Garden of art

HAMILTON, New Jersey – Art appreciation in a most natural setting. That is the Grounds for Sculpture here, in the very heart of America’s Garden State.
From stone and wood to metal and resin, from the monumental to the theatrical, the objects of art range from the abstract to the impressionist to post-modern and, yes, even mobile.
Be they by the man-made lake, hidden in a bamboo grove, upon a slope, framed by tall cypresses, or atop a stone pedestal, the sculptures blend with their setting. Art becomes nature thus. And nature becomes art.
Truly, now fully do I appreciate my Humanities class in the university. It gave me some sense of the culturati. Hence, a deeper appreciation of the arts. Hence, a more meaningful and pleasurable experience derived.
Imagine my sheer joy in finding Degas’ blue ballet dancer series transformed into metal sculptures – complete with the ballerinas’ tutus.
A most pleasant shock was the sight of a woman in all her naked glory seated on the grass with two fully-dressed gentlemen about ready to take their lunch, a picnic basket of bread, fruit, cheese and wine nearby. Yes, it was a rendition in 3-D of Edouard Manet’s Picnic on the grass. Of course I joined the scene, captured in a photo for a lasting memento.
The wife I asked to pose – with me again – in another Manet masterpiece, the Argentuil, a sailor and his wife on the pier by their boat sculpted in resin.
I acted the lover of the Lady in a bathtub – an aptly-named metal sculpture, and made like a Peeping Tom to By Nature -- a lady taking her bath by a creek amid lush foliage.
Claude Monet’s green arch bridge in his series on the Giverny Gardens (hope I am not mistaken here) was copied most precisely there too, complete with the lily pond, the koi fish and the drooping weeping willows. It made a most romantic setting for me and the wife, sister Celia and her husband Edgar.
The piece d’ resistance to me though was Renoir’s Luncheon for the Boating Party – straight out of the canvas perfected in life-like proportion down to the last details – the whiskers of the boatman, the fruits, the wine, even the very folds of the women’s skirts.
Could not help gushing at the sight.
Beyond the masterpieces of the Impressionists, there were the Grecian classics too but given a new interpretation, like the Nine Muses, an abstract in granite.
This paper’s editor would have fallen in love with the Erotica Tropicana, a tableau of a naked woman in the jungle, set inside a thicket of Chinese bamboo. Sheer sensuality, Mister Ashley.
As this is America, there need be a touch of Americana. Coming straight out of the Depression is the Unemployment Line – a queue of forlorn men seeking work, any kind of work. Rural America is represented by gargantuan bulls at rest on a meadow, and two gossiping, really huge women.
There are more, much more than I could possibly write about here. But there is not one that did not touch me. It was one really beautiful, enriching experience.
So who now says that masterpieces of art – paintings and sculptures by the masters most notably – are a museum’s monopoly? And best appreciated there?
I have gone to the Louvre in Paris, the Moma and Guggenheim in New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and seen the works of the masters. The excitement, the joy, nay, the bliss that came to me in beholding the masterpieces there is as great as that I felt at the Grounds for Sculpture.
My thanks to Debbie Seva, a close friend of the wife’s family, for the cultural enrichment. (For my past columns, access acaesar.blogspot.com)