March 17th, 2015

Crystal Bridges is one of my favorite local places to go when I have a day off. I love taking people there for the first time.

The weather yesterday was absolutely perfect for bike riding---not to hot, not too cold. It was a little windy, especially with the headwind from the south on the return ride, but it wasn't terrible. A friend and I loaded up our bikes and headed to Northwest Arkansas.

We got to the museum around 1:00, and parked near the Bentonville Square. We road down to the museum through the Compton Gardens, and parked our bikes near an out-door sculpture.

The special exhibit at the museum right now is called from Van Gogh to Rothko, a collection of modern artwork that been curated to showcase the abstract, realistic, and conceptual art of the modern era.

I saw Andy Warhol's 100 Campbell Soup Cans, the tiniest most incredible landscape by Vincent Van Gogh, the Henry Matisse Guitar Music painting. It was truly an amazing exhibit.

This little dachshund on his leash was an adorable painting---very memorable!

In the first room of the exhibit, the orange and yellow Rothko created a calming balance...a group of folding gallery chairs held about a dozen people. Two musicians were playing music they had written to accompany the painting. One played clarinet, the other a guitar. The music was a type of experimental jazz....soothing...like the buzz of an insect, but harsher, flatter and slightly strange. Not something you would just turn on if you wanted to listen to music--and nothing you would want to hear unless your senses were balanced by the famous Rothko---a soothing visual sensation.

Some of these things are not really meant to be photographed, they are too highly conceptual to contemplate unless you are standing in front of them. Like the Red Painting....or Sky High by David Simpson. A stark contrast to the very busy and full abstract expressionism and surrealism exhibited in the other rooms of the show.

My favorite and most memorable moment of the day occurred in the last room of the exhibit. Op art and color field paintings--those flat experiential edge to edge explorations in color.  We stood amongst the paintings, stripped down to the most basic elements---no subject matter, no movement, just flat.....Like the white line painting by Agness Martin entitled The Tree, her interpretation of trees.

A young boy, around 10 or 11 wandered through the gallery reciting titles of the color field paintings----"They've all run out of ideas!"  He exclaimed. "Look--Red Painting. Yep, they've run out of ideas."

After looking around the permanent collection for a while, we jumped back on our bikes and rode along the paved trails to the north of Crystal Bridges. We rode past Slaughter Pen, the infamous Northwest Arkansas Mountain Bike network. We rode under bridges and through tunnels. The path ended just south of Bella Vista---so we turned back, and rode back to the car to load up our bikes.