I received an email the other day from a good friend with whom I attended the Cleveland Institute of Art in the mid 1990’s. He had been back to Cleveland for a visit, and had met up with another CIA painting alum to walk the galleries at the Cleveland Museum of Art. He wrote about revisiting paintings that had been important to him during school, like Rubens’ Portrait of Isabella Brant and about other paintings that stood out now, at this different moment in his life, including an Inness landscape. I haven’t been back to Cleveland since 1999, and I’m curious about which paintings might stop me now, and how different the list might be for me today than it would have been 10 years ago. To tell the truth, it isn’t necessary to travel to a museum that I haven’t been to for many years to have a similar experience. I’ve been working at the IMA for a little over five years, and I am amazed by how often a work of art that I haven’t paid much attention to suddenly asserts itself.

Isabel Bishop’s Tidying Up

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If you missed last Thursday’s talk by Modern Art Notes blogger Tyler Green at the Central Library, presented by iMOCA, we’ve got you covered. Overall the talk was insightful–intriguing to those outside the arts world and passion-evoking for those intimately involved in the arts. “We all agree too much. Maybe we’re afraid to say the wrong thing,” said Green at the opening of his talk.

The afternoon before speaking, Green spent some time wandering the galleries of the IMA. The following are Tweets from Green’s visit to the IMA. You can “follow” Green on Twitter by clicking here.

• At Indy Museum of Art. Sweet.
• Digging Emile Bernard. Color, composition, his way of eliminating depth.
• Denis’ The Breton Dance from 1891 shows how important he would be to Bonnard and Vuillard and how they showed foliage/landscape.
• Rembrandt 20something self-portrait is fantastic and weird. Light. Diagonal of cap. Open mouth.
• Early Titian (20ish) portrait is creepy and soothing. Something odd about the eyes. And fur trim on coat is more painterly than hair.
• Fine Prints for Five Dollars at IMA is the most fun I’ve had in a prints gallery in eons. I hope the show is on http://imamuseum.org.
• Emile Bernard’s Yellow Christ: fascinating apostles. Mask-like: recalls later Picasso; simple, direct feature that recall very late Matisse.
• IMA Sandback space is haunting. Untitled diagonal going out window into beyond…
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