Chazen Museum of Art, #4 - The Art, "Other", Madison, WI

There were some pieces during my visit that were interesting enough for me to take pics of, but did not fit into the contemporary or modern category, at least in my mind they didn't. So, with this last post from the Chazen, you get a bit of a hodgepodge of artwork, enjoy...

This one sits somewhat forbiddingly out front of the museum... perhaps it does get people to stop and even stop in to the museum though... I liked it. Where's Johnny Depp?

In the area of older works, the one below caught my eye for the use of the color white, and the color in general. I find many older paintings, from the 1500-1800s to be very dark. I believe this happened to have to be that way as the pigments for white paint are relatively new. So, you don't see much white on older works.

This lady caught my attention, well, because she's nude... but not just because she's nude, please. She's nude, carrying a bow, and walking a really big dog! I thought all of that together was kind of an odd pairing, but what do I know? Maybe you had to walk your dog naked back in ancient times... or maybe it's really fun to do do even today. Try it.

And after seeing one odd nude thing... the brain can't not see another. Who would have ever thought it using a strung, taught bow weapon while naked? Seems like an especially bad pose and angle to me too. Ouch! You didn't see the samurai falling for that s@#t.

And finally, to book end this "odd" section, I'll finish with another skull. I liked this one as well, and to be clear, both of them are at least 5-feet tall and pretty dang hard to miss.

I'm going to have to keep my eye on this place, for the next temporary/special exhibit and to go see anything else I missed during my initial trip.

Chazen Museum of Art, #3 - The Art, Contemporary/Modern, Madison, WI

Whenever I find myself in an art museum, I tend to gravitate toward modern and contemporary pieces, I think due in large part to the general use of bright colors, shapes, and concepts. That's what I take the most pics of and what you'll see below.

HUGE sculpture made out of carbon fiber and aluminum!
I hope my picture didn't disturb that group of people over there... wait, that's an exhibit too.

Isn't this stuff awe-inspiring and awesome?! I loved all the bright, interesting pieces, installations, and sculptures. It made the trip very worthwhile and I was very happy to have made this trip.

One more post on the Chazen coming up... stay tuned for #4.

Chazen Museum of Art, #2 - The Samurai, Madison, WI

I didn't know it going into the museum, or as I made my plans that week, but I stumbled into a very well-done exhibit on the Samuari. I would encourage anyone to go see this exhibit, it's not terribly big and wouldn't take much time to view. You could then go on to the rest of the museum, or save it for another day.

The exhibit sorted it out pretty well, with history, dress, weapons, and even the daily life. Here's some of the info and images below, but it's certainly not all.

Don't forget to come back soon for Parts #3 and #4, with much more of the normal art being exhibited in the museum.

Chazen Museum of Art, #1 - The Building, Madison, WI

After gorging myself on soggy sandwiches and premium ice cream, I had planned to take in another campus attraction, the Chazen Museum of Art, located a decent walk from Babcock Hall. It had begun to rain, which made the idea of a museum perfect for this outing. 

It's an impressive building both inside and out, and we'll spend a little bit of time in this first post (of four) looking at just that, the building.

It became clear that the building is actually two buildings connected on the 2nd floor with a walkway. In the walkway, you can get a great view of both "sides" of the museum, as well as the outside campus area, and even Lake Mendota off in the distance (probably easier if it's not raining).

I'm calling the portion below the "right wing", where you find the main entrances, lobby, special exhibit hall, and the gift shop.

This is the "left wing", which is chock-a-block full of art.

Below is a view into the main lobby from the steps above. It's truly a very nice museum space and I was a bit surprised at how nice everything was for being on a Big 10 college campus. It was a great surprise at that.

Here's a list of the types of art and a quick view of the entire museum from the map:

They indicate above that it's a four-story museum, however, I spent most of my time in the special exhibit on the main floor (which is a modest size gallery), and then on the 3rd floor walking around all of the different collections. I don't recall being on the 4th floor, or wanting to at that point, plus it will give me something to back and see at a later time.

They even had their own art on the walls and in this case, ceiling of the museum... here's a glimpse of something just painted on the walls near a large skylight...

Pretty frickin' awesome stuff.

That's it for this post. In posts #2, #3, and #4, we'll look at the special exhibit they had when I visited, and then some of the normal collection pieces.