Arts & Culture

Cornell’s Artistic Window: Highlights from the Collection

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From Picasso to Piranesi, Cassatt to Cunningham, the Johnson Museum’s Highlights from the Collection: 45 Years at the Johnson showcases a wide variety of art. The scope is immense in both historical and geographical breadth. Upon entering the exhibition, I found myself face-to-face with a cow with its head turned to the side, eyeing some distant pastoral horizon as though musing over the kinds of deep insights only cows are sensible of. Its front legs are posed as though aware of an audience — Constant Troyon’s 19th century bovine scene is at once striking and peaceful, unique and unobtrusive. Past the cow is a row of medieval Asian art where a bronze 12th century Ganesha is adjacent to a 15th century Burmese tile depicting two elephant-headed warriors.

art

Beauty in the Unfinished: Drawing the Line

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Drawing the Line, open until June 10 at the Johnson, displays over a century of drawing history from European artists. In particular, the exhibit celebrates both the drawing as a sovereign entity as well as an often-ignored component of the artistic process in its entirety. In this way, Drawing the Line forces the audience to closely reevaluate pre-existing notions of where and how beauty is to be found. A drawing technique with a history of over six centuries, gouache differs from watercolor in that it produces a distinctly more opaque finish. In an untitled composition from 1915, Pablo Picasso intermingles both gouache and watercolors.