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From: AL
Date: 14 Jun 2004
Time: 18:55:27 -0500
Remote Name: 216.192.10.5
Hmmm. Tea sounds nice. I once spent a few days wondering around the National Gallery of Art in DC. There I finally figured out that, for me, the best way to see art was to walk around, find the few pieces I loved and spend the day with them. All you need to do is find one, and then just linger in front of it. Soon a spot opens up on a nearby bench, and you can sit there for hours soaking it up until you are done. At first the guards look at you a bit funny, but after a while there is a shift change and word gets around that you have been captivated by one of the collection and have started to grow roots in front of it. Passersby sometimes feel odd about getting in the way of your view while others pause and take a second look when they realize someone else thinks there is something there to see beyond the famous name and info plaque. When you finally get full of one you move on to the next. When you get hungry, you go to the museum food court. When they announce it is closing time you go home and come back the next day. . . . As for inner museums, when I was in grade school I was once entranced by the alabaster urn reported to hold the entrails (glad at the time I did not know what they were) of King Tut. I think it was the way they lighted it that just made it, for me, the one piece to see in the entire collection. (But alas I was part of a cattle call school tour so I only got about 60 seconds and so do not have an image in my head.) . . . My first piece of real art, however, is an image that endures . . . it is one by Chagall of Paris at night. At the time I didnt know who he was, what the strange animal was (horse, goat - BTW I still do not know) or that it depicted Paris. It was just this gorgeous display of blue color contrasted with a huge red circle. It was the blue. How you can take a tumble for a color I dont know, but tumble I did. So of course I spent my school graduation money on it instead of practical things like textbooks, luggage and clothes and spent my first year at college eating in the dorm cafeteria instead of ordering late night pizzas like any normal college student. (opps) Id put a link to it but I can not find an image of it online. It was used on a poster to publicize his Louvre showing in the late 60s and is called "Soleil Rouge" which I am guessing means red sun. Online you can find his "Amoureaux (sp) Soleil Rouge" but that is a different picture. . . . So no need to go to Paris and the Louvre when it is there everyday in gorgeous, outrageous blue under a fireball of ruby red, propped against the wall waiting to be rehung. (along with a few other things like a hairy gorilla armpit and a . . .)