Santa Fe, day 6 -- Wednesday, nov 27
Decided to drive back up to Taos. Despite having been there several times, I'd never gone to any of the art museums. Started out at the Harwoood.
Google girl took me around the rosie, through a bunch of windy back streets that's struck me as being much more the real old Taos than the over commercialized plaza area.
Hardwood had a big exhibit of photographs and paintings by its namesake, Burt Harwood.
Particularly enjoyed the pictures of Taos Pueblo ceremonials in the 20's, roofs lined with White women in big flowered hats.
Generally like Taos School with its strong sense of color and line, but was disappointed to only find two paintings by Dorothy Brett, both rather idiosyncratic. One was from her "dynamic symmetry" period, a kind of geometric Zen mandala.
The other was a picture of airplanes filling the skies, encrusted wi bits of jeweled decoration.
They also had this famous portrait of Brett.
The next Museum I went to was the Taos Art Museum, housed in the remarkable home of Russian artist Nicolai Fechin.
Besides being a painter, he was a woodworker who hand carved many of the architectural details such as closet doors and staircases and made much of the furniture. I fell quite in love with the room he designed for his daughter.
Next headed north to the Millicent Rogers Museum, which I had been to before but enjoyed the second time around. They had one of Brett's more characteristic big ceremonial pieces, The Buffalo Dance.
Looking at painting after painting with My friend Pam in Maine, I had begun to appreciate a wonderful sense of rhythmic repetition in Brett's work --extremely musical, especially considering her deafness.
Here are a couple of other Brett's taken from web sites.
Came home through a long sunset. Tired but happy.
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