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If you like art and cats, this book is for you!
It is a nice general history but it could have included more about the returned items. The best parts are about the development of the museum.
(Oil on canvas, 1911; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, USA)
Lines and planes converge at the center of this composition, the subject of which is the urbanization and modernization of the city of Paris. Chagall painted this picture in 1911, one year after he first saw the Eiffel Tower during his travels to Paris from Russia, his native country. The dynamic composition centers at the famous Parisian monument. A blood-red road leads the eye inward with a perspectival rush towards the focal point. Powerlines on the right create a sharp receding diagonal that are mirrored by the blue skyline on the left. Below, a brick-red wall creates a dynamic thrust into the painting and is interrupted on the left by the new Pont de Passy, above which travels the city’s new Métro line.
For all of its linear energy, Chagall intensifies the composition with consciously jarring juxtapositions of color. A painting about transportation, communication, and speed is met with a contradictory sense of timelessness suggested by the presence of a horse, Chagall’s personal imagery reminiscent of home.
I found this a useful guide to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Of course their acquisitions and exhibits change, and frankly the binding sucks and it's the kind of book you can expect to soon fall apart--which is why I'm docking a star. But it's still given the maps a good way to make your way through the museum, and that's especially useful if like me you're a New York City resident. And if you're not, and you only visited, it's like taking a nice little album of your visit home with you.
