Feral Ponies and American Museums: Summer 2011

Instead of showing a bunch of pictures of art that I saw along my tour from Philadelphia to Washington, I thought how often do you get to see wild ponies, if you even knew they existed at all! There were seven of them that seemed to travel around in a gang, and according to local lore, they are the descendants of horses that escaped a Spanish ship when it wrecked off Maryland's coast hundreds of years ago.

They seemed resigned to their status as local celebrities, posing on the Assateague sea shore among throngs of beach bums, not moving a muscle sometimes for hours on end. Everyone around them went on furiously snapping shots of them, or lounged beside them, creating a Still Life with Wild Pony?

What you don't see in these pictures is me attempting to frolic with said ponies while avoiding getting bitten and kicked (they are wild, ya know). This was a carefully choreographed romp that merited many dips in the ocean to cool off. At dusk, camping in the same park, we found the ponies grazing nearby the evergreen bushes and prickly pears, steps away from our tent. By nightfall they had gone, but were  hidden somewhere nearby, and we sat by the beach watching tiny fireworks from Ocean City and a family clamming by flashlight. It all felt like the atmosphere of a Nancy Drew murder mystery, the perfect summer thriller without the sinister plot.

What grew out of a trip to Maryland and Virginia to see the ocean and the ponies, was an unexpected tour of some of America's greatest art collections. The highlights were mostly the unexpected: arriving in Philly really made a dramatic impression, especially its mammoth art museum on a giant hill. My absolut favourite was the entire room dedicated to Duchamps, and the macabre finale peering through the wooden slats of his "Étant donnés"and discovering a beautiful woman; violated. it was my first chance to see his urinal in person and the trends pioneered by Duchamps (along with Hans Hocke who also had work in the museum) persist to this day. I'm remembering the show at the Power Plant "Rearview Mirror", where several of the Eastern European artists were emulating Hocke's almost archeological collection of objects, creating little vignettes of material realism. These artists really infused a mysticism/witticism into the mundane, and they were the first! Discovering such origins of thought in art is invigorating... but for what it's worth, some of my faves support a slightly controversial and naive portrayal of exoticism that would now be considered insensitive. The two I adored most were, in Philadelphia, Renoir's Odalisque (1870) and in Washington, Mancini's Il Saltimbanco (1879). I have no qualms when expressing my love for such dreamy opulence, the fantasy wraps around the viewer like the clothes worn in the painting. I may have just been swept up by July fourth madness, but the sights I saw south of the border really rocked my world.

I'll leave you with this work by Chagall, who was the subject of a special exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art that I also got to see. It is called "Horse Woman on Red Horse" (1966) and yes, there we have a beloved horse (but unfortunately no pony).