Friday, February 27, 2009

The Barnes Foundation

This is the greatest museum of modern art that nobody has ever heard of.

Albert Barnes made a fortune in pharmaceuticals (preventing syphilis transmission between mother and child during childbirth, in case you were curious) and he dumped the entire fortune into art. His foundation owns 180+ paintings by Renoir, 69 Cézannes, and 60-odd Matisses.

And these are not minor Matisse paintings either. Each one is a major masterpiece. And Matisse painted a mural in the hall himself. In fact, this is possibly the greatest collection of Matisses anywhere in the world.

There are 800-odd paintings, and the total list of artists is like the whos-who of modern art (van Gogh, Picasso, Chirico, Klee, Modigliani, Monet, Manet, Seurat, Prendergast, Gauguin.)

It's in a remote suburb of Philly (for now - it's all very complicated - there's a lawsuit in the works.)

They keep an extraordinary tight control on the images so for now, you will just have to believe this review. Or buy their books. Or go there.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Hancock

What did the reviewers see in this? It was bad, atrociously bad. Not even make-fun-of-it bad. Just bad.

And you don't even get Will Smith naked! Nor the woman. Or a bad sex scene. So what was the point again?