Image Gallery: From the Spring 2007 Special Exhibitions Listings

I always get a big kick out of the nine images Stan Parchin selects to accompany the quarterly special exhibitions listings. They come as much a surprise to me as they do to you. In our new image gallery, culled from the Spring 2007 Special Exhibitions Listings, we've got eight items that delight me and the work of one artist I shall never comprehend. To whit: Cézanne? Oh, my, yes. Ancient and Classical art? Talk about art history. Manet's barmaid? Who hasn't wanted to cheer her up? Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party? Hello! I adore Pissarro for his painting, mentoring skills and political ideals. And, speaking as an artist, Albrecht Dürer is one of my all-time heroes, a draftsman of such surpassing excellence you'd be forgiven for considering snapping your own pencils in two and walking away from drawing forever. Honestly, there should be a Dürer action figure manufactured; he was that talented.

All well and good, but then along comes Hans Baldung Grien. Try as I may to understand the social and religious environment from whence he sprang, so as to keep his work objectively in context, the bizarre scenarios his mind shot out of his hand and onto paper/engraving plates/wood (painted panels or carved blocks, your choice) frequently creep. Me. Out. We're talking seriously misogynistic borderline pee-oh-are-en, in some cases. One probably should pity the man. Apparently Hans never, not once in his 60 years on earth, encountered a single Madonna in the kitchen, only the other "womanly" cliché. Tell you what, though: he figured out a surefire way to immortalize himself in the annals of art history. And I'll bet that last makes you itch to look at the Spring 2007 Special Exhibitions Listings Gallery, doesn't it? Enjoy.

Image credit:

Camille Pissarro (French, 1830-1903)
Côte des Jalais, Pontoise, 1867
Oil on canvas
34 1/4 x 45 1/4 in. (87 x 114.9 cm)
Bequest of William Church Osborn
1951 (51.30.2)
© The Metropolitan Museum of Art