williams campus, courtesy of yours truly, except for the picture of the painting "Wasp and Pear" which is courtesy of MoMA.org, as I was naturally not allowed to photograph the artworks in the museum.
It was a lovely day for a drive and we had a great time.
The exhibit was interesting. I was admittedly mostly interested in the art even though Gerald Murphy only painted 14 known canvases and they have not all survived. I thought the paintings were spectacular and I am amazed that he gave up painting after only 7 years because he felt he would never be more than "second rank". Yes the pictures are somewhat autobiographical and they capture much of the spirit of cubism juxtaposed with an irrepressible American style and celebration of the good life. But they are beautiful, sometimes stunningly so, and very powerful and evocative. George and I were both taken by "cocktail":
Which is very modern, very American, very much a celebration of the glamorous life in the 20’s.
I was also very much taken with "Wasp and Pear" (in the collage above). The color are different, softer, and yet at the same time more threatening. The painting celebrates the innocence and sweetness of the pear, but also the sting of the hornet, how sweetness often hides the pain of destruction. It is both lovely and harbors a dangerous edge.
Oddly, although the exhibit was far from empty, very few of our fellow museum-goers were spending much time looking at the paintings. George and I were the only ones there when we were at the part of the exhibit, which was good for us because we spent more time looking at the paintings than almost anything else. Although we often had to jostle our away around other visitors to look at photographs, journal entries, and various memorabilia, we had the paintings to ourselves.
The letters, photographs, sketches, and various remnants of the Murphy’s lives did not interest us as much as the art. I think this is probably what some would consider a character flaw of mine; I am not really interested in that kind of personal artifact. There were fabulous and interesting sketches by Picasso and a nice group of cubist works, but it was Murphy’s art that attracted us, and it seems to me that the paintings were the most interesting part of the exhibit, both for their quality, and probably for what they tell us about the sophisticated artist who painted them. It is a shame he gave it up. But we are lucky they survived.