Getting My Fix

I've come to the conclusion that the VMFA is an enabler.

When Friday rolls around and I want something to do but I don't want to be bound to an event or a fixed time, there it is, offering up its siren call.

So when it's been a few weeks and I'm looking for a fix, it's my automatic default.

Talk about first world problems.

As an unabashed photpgraphy lover, I'd been eager to see "Unreal: Conceptual Photographs from the 1970s and 1980s" since it opened a week after I returned from the beach.

The idea of artists intentionally manipulating the medium and constructing their subject matter made for a show all about the artificiality of photography.

Annie Leibowitz's "David Byrne" showed the perennially awkward-looking Byrne in a jacket made of leaves.

Nancy Burson's "Warhead" used early digital technology to create a face made up of world leaders' features, the percentages determined by the amount of war materials their country possessed.

Let's just say the face was 57% Ronald Reagan and leave it at that.

I recognized the style of Deborah Turbeville's photograph of fragmented horse sculptures, part of her "Unseen Versailles" series, part of which I'd seen at Ghostprint Gallery a while back.

Betty Hahn's "Betty, Passport" was the most un-photographic-like because she'd printed her picture on fabric and then outlined her face with needlework.

If it sounds like there were nothing but female artists in this show, that wasn't the case but it was a distinct pleasure to find women artists so well represented for a change.

Perhaps having a female curator helps (wink, wink).

From photographs of recent decades, we moved downstairs to "Catching Sight: The World of British Sporting Prints" for something completely different.

Hounds and horses, how can you go wrong?

The exhibit was an eclectic mix of artists, some more journeyman-like and other masters of the print.

Hogarth's "The Cock Pit" showed a roomful of upper crust types watching birds go at each other, but was striking for how the composition mimicked that of Leonardo's "The Last Supper."

Irreverent and brilliant at the same time.

Close inspection of the detailed prints revealed all kinds of sly wit and commentary on both upper and lower class Brits.

Sometimes the print's name said it all: " One of the Wrong Sort who Goes Out with the Hunters Because it is the Fashion."

No judgment there.

Some of the colored prints came across more like paintings than prints, making it easy to see why they would been collected by those who could afford to do so.

By the time I'd checked out the over-sized anatomical drawing of a horse, I could feel my cultural jones restored by a few hours at the museum.

Like a drug with feel-good results, but no cost involved.

Score.