Dutch Paintings
I’ve realized that I’ve been in somewhat of a hiatus in terms of babbling randomly about goings on. Most of this time has been filled with reading Stephen King books (“Bag of Bones” is fairly good, except for the last 100 or so pages, and “The Shining” wasn’t nearly as terrifying as the Kubrick film) and watching TV. I suppose it’s no coincidence that this hiatus corresponds with the new TV season and all the soul-draining inactivity that implies.
I’ve also realized that I haven’t seen a movie in a movie theater in a while. The current crop of movies is unremarkable, though that hasn’t stopped me in the past (yes, I’ve actually paid money to see “Godzilla” and “Armaggedon”, but then I find a giant special effects dinosaur more interesting than Brad Pitt in a tux). Instead, I counterintuitively blame my DVD player, and the several unwatched DVDs I have on the shelf. Guilt plays a role in all this: why should I spend $9 to see a bad movie, when I have these DVDs of good movies I haven’t watched yet just lying here? An accumlative instinct doesn’t help matters: I’ve been buying DVDs (“on sale now!”) faster than I’ve watched them. And, so, the movie theater-DVD gulf widens, and the effort to overcome the guilt increases. At some point, I’ll realize that there are a ton a books on my shelves that I haven’t read, and this hasn’t stopped me from buying more, adding to Amazon.com’s bottom line. Either this idea hitting home will stop me from reading, or applying the psychological framework to the DVD-movie situation will break this movie-going impasse. Accumulative guilt has to be boxed away in some mental carton, and put in the attic. It’s the American way.
In the meantime, I’ve been on some sort of art/museum kick. Saw the French architecture thing at the Soho Guggenheim. Oh, those French! A few things were interesting — the bit in the basement showing the process of dubbing a movie in a foreign langauge was fascinating — but, oh, those French! Saw the Upper East Side Guggenheim’s Compare and Contrast exhibit: this Paris modern art museum is being repainted (or something along those lines), so its contents have found their way to New York for the winter, to be displayed next to the Guggenheim’s collection of similar work (trivia point: the Guggenheim was originally the Museum of Non-objective Art, which means that the stuff they had couldn’t look like anything real). More interesting than the Soho exhibit, but expectedly so: up the Guggenheim’s spiral is a selection of this century’s major art work, spanning early Cubism to late century conceptual art. There’s some nice Giacometti, Picasso, a sprinkling of Pollack, a Dali or two, a niche full of Mondrian. Somewhat disconnected, but neat. Note the UES Guggenheim is pay-what-you-want on Friday, after 6PM, and the Soho one is like that on Saturday evening. It’s unclear if the full admission price is worth it, but then I’m cheap.
In the next month or so, I’m going to hit MoMA and the Whitney, for the Jackson Pollack/Rothko exhibits. I know little about abstract expressionism, beyond the fact that Pollack has the “hey, my pet ferret can do that!” drip art, and Rothko did the “hey, my drunk uncle did that once!” solid color things. I look to reaching enlightenment after these visits, though I suppose enlightenment may consist of a plan to coax one’s pet ferret to do a drip painting.
In the meantime, the Met is having three big-banners-out-front exhibits. One is this exhibit of Degas photographs, which is interesting, though short. Another is fancy Italian dress armor from the Renaissance, also interesting, though I was wondering what would happen if you put on weight during the holidays and couldn’t fit in your favorite suit of plate. Would a cunning adversary wait until early January to attack, when all your knights were loosening belt buckles a notch or three? And we’re not talking about jeans, which you might be able to cram into. “Buddy Lee tested”, indeed.
The big exhibit at the Met is the Dutch Renaissance paintings. Van Eyck to Bruegel. The wonder of this period of Dutch art is the fine detail the painters were able to place into their work. Yes, you have a major scene in the foreground — where fine wrinkles are delineated on each face, mind you — and in the background is, say, a stunningly detailed town scene. Tiny guys, carrying fish to the market, or wheat to the mill. Little people looking out minature windows. Generally, the Met allows you to get real close to these works, so you can make out the details.
Much of this is devotional art: various interpretations of the Passion or the Annunciation, random Biblican parables and lives of saints. Well, there’s also portraits and the last room has the “Wheat Harvest” showing naturalistic peasant life, but Hell imagery is more interesting than a picture of Bob, Salt Merchant in Antwerp. There’s also a fantastic rosary “bead” (if something the size of a pool ball can be called a “bead”), which is openned up. Inside, carved out of the wood of the “bead” is a stunningly detailed city scene. This is not a painting, but a diorama, one of those, “how did they do that?” things. Yes, we may have all that laser silicon wafer etching technology nowadays, but seeing this rosary, you’d almost swear the Renaissance Dutch had all those Intel engineers beat at the carving game.
Some of the paintings are jarring to modern sensibilities. For example, there’s a whole room full of paintings of the Virgin Mary breast feeding baby Jesus, which elicits a mild boggle. (While I didn’t see protestors, it’s unclear to me how the Christian Right, for example, would react to these paintings, seeing as how bodily functions are stictly verboten in modern American religious imagery). Other things just look odd in the late 20th Century. Joos van Cleve’s “Last Judgement”, for example, has Christ dressed up remarkably like Superman. Well, there’s a big red cape, and he’s flying through the air: it’s almost as if a blue shirt with a big “C” on it was at the dry cleaners. I don’t recall if he was buff. A different painting has a manger scene, with an angelically glowing baby Jesus, with me thinking, golly, they won’t need a night light for the kid. And then there’s this painting with Christ’s fingers splayed out in a Vulcan “Live long and prosper”. Yes, I’m aware Leonard Nimoy is Jewish, and the Vulcan thing is derived from a Hebrew hand sign, which was the only thing he could think of doing when he was asked to do some Vulcan greeting for the camera, but it still is jarring to see.
This is a long exhibit, and I got tired at the end of it. This may call for a repeat visit, since I’m sure I missed a lot of things, expecially in the final few rooms.