The first painting you see as you walk into the ‘Van Gogh, Dali and Beyond’ MoMA exhibition now showing at the Art Gallery of Western Australia in Perth is Van Gogh’s ‘The Olive Trees’.

Olive Trees with the Alpilles in the Background (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My left brain must have been in full motion as my mind was surprised by the solidity of the unrealistic, opaque, creamy white balls of cloud, the dullness of the blue of the Mediterranean sky and the trees below it.  Sacrebleu!!  I mentally washed my mind out with soap and water as I kept looking.

Although not as colourful as reproductions and writings had led me to believe the artist’s intention began to filter through.  The rhythms of the brush strokes and the harmony of the colours started to convey life, movement and a living force connecting all things in nature.

I began to understand the theme of the exhibition ‘The World Reimagined’.  At first sight the exhibition may appear to be a disparate collection of 130 works by 96 artists covering landscape, still life and portraiture over more than a hundred years.  The common thread seems to be that across the decades each artist has inherited, rejected / developed and communicated innovative responses to their worlds through imagination.

There is certainly plenty to see, plenty to ponder and plenty of inspiration!  I don’t think you’ll be disappointed If you can get to see it.  You can find out more here.

I’ll let Mark Twain have the last word – again!

The common eye sees only the outside of things, and judges by that, but the seeing eye pierces through and reads the heart and the soul, finding there capacities which the outside didn’t indicate or promise, and which the other kind couldn’t detect.

MARK TWAIN, Joan of Arc

🙂
Helen