Art Visit

I chose to visit the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento because I heard from my friends that it was a very nice museum. I was very excited to go and I had the chance to go there in May. I started by the ground floor galleries, where they have Asian art exhibits. There were some sculptures such as the "BUDDHA" from Northern Thailand that was made out of wood, gilt, glass inlay, lacquer and metal. I thought that I would get to see more ceramics and decorative arts in that section but the collection itself was pretty small. I was a little dissapointed. I can just speak from my own experience because in South America, the museums have huge ceramic collections so I thought it was going to be similar in Sacramento.

Then I proceeded to the first floor galleries where you were not allowed to take pictures. There I remembered pretty vividly the "Minton Porcelain" from Mary Crocker's personalized fine table setting, circa 1870-1880. The colors were very rich, with saturated turquoise colors with delicate golden designs and the outer part of the plates had bright blues with flower designs in gold and white. It's too bad I don't have a picture of them. I don't think I can have an accurate description of them without a picture.

Anyway, I found the second floor galleries pretty amazing. It's a huge difference to view artwork in person than in the computer or a book. You can really appreciate the "real size and colors of the paintings". When I was, there had a special exhibition on display "The Language of the Nude: Four Centuries of Drawing the Human Body". It had a great variety of religious figures, god and goddesses, heroes, and even abstracts. There were almost 60 drawings from the 16th through the 19th century from Italy, the Netherlands, France, and Germany. It was pretty fascinating to look at them and at the same time, I am grateful that I had such an opportunity.

The secon floor had the biggest collections of European, American art, and Contemporary California art. My favorite painting was by Tino Rodriguez, a Mexican American artist. His painting is called "Xochipilli's Estatic Universe", it was done in oil on a medium size panel. The colors are very vivid and rich even though this picture looks a litlle fuzzy. Sorry, I tried by best but I couldn't use my flash.

Tino Rodriguez gets his inspiration from literature and mythology of diverse cultures like you can see in this painting.

On the background, there are four aztec statues and the sky appears to be blue-greenish in color. I think atmospheric perspective was used for the background. There are several butterflies and birds throughout the painting, all with rich warm colors. There is a hummingbird sucking on a flower towards the top of the painting in with red and green colors. On the foreground, there are marine shells at the shore and a ballerina in pink with a skeleton face dancing on a thin line. Again, in person you are able to see all these fine details. There is an Egyptian statue, the "Sphinx" on the pasture on the green area. To the lower right of the painting, there is an infant buddha in a bubble coming out of a red flower, that represents a mom's uterus.

Tino Rodriguez likes to use themes of metarmorphosis and transformation. In Aztec mythology "Xochipilli" is the prince of flowers, the god of beauty, song and dance. Also the face in the painting appears to be a dual creature, one side male and the other female. It's also a homage to the artist "Frida Kahlo". I found this painting very different from anything that I have ever seen. The artist introduces the viewer to a "world rich in pleasure that not only touches our senses but alters our perceptions" (Croker Art Museum).

In overall, my experience at the Croker Art Museum was great. I just imagined it to be a bigger museum but at least it was well kept. From the information that I read in a brochure, they are planning to expand it, so I look forward to go back once the expansion is done.