the ladies are tramping

I visited the Cloisters with my aunt today; it’s her first time.

We walk into this one gallery where there’s usually the most exquisite display.  I’m not sure who they are and am feeling a bit sodding lazy, so here’s a picture instead of a description:

three ladies

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well, today the ladies weren’t there.  Just the one.  We walk through the portal and I gasp loudly and cover my mouth in shock. A guard looks at me.  ”Where are they? The heads? The women?”

Apparently I’m chuckle-worthy and after pointing out a perfectly visible sign letting us know that two of them are traveling (why not, were I a bust I’d still want to travel), he does a sweep of the room and returns.  Turns out he used to be a night guard.

“Ooh,” I say, since he’s brought up truly the coolest job outside my own, “do people get creeped out by all this living history all around them at night?”

“Nope,” he answers, dashing what another guard elsewhere has told me. “But some people do see things.”

“What things?”

“One guard thought she saw…a ghost.”

“Nice. In the Langon Chapel?” And I describe what I’D imagine there.

He looks at me a moment. “How do you know?”

Because I have all too vivid an imagination, I want to say, but don’t.  Shortly after he walks away again, giving me an odd look.  I spend the rest of our visit trying to look remarkably unsuspicious.  :)

and then there was one

Notes of a Fine, Upstanding Citizen

The truth now: have you ever been kicked out of a place?

I have twice suffered the ignominy of being escorted from a place, if one does not count evacuating Georgia.  (Which I do not, as I find an invading Russian army to be suitable reason for anyone to be escorted from a place.)

Both times, it was a museum exhibit which caused my downfall. 

I blame Modernity.

See, although I wasn’t alive to test this hypothesis during the 1600s or even the early 1900s, I suspect that I wouldn’t have been kicked out back then.  Mostly as I likely wouldn’t have been even allowed in to start with.  Thus securing my fine, upstanding reputation.  This sad truth would nettle any but the most wise of souls, but fortunately I am as sage as can be.

The first museum to unRuth was in Haifa, Israel. 

There I was, earnestly having my mind blown by my insanely intelligent cousin, who was explaining some dimensional theory in physics.  I mean, who can focus during times like these?

I certainly cannot.  And the task of explaining the incredible to the uncomprehending meant my cousin was of no mind to focus on minor details, either.

And so it was that we accidentally meandered into the exhibit itself.  A model Neanderthal community, replete with model Neanderthal men, women, hearths, instruments and huts.

Visitors got a unique flavor of history that day, a glimpse of prehistoric man fashioning crude instruments and modern man fashioning crude explanations for nuclear physics.  We, on display, lingering outside a Neanderthal hut, felt the exhibit was more hands-on than typical, but otherwise noticed nothing unusual whatsoever.

Security did notice.  We were escorted to the café.

I began a strict regime of noticing my surroundings when I entered museums. 

This succeeded for a decade, until New York.  This time, it was not inattention that would garner an escort out, but rather my intense concentration on the art.  I feel this lends the entire thing a certain air of respectability, don’t you?

We were in my favorite museum ever, the Metropolitan, softly abutting Central Park.  A friend and I were exploring the American Wing.  The Met’s so lovely and full of scrumptious art and numerous wings that I had never actually even made it into that particular wing before, and I was quite ecstatic to be seeing the gorgeous Tiffany lamps.

So on this particular day, R and I got into earnest discussion about the lamps.  The question: if we could have one, which one would we want. 

Only the thing is that both R and I are avid readers and also fans of Tiffany glass.  So we took this question most seriously.

It would be the earnestness of our admiration that would get us in trouble.

We began holding books under each desirable lamp, reading a page or two here or there to get a sense of how good the lamps were at providing light, real light, to read by. 

Apparently, Tiffany lamps in the Met are NOT there to provide reading light for visitors, and next thing we knew an alarm was peeling and we too were peeling away in flight and terror.  We slammed into someone at the Frank Lloyd Wright room, and then realized the only way out that we knew was back through the Perilous Minotaur Room of Tiffanies.

We unsuspiciously crept through the room, our bags and books hiding our faces, until we made it out to the Egyptian Wing. 

I like to think we were mostly unnoticed, only a guard coincidentally was walking right by us, departing only once we were deposited safely away from light sources of artistic value.

I do love the Met still, of course—love it dearly, in fact—but I still get a certain illicit frisson when I wander into the American Wing .  I grow red and keep the book in my bag hidden, and keep a healthy non-reading distance from the Tiffany lamps.

In fact, ever since that day, I am more likely to spend countless hours searching for the Temple of Dendur, a lovely haven in the middle of the museum which R showed me that day, but which has eluded me ever since, much in the manner of Platform 9 ¾.

I may have Muggled the Met.

So, what about you?  The truth now. 

The Pond in lower Central Park

And on one absolutely unrelated note:  First Date, the movie with Tina Fey and whatsisname, is hilarious.    And the scene where whatsisname mentions Central Park…–brilliant. 

Stone Cold

My new thing is stonemasons.  I read a great book a while back by a master stonemason (Thomas Maude), and ever since then, I can’t get enough.  From stonemasonry to architecture to sculpture, I’m swimming in delicious books, hooked onto the glimpses of that other world, that other our world, lurking beneath the surfaces of our everyday lives.  Literally.

One thing that’s fascinating me is the way in which we fixate on inanimate things in order to prove our strength.  Remember the Taliban in Afghanistan?  The Soviets did the same thing in Kaliningrad—only instead of blowing up statues in effigy, they decapitated them.

Apparently this was all the fashion in the Paris of the Reign of Terror (1793-94).  When Louis XVI was decapitated, it wasn’t quite enough of a statement—the funerary statue of Carolingian King Lothair (954-86) was decapitated too. 

Throughout Paris, images of kings were torn down and destroyed.  Decapitated-destroyed.  Statues of unknown provenance, if possibly regal statement, were also thusly tossed down.  If stone could think, it would scratch its head.  Which would of course be lying on the ground several feet away from its body.

The Notre Dame, when its medieval sculptures were forced from their pedestals along the walls, offered the discerning anti-royal citizen quite the heaping mass of rubble.  According to records, the very doors of this grand cathedral were obstructed and obscured by defiled stonework, featuring the illustriously decapitated statues of French royalty—be they holy or secular.  For three years they sat there in disarray, gathering the dirt and detritus of abandonment.

A contemporary painter suggested they put the rocks together to form a huge sculpture, but France had enough problems at the moment without directing all their horses and wagons to the site, and of course trains had yet to be invented.  So to minimize costs, they offered the misshapen rocks as quarry for sale.  Genius.  And so it was that these historical statues, saints mistaken for kings, were transported to various reaches of that great land.

Almost two centuries later, in 1977, the French were living their normal lives, sans revolutions and butchered statues or royalty.  Very novel.  And what should happen when some dear French dudes start excavating at 20 rue de la Chaussee-d’Antin to build a prison?  You guessed it.

Wait, you didn’t.  I shall have to furnish the answer myself.  No worries, dear reader.  I came prepared.

What should they find–but a mass grave.  A mass grave of statue heads, all buried facedown.  Twenty-one heads, buried together and cushioned by plaster.  No records exist to tell us today who buried these heads.

So now we have not only the fact that we sculpt ourselves from stone and venerate it.  We also destroy these images to show our power.  And we also bury them, again in veneration.  We bury them, or of course we walk slowly around resurrected statues like Venus de Milo, and marvel at its beauty, at its survival, and at its makers.

Stone…not so cold, after all.

Paper Art

So I have reached the conclusion: sometimes it’s okay to cut a book up.  But basically only if you’re Su Blackwell.  When she does it, fiction comes to life in a most magical, delicate way.  (And the image she brings to life is made of the very pages describing it in the book.  So cool!)

Not sure if you agree?  Check these out and get back to me. 

The Old House 2007, by Su Blackwell

The Girl in the Wood, by Su Blackwell

The Girl in the Wood (detail), by Su Blackwell

Alice: Through the Looking Glass 2007, by Su Blackwell

Alice: A Mad Tea Party 2006, by Su Blackwell

While You Were Sleeping II, by Su Blackwell (I think)

     

The Naked Guy in the Basement

You know what it’s like, right?  Moving in with a roommate, having to decide what comes with and what can’t fit–the usual.

So I decided my round kitchen table wouldn’t fit.  I asked the Ukrainian movers (whom we nicknamed Jay and Silent Pavel) if they could bring it down to the basement of the gorgeous old Brooklyn house that would be my new home.  I followed them out of perhaps a misplaced sense of hospitality.  In no time, they plunked it on the cement ground and headed back up.

I lingered at the bottom of the stairs, trying to find the light switch.  And that’s when I saw him.

Leaning back against a beam, glistening slightly in the shadows.

My roommate was an artist.  And I guess he hadn’t made the cut.  A charcoal nude.  A sketch.  A sleeping man reclined on a sofa, a book on his lap.

He was… beautiful.

I stood in awe and gaped.

Finally, I stumbled back up.  I staggered to the studio, bathed in light, where my friend was chatting with my new artist roommate.

I didn’t bother with preambles.

“Who’s the naked guy in the basement?”

My friend’s face was a canvas of Gobsmacked.

Within a few months, The Naked Guy in the Basement–for thusly was he renamed–made it out of the basement and, with much fanfare, onto the living room wall.  By the time I moved away, packing my few belongings into J’s car for the long drive south, he was a mainstay for all of us.  My roommate endowed him to me as a goodbye gift, although I wouldn’t see him again until I finished with Peace Corps.

That day, the day I moved out, I saved loading the art until last.  Turning to grab the last few pieces, I saw he was missing.  Him and a Dali sketch another friend, Ev, had given me years gone by.  Saint John of the Cross, it’s called, and it’s my favorite Dali.

I stifled a squeak and ran about the house looking for them.  Through a window, I saw J make her way down to the car.  I ran to the front door.

“J!”

She turned, cocking her eyebrows.

“Do you have Jesus and the Naked Guy?”

Her expression told me she wasn’t the sort to yell the answer to that one on a Sunday morning.

Now that I’m moving into my own place sometime soon–months after moving back from Peace Corps–I need to unbury my art at my parents’ home.  I think Jesus and the Naked Guy might just be under my bed, but I’ll find out for sure soon enough.  :)

Brooklyn View, Winter Storm

Just Under Six Thousand, He Said

He was walking up the stairs above me, so he didn’t see my face.

“I’ll think about it,” I said, meaning that I’d spend the evening fantasizing that I had $6,000 (or, as he put it, just under $6,000).  Not to mention a wall to hang the painting.

I’d dragged my friend J out there, taking advantage of her sprightly idea that we go on a road trip.

“Yeah!” I’d agreed enthusiastically, and wrote down the directions to a small town nearby.  She wore a confused frown when she met my eyes, but she agreed.  It wasn’t the hike through the mountains she’d been thinking about, but she knew Dao Hai Phong was my favorite living artist, and if the nearest gallery showing his art was a mini-road trip away–so be it.  She’s good peeps, J.

We pulled up at a large private home.  Phong’s painting was in it.  I couldn’t wait to see it.

We rung the bell, and the hospitable owner emerged.  He showed us rooms upon rooms of art, taking the time to tell us all about the many artists.  He knew I was there for Phong, but he was willing to teach anyone interested in learning.  I can say he made me a fan of others, too.  But still, my heart was in my mouth waiting to see the Phong painting.  Finally, he brought us before it.

It was…breathtaking.

And then they took it off the wall and brought it out onto a patio to see it in full light.  I swear, color filled the world….  It was sheer beauty.  It was….

just under $6,000.

We thanked him, for it was wondrous.  And then we stepped out again.  The sun didn’t dazzle our senses, which were still awash with Phong’s painting.  I wandered to the car in a daze.

Just under $6,000.

I’d just come back to the States from Georgia.  I was still acclimating to credit cards and insulation and air conditioning, not to mention automatically opening and closing doors.  The latter I’d completely forgotten and had literally put down shopping bags to personally battle a door, trying to shut it while it kept opening wider and wider.

In other words, the words “six thousand” just didn’t fit under my tongue or over it, or anywhere near my teeth.  I’d spent almost every last penny of mine doing refugee youth work.  I had, shall we say, under six thousand in the pocket.  Well under six thousand.

I opened the car door and–inspiration!–my heart leapt.  I shot a gleeful glance at J.

“I have the most brilliant idea,” I announced, in my usual understated and modest way.

J froze, her hand on the clutch. “You’re not going to…buy it?  For six thousand dollars?”  Her voice was a horrified whisper now.

“No, better.”

She shook her head mutely, and didn’t pull out of the driveway.

“Six thousand,” I said. “That’s a lot of money.”

“A lot,” J agreed.

“For six thou, one could fly to Vietnam itself, see it, stay a week or two.”  I paused for a beat. “J, I bet we could do all that for HALF the amount.”  She was breathing again, so I spoke genius idea two. “And with the other $3K, I’m telling you, I bet I could find the artist and buy another painting.”

Now, I’m sure you’re thinking that’s mad.  I wouldn’t blame you, really, considering I was discussing $6,000 which I didn’t have.  (And incidentally, still don’t.)

But what’s great about J (among other things), is that in response she said (and I quote), “That’s a brilliant idea!”

There’s just something in the blood of a true traveler, that such an idea can be found not just worthy, but truly worthy.  As in put-it-in-our-calendars worthy.

And thus was the great trip to Vietnam agreed upon in blood.  Well, imaginary blood.  Somewhat like my $6,000.  Still, when I DO get $6,000, provided Juliet Stevenson and Alan Rickman are not acting on a stage I can drive or fly to, Vietnam’s on the horizon, baby.  Vietnam.  Because they have a painter I musts meet and a painting I would love to see hang in my own home.

Ought I not be above material possessions?  But his art is about mood and beauty, and is a breath of that most incredible of things: art.

And now, some art by my man, Dao Hai Phong:

Dark Nights - Dao Hai Phong

Lotus Season - Dao Hai Phong

Flower Vendor - Dao Hai Phong

title unknown - Dao Hai Phong

Two Boats - Dao Hai Phong

Two Trees - Dao Hai Phong

Highland Scenery - Dao Hai Phong

Uh…  So if you have a spare $6,000…and have already paid off your school loans and put aside money for your children’s college tuition and your parents retirement as well as yours, and have given away loads to help inner-city youth, children of the incarcerated, abused creatures of all sorts, the homeless and the hungry, etc, etc…  You know what I wouldn’t mind for my birthday

Why I Must Visit Vietnam

More this afternoon, but for now: a teaser of the gorgeousness of modern Vietnamese painting….

Dao Hai Phong's Lotus Pond