Santa Came Early

Christmas arrived nine days early at the Folly this year, with a visit from Florian and Arko. We hadn't seen each other in more than four years, and Thom was kind enough to lend them the cabana.  They were tickled to have escaped the frigid weather in Chicago.

We began the Palm Beach County Grand Tour on Worth Avenue.  Oddly, Tiffany's doesn't seem to decorate for the holidays, at least outside the building's elegant coquina exterior.

Christmas wreaths and alligators are about as asynchronous

. . . as decorated pine trees and palms.

At the Manatee Lagoon, Florian was lucky enough to spot one.  It took me three visits.

Next up, late-afternoon  'gator hunting at the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge.

Florian did find a BIG one where we'd been told to look by a fisherman, but the poor creature had a floater embedded in the tip of its snout,  making it look like Rudolf the Red-Nosed Alligator.  I prefer photographing uninjured wildlife.

Visitors gathered on the viewing platform to watch the sunset over the Everglades.

Park signage conveys the diversity of Florida's fauna, although it doesn't necessarily protect those depicted.  I passed a tire-squashed snake on the opposite side of the road.

Florian struck a happy pose at the Norton Museum where we caught a traveling Rembrandt show.  He took almost as many pictures of the art as I did.

We dined at Oceano Kitchen where the coconut cream pie looked a little bit like a crab but tasted heavenly.

On Friday, we headed to MacArthur Park.

While Florian and Arko frolicked in the surf, I walked the length of the only undeveloped stretch of beachfront in the county.

Upon return, I retrieved Arko's stick from the ocean.

The boardwalk was much busier than during my last visit.

Florian took me to brunch at John G's, an "old Florida" restaurant now under new management, where we enjoyed delicious cranberry mimosas.  If the waitress hadn't screwed up my order, I would have taken a picture of my eggs Benedict with crab cakes. Afterward, we drove an hour to Wynwood, where Florian took a picture for his friend Uwe who gets a kick out of signs that don't make sense.

Wynwood Walls changes less each time I go.

Back at the Folly, we dined on fresh branzino, purchased the night before after checking out the Loggerhead Marine Life Center and perfectly prepared by Florian.

I'm sure he felt a little bit like this kid after I took him to the airport on Sunday.

 

Brighter Rembrandt

Everything in the Palm Beaches looks just a little brighter in December, even Rembrandt! He had yet to turn 30 when he painted this assured self-portrait.  The kid knew he was going places.

 

"Self Portrait with Shaded Eyes" (1634)

The Leiden Collection loaned it and many others to the Norton Museum of Art.  Florian suggested we go when he and Arko were visiting the Folly. 

Rembrandt is usually a little too dark for me--I much preferred the Van Gogh Museum to the Rijksmuseum when I visited Amsterdam more than 25 years ago.  But after immersing myself in the Italian Renaissance last fall, works by the leading artists of the Dutch Golden Age were refreshing, like a cold tonic after a warm bath.  

"Minerva in Her Study" (1635)

This portrait of a politician and in-law is attributed to Rembrandt's workshop because he farmed out painting the intricate lace work.  This kind of assistance only became controversial when Andy Warhol called it a Factory (that's "Fabriek" in Dutch).

Portrait of Antonie Coopal by Rembrandt's Workshop (1635)

His patrons were more likely to be from the mercantile class, as Calvinists frowned on religious scenes.  The Dutch East India Company had a lot more power than the Vatican in the Netherlands; this woman was married to its "Councilor General Extraordinary." Making her collar must have been as difficult as painting it.

Portrait of Petronella Buys (close-up, 1635)

Rembrandt didn't only solicit commissions.  He sold portraits like this, featuring a model almost as enigmatic as the "Mona Lisa," on the open market, too.

"Young Girl in a Gold-Trimmed Cloak" (1632)

But age interested him just as much as youth.  He depicted it with skill and dignity even in his twenties.  This canvas, his tiniest, isn't much bigger than a playing card.

"Bust of a Bearded Old Man" (1633)

"Study of a Woman in a White Cap" (ca 1640)

"Portrait of an Old Man (Possibly a Rabbi" (ca 1645)

"Portrait of a Seated Woman with Her Hands Clasped" (1660)

Oh yeah, there was a Vermeer in the exhibit, too.  Although he never achieved the renown of Rembrandt during his lifetime, the scarcity of his work (only 34 paintings worldwide are attributed to his hand) has given him much greater mystique.

"Young Woman Seated at a Virginal" (ca 1670-75)

Other works in the exhibit by less familiar artists depicting everyday life nearly four centuries ago provide a welcome reminder about the simple pleasures that bind humanity when so much contemporary background noise suggests that few of us have anything in common.

"Young Man Reading" by Jacob Van Loo (ca 1650)

"Prayer Before the Meal" by Jan Steen (1660)

"Elegant Lady Writing at Her Desk" by Gabriel Metsu (ca 1662-64)

"Hunter Getting Dressed after Bathing"
by Gabriel Metsu (ca 1654 - 1656)

The modernist prints I liked best in another gallery, however, do emphasize the political (not that there's anything wrong with that when I see eye-to-eye with the artist!) Twentieth-century social realism has to be the most empathetic school of art.  José Clemente Orozco, like Ben Shahn, depicted the worldwide impact of the soul-shattering Depression.

"Unemployed" (1932)

This work by Reginald Marsh is almost as shocking as one I had seen just a couple of weeks earlier at the New York Public Library.  A woman's grabby date from hell looks like he badly needs a lesson in consent.

"Couple on a Roller Coaster" (1946)

Bernard Perlin couldn't fight for his country during World War II because of his sexual orientation but drawings like this one got him a gig illustrating government propaganda. Fortune and Life magazines also hired him to document American society.  Perlin summered in the Pines long before I did.

"Dead Man on Subway" (1942)

I never would have guessed Picasso as the artist of this etching but its themes--poverty and blindness--are characteristic of his Blue Period.

"The Frugal Repast" (1904)

With one exception, the museum's sculpture collection offered some comic relief.  I neglected to identify this colorful papier-mâché work.

I found my peeps outdoors--grinning fools!

"Moonrise" Sculptures by Ugo Rondinone (2006)

Surprisingly, KAWS looked more at home here than he did at the Brooklyn Museum.

"Separated" (2021)

James hadn't been published when I saw a Charles Ray retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art several years ago which also included "Huck and Jim."  Their impact is equally disorienting for different reasons.

(2014)

Taking its cue from the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Norton concealed the nude statue of perhaps America's most famous couple behind hedges.  It was supposed to be the centerpiece of a fountain in front of the Whitney's new building but the museum got cold feet.  Nevertheless, Jim stands tall and alert

. . . while Huck looks elsewhere, oblivious to his surroundings.