The Menil Collection is a model of an art museum opened by John and Dominique de Menil, distinguished collectors and patrons. Founded in 1987 in Houston, Texas, the gallery holds an excellent collection of art worldwide, with modern and contemporary antiquities. Many modern artworks are displayed at the Menil. The latter is a broad range of movements and styles that emerged during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, signifying the transition from traditional artistic conventions to new art forms, such as surrealism and abstraction.
The Menil Collection is a creation to develop the understanding and enjoyment of art for spiritual, cultural, and intellectual life. The founders intended to create a space for the reunion of art from different cultures and eras that would easily provoke dialogue and leave visitors in awe. They conceived of a museum that transcended traditional limitations to depict the essential flow of each artistic expression into the next, across time and transnational boundaries. The Menil Collection holds onto this spirit of free admission as a sanctuary to learn more about the indefinable ways art and human experience intersect. The collection is open from 11 AM to 7 PM every day except on holidays.
Dorothea Tanning’s “Arabella” is an apt surrealist painting, replete with visions and fantasies akin to those of the dream world. The painting depicts deformed and transformed forms, which lends to the beholder a completely surreal environment (Menil, “Dorothea Tanning”). The presence of different elements within a single frame itself defies ordinary reality, as reflected in surrealism’s focus on breaking down the barriers between reality and the unconscious aspects of human nature.
Andy Warhol’s “Big Campbell’s Soup Can, 19¢” is a pop art piece that re-envisions household consumer goods within the transcendental context of fine art. The piece essentially uses that clichéd image of mass-produced American consumer culture – the famous Campbell’s Soup Can – enlarged and recolored to be felt as elite art (Menil, “Andy Warhol”). Warhol uses bold colors and repetition, elements characteristic of the pop art style, to make the ordinary more striking. This work epitomizes the critique of hierarchies of artistic traditions and values by pushing this ordinary object to an extreme visual spectacle as a finished fine art painting.
Works Cited
Menil. “Andy Warhol, American, 1928 – 1987 – Big Campbell’s Soup Can.” The Menil Collection.
—. “Dorothea Tanning, American, 1910 – 2012 – Arabella – the Menil Collection.” The Menil Collection.