This post was written yesterday, so just pretend you are reading it then. Typepad has a feature where you can write up a post and then have it post later, so I thought I would give that a whirl to test it and see if I could actually figure that out...I don't know what I did, but it didn't post at all. It's a good thing I have other skills is all I can say.
This is a photo from last evening after the swim sessions as I was not at the pool to take any there...more on that in another post. So, here you have, starting in the corner with Matt, Jonathan, Chris, John, and Harrison, all famished from a full day of swimming and eating more pasta than you can even imagine is possible...can you believe those blues on Chris? He has the bluest eyes I have ever seen on anyone. I had to take six shots as they were all goofing off and Harrison was trying to go for "studied" poses...this was the best of the lot, believe me. So...here's yesterday's post:
5 hours at The Speed Art Museum today...be still my heart! I mentioned to Nancy and Jeri (other swim moms here) that I was going and they both looked horrified that I might insist they come along...they need not have worried as Nancy's claim to fame is that she did the Roman Art exhibit last year in 5 minutes (or less) and Jeri's similar claim is that she did the Louvre in 45 minutes...sort of like my idea of shopping. Last year I spent the whole of one day at The Speed seeing most everything in depth (they have really nice exhibits and no one rushes you along at all...very important in my mind). I did, however, run out of time in the last four rooms and had to rush a bit...much to my dismay as that is where the Dutch artists' works hang and The Speed has a particularly great collection of those.
Since watching the movie The Illusionist, I have been haunted by thoughts of getting back here to The Speed to spend more time with this Dutch collection as the Dutch portraits are so like the filming of the entire movie...it is like one Dutch painting after another in hue, contrast, lighting, silhouette, mood, etc., etc.
I was there when the door opened and headed straight for those last four rooms...they did not disappoint. The portraits were as I remembered and I spent three of my five hours in those four rooms as they have not only the portraits I was so keen on seeing, but also the Dutch landscapes, and the Dutch still lifes.
I fell in love with a painting called Still Life with Fruit and Flowers by Jan Van Os (painting was signed, but no date, however, JVO lived between 1744-1808, so you can roughly do a quick guess as to time frame). I can never decide if I like still life flowers better, or still life fruit better...with this painting, one does not need to choose as it has both (with a few little animals and a secret cherub thrown in for good measure). The fruits and flowers are swizzled about in "S" shapes throughout the painting...it is amazing the way the "S" shapes do so many things and yet it all looks cohesively harmonious...I looked at it for an hour...seriously, don't even think I am kidding. I can't wait to find a reference on it and read something about it and the painter (I don't know that much about him, so if you do, share...please share). Life is great, isn't it? Just full of amazingly wonderful things. (And, yes, I know, I so don't deserve it.)
Van Os leads your eyes down "S" shaped paths in the painting that wind in and out, up one side, down another, across and back again. The paths follow colors of brights along one path, pastels along the other, and each color group has its own "S" curve while somehow blending with the others...reds, greens, oranges, browns, yellows, pinks, all wooing you into absolute love; and sizes of all the larger ones leading to paths of the medium ones and the smaller ones still another way; and shapes with rounded and pointed subjects leading you around the painting each on their own curved path and sometimes intertwining; darling little flies and a tiny mouse munching on the meat of an open walnut, a cat with its paw resting on the very edge of a bird nest filled with tiny perfect eggs; and the most absolutely wonderful renditions of water droplets on the petals of the flowers and skins of the fruits that you will ever see...EVER. Gorgeous. I am going back tomorrow.
There was also a special little hallway exhibit in the basement...OMW...the basement of all places, well the "lower level" which is essentially a basement, OMW again...where they had lined up drawings by these artists: Picasso, Matisse, Constable, Degas, Whistler, Durer, Delacroix, Winslow Homer, John James Audubon. ALL IN ONE SMALL HALLWAY...unbelievable artwork to the left of me and then to the right of me as I proceeded down the hallway...ALONE AS NO ONE ELSE WAS THERE at the time and I had all these guys all to myself...one hour and 15 minutes and that was rushing it. Amazingly beautiful drawings...just me and them...how lucky was I on this day at that time? (And, I did not touch a single one...can you believe it? I am behaving extremely well under these circumstances!)
I was running out of time as I still wanted to see the special exhibit of Werner Reiterer called Raw Loop (modern art and I so wish Vanessa had been with me as Vanessa and I do modern art so well together). I laughed and giggled through the entire exhibit...he is a humorist, as well as an artist, so you are actually supposed to do that. He is an Austrian and this is his first solo show in the United States. Some of it was print (one of my favorites being a drawing entitled Jesus at Home which consisted of a coat hook hanging on the wall with a halo draped over it, a white tunic hanging on the hook, and a pair of sandals neatly residing on the floor under it all...I chuckled the moment I saw it) and some of the exhibit was interactive sculpture.
I loved the interactive sculpture (Oh, Vanessa, you would have loved these!). My favorites were a bank of 8 very large loud speakers that when you approached you could hear whispering coming from them, however, the closer you got, the louder the voice became until it was VERY LOUD when you were as close as you could go, sort of the opposite of life where you hear a whisper up close and the louder stuff far away, I suppose; a mannequin man dressed and sitting on the floor leaning against the wall, very human-like, and when you neared him, he began to "breathe" and it was quite haunting actually, sort of like approaching a still figure to check to see if he/she is actually breathing and alive when it is pretty clear he/she is not, and then having it breathe deeply when you are right next to it, made you pull back and gasp in surprise; and a room where you were supposed to yell with increasing loudness so that the lights would brighten and dim according to the volume of your voice...and on and on as I know you have all probably quit reading when you realized this was me on another museum tangent...yes, I know, your eyes immediately began to glaze over and you thought, "Uh, oh...here she goes again...."
And, for those of you still reading, I had the best time today and it ended all too soon. Tomorrow The Fraiser Museum...and a sneak back at The Speed to have one last look at the Van Os painting...The Speed Art Museum is, by the way, FREE, so go...really, just go...you will love it! And, take me with you!
