With many thanks to support from the Center for Advanced Visual Studies and the Kelly-Douglas Fund for Traveling Fellowships at MIT and Location One in New York, I travel to London and Paris to research the Floating Sculpture and the Rammed Earth Sculpture Garden.
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London
I attend "The Artist and the Garden" symposium at the Garden Museum (http://www.museumgardenhistory.org/).
Geffrye Museum curator Christine Lalumia presents on the domestic gardens featured in the paintings of James Tissot (1833 - 1902). In contrast to the strict protocol of the drawing room, the garden, as well as the conservatory, was a socially more open, potentially promiscuous, place. With the proliferation of the domestic garden in the Victorian period--the "big, big gardens" of "big, big houses"--there was a sense that "all kinds of things could happen behind these walls." Lalumia discussed Tissot's use of the garden to allegorize as well as document modern women.
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Garden historian David Jacques presents on the restoration of the landscape at Chiswick. "One of the problems for the historian," he observes indicating the archive garden plan, "is these writhing paths. Could they have really been like this?"
Dr. Jacques notes the preponderance of Dutch topographers working in England in the 18th century.
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Accompanying a slide show of his images, garden photographer Andrew Lawson presents a list he devised as a rubric against which photography's capacity to capture and express the sensual life of the garden can be evaluated:
Experiencing a Garden
The relationship of spaces
The wind in the trees
The disposition of beds, trees and buildings
Where the paths lead
Dappled sunlight on the lawn
The encircling landscape
The crunch of gravel underfoot
Plant associations
The fragrance of crushed thyme; the perfume of roses
The sense of place
Seasonal changes
Sculpture, ornament and garden furniture
The sound of water
The heron overhead; a kingfisher flash
Flower detail
The passing of time
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Paris
I visit with Isabelle Lemaistre, curator of 19th-century sculpture at le Louvre, where together we view the "French Bronzes" exhibition as well as personal favorites in the collection. I linger to see the Mantegna exhibition and meander the vast and opulent Museum.
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Versailles
Trianon
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Château Courances
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