Pub In The Park

New York has long been a magnetic center for some of the world’s greatest artists. It’s no surprise, because they are drawn to the enormous energy of the city, which offers endless inspiration. It’s a very powerful place, and not only because some of the powerful figures in the art communities base their work out of here. The intensity of sensual stimulation is constant, and anyone who’s ever tried to put a vision to canvas with a brush understands how this feeds into the process.

It’s a fantastic city to visit, not only for the extreme of luxury. NY hotel accommodations offer some of the finest places to stay anywhere, and there’s all the city to explore after splendid sleep. It’s not hard to see why artists are attracted to it, and there is a long list of famous New York artists living here today. It’s very likely that anyone who’s made a substantial financial gain from their work, and that doesn’t include all the great artists obviously, has been in the city at one time or another.

In the biography of Frida Kahlo , most people make the association with her and Mexico City, where she lived and worked in a small room in Diego Rivera’s place. This is where she spent most of the time during the height of her career, but they did travel together, and they both lived in New York in 1931-1932.

He was commissioned to do murals in the U.S., and they visited San Francisco and Detroit, and also made this city their home for a time. Like many people, she had a kind of love-hate relationship with the city. While she was thrilled at the pace of culture here, which could sometimes rival her own Mexico City, she was also distraught at the living and working conditions for many of the poor in the city.

For a young artist whose Communist sensibilities were being awakened at around this time, this was a lot to take in, and it haunted Kahlo long after she left. This was also around the time that she miscarried, and it marked the passage of another very difficult time in a very difficult life, and a life that made the world better with her vision.

Until May 23, 2010, the Museum of Baltimore Art is holding a spectacular exhibition on some of the best Paul Cezanne paintings available. “Cezanne and American Modernism” brings together sixteen of the French artist’s watercolors and paintings displayed alongside thirty American artists, such as Maurice Prendergast, Alfred Stieglitz, Man Ray, and Marsden Hartley.

The exhibit demonstrates the influence Cezanne’s work has had on American Modernism. This special event brings together two of his greatest works, “Bathers” and “Mont Sainte-Victoire Seen from the Bibemus Quarry,” with 80 paintings taken from both private and public collections. You’ll find work here from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and from the Art Institute of Chicago.

Cezanne, who lived from 1839 to 1906, is credited as a Post-Impressionist artist who led the art world from the 19th Century into the 20th Century, forming a bridge from the French Masters of Impressionism to Picasso’s Cubism. As Impressionism moved away from realistic depictions of human figures and nature, Cezanne advanced those lines even farther by treating nature as a collection of geometric shapes, with the trunks of trees being treated as if they were cylinders or fruit, such as apples or oranges, treated as if they were spheres.

Both Matisse and Picasso referred to Cezanne as their artistic father. Retrospectives, like the one at the Baltimore Art Museum, allow visitors to see this connection more clearly by placing his work side by side with the artists who inherited the world he created.

By checking into a great room in Baltimore , you can check out Cezanne and the other American artists, and have time later to explore the city of Baltimore, from its museums, its restaurants, and historic ships and landmarks, such as the USS Constellation and Fort McHenry, where the lyrics to the Star Spangled Banner was written.