The Heckscher Art Museum
I don’t know how many of you get a chance to come out to Long Island, but if you ever do there is truly a gem in the Heckscher Art Museum in Huntington. Heckscher has on display over 2500 traditional pieces of art with a focus on the 19th and 20th century landscape paintings. As American’s moved west and settled their lands, so too did their brushes and paints settle on canvas.
The collection I sought to see was their exhibition on Realism in the 19th and 20th centuries. The pieces use reflection of reality on water, ice, or even mirrors, as a talent of painting and as an interpretation of the time period.
The art lacks the shock value of many modern art pieces we have been viewing this year, but because the semester is ending and I have been inundated with contemporary art, I decided to take myself back to art as I knew it prior to this class.
A piece that stood out to me was the Blue Bulb by Margery Caggiano. It was painted during the 1970’s, which as we know was a time for great cultural revolutions. It stood out to me as being so vividly real in light of a time that was so outwardly idealistic. In addition to that, the sheer talent and time spent on the painting stunned me as it is clearly shown in the grace with which the brush was rubbed.
Upon first glance I had thought it was a photograph. The shadows and reflections were so unnervingly real that I could hardly fathom how much practice and effort went into painting it that way.
The painting struck me as commentary on the banality of everyday things, and how marvelous they can be when meticulously crafted by human hands instead of their machines. A light bulb to us would appear as nothing more than a tool; we use it, we flick it on or off, but we never observe. We never care or take time to appreciate the effort put into creating or working it. Through photo-realism, this particular division of pop art, we are able to see the beauty in the tedium of modern day life. With all our amenities and gadgets we rarely take the time to appreciate them for what they are and the effort that goes into creating them. Case in point, the shadows and reflections expertly painted in this piece.
If you desire a different experience from your traditional art museum, one that you can better understand and appreciate for talent and time spent, the Heckscher museum is host to hundreds of realist and surrealist pieces. It is art as we know it; the classics we see in textbooks but never anywhere else. Being so close to them allows you to appreciate all that you’ve learned and compartmentalized of history, tapping into the culture of the time as opposed to the counter-cultures.
-Stephen Elliott
Posted: December 8th, 2012 under Reviews.
