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Oberhofen, Lake Thun, about 1848, by J.M.W. Turner |
Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art.
If beautiful old people are works of art, then what of beautiful old works of art? Some aging, old pop arts and proto-modern works are enjoying anniversaries as birthdays abound at Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) at Newfields.
Two large Robert Indiana pop/minimal sculptures, Numbers (five) and Numbers (zero), 1980-83, from his series of monumental paint on aluminum sculptures, greet visitors at the main entrance. The huge, white, deadpan works are positioned like the number fifty in honor of the anniversary of Indiana's LOVE at IMA.
And inside, in honor of a 250th birthday, is the exhibit continuing through January 26, Luminous Horizons: Celebrating the Legacy of J.M.W. Turner.
The exhibit presents 17 landscape watercolors and drawings by Turner and a related group of artists, who through expressive, even symbolic, simplification of compositional elements and amplification of the majesty and moodiness of nature, forged a path away from Academic Realism, and Neo-classicism through Romanticism, and toward a more modern art.
The romantic roots of Turner's times is seen in two works by other artists in the show. In Judith, or Cowper's Oak, 1804, by Margaret Meen, the manic verve of an excitable age is contained within the rotten hollows of her 700-year-old tree. The work, of watercolor, gouache, ink and graphite, shows a devilish tree so aged and ruined, yet clinging to life in its strange forest of new growth sprigging out in a fantasy, all directions.
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Judith, or Cowper's Oak, 1804, by Margaret Meen |
And in J.M.W. Turner at a Drawing Table, about 1795, a pencil drawing by Thomas Monro (attr. to), we see Turner, like all the poets in our mind ever since the Romantic Era; earnest, engrossed, possessing the beauty of youth. His waistcoat, frilly collar and and ribboned ponytail, though, are the neo-classical vestiges of an ending era before the blossom of his own.
It may be that the watercolor medium itself, with its luminosity and fluidity, provided the spark of inspiration for the high tones and atmospheric nebulousness in certain Turner paintings, such as the large oil, Regatta Beating to Windward, on display elsewhere in the museum's European Painting gallery.
Tiny Might of Turner's Watercolors.
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| Bellizona, 1842, by J.M.W. Turner |
In the show is Bellizona, 1842, a watercolor based on a sketch from a notebook containing a view captured near the border between Italy and Switzerland. In just minimal washes of cool blue and warm brown, the scene is set for a group of persons, tiny in the scheme of things, on a walled roadway that runs alongside a fortress town amid misty mountains. A couple, standing on the road arm in arm, are mimicked by a pair of thin cedars aside the road just beyond.
The eye darts about the composition, like a particle of windblown drizzle, from the blazing white of the fortress tower enveloped by the blue hills, to the deep shade of the cedars. The people on a the road, walk or rest, chat or hug, beneath a towering sky of immense nothingness. The epic scale of earth and sky heightens the meekness of their human being. The cloud-like perspective of a god that enjoys an overall handiwork of time's wheel and eternal motion rather than the nuts and bolts of its ticking moments or gears.
Venice: The Rialto, 1820-21, has the same ocher and blues, here of canal and ship sails, buildings and a bridge. Turner is more attentive to detail in this painting accomplished decades prior to Bellizona, showing a sunny promenade of canal-side storefronts as they face off with a row of merchant vessels. The moored boats triangular sails overlap in retreating perspective toward an arched bridge and then a massive castle wall in a distance veiled by hazy sunlight.
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Venice: The Rialto, 1820-21, by J.M.W. Turner |
Gondoliers, in white blouse with red breeches, guide their passengers in the Seuss-like craft they command down the blue shimmer of the waters that divide the scene. As mentioned, details abound here, with building facades shown in minute and individual detail, along with skyward projections such as chimneys, boat masts and a distant white church steeple or palace tower.
The business of current human productivity seems a subject here, along with the the architectural record that surrounds – but again – a massive sky, created by doing nothing except barely painting it, hovers above as the most enduring of everything portrayed.
As he approached the end of his time, Turner created Oberhofen, Lake Thun, about 1848. His same favorite hues he employs for his watercolors are here. His blues and the ocher, although here the reds are more energized with pinks. The maelstrom we know of the most mighty of his paintings, can be seen here in miniature view. Dreams are suggested rather than realities drawn.
Are these crowds of people or groves of trees? Boats, roads, shorelines? A storm overhead, leaden with rain, or rather a spot of blue sky in white clouds?
When all is said and done, a hand's trace of a vision, a fleeting power – the rising sun of impressions yet to come.
Mark Diekhoff, January 2026
dedicated to Bob Weir, the other one
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