weekend: no time toulouse

[anotheranon]

D. and I went to the Toulouse-Lautrec and Monmartre exhibit on Saturday.

Conclusions - very good and comprehensive, and seeing the "famous" originals of paintings I recognize from books was a thrill as always - is it possible to be a fangirl for a piece of art? D. was not as enthused as I was but enjoyed the lithographs, particularly Tournee du Chat Noir.

I was surprised at all of the non- T-L paintings in the exhibit, including several by Van Gogh before he went to Arles and developed his familiar orange/yellow/blue palette. His were still recognizable even in paler colors because the proportions are all slightly slanted or askew. Another surprise was that Toulouse-Lautrec did a lot of his "finished" works on plain cardboard - and here I was thinking all this time that he just used a lot of brown :P

The characters of Monmartre are always fascinating to me because you see them in different paintings and start to recognize individuals. My favorite is Yvette Guilbert, the cabaret singer with the trademark long black gloves. This painting (not part of the exhibit) is my favorite; the way T-L painted her as all angles and points and long skinny arms she looks quite like an alien to me - what would an alien keep in those gloves?

Maybe I'll write a sci-fi brothel-circus story sometime, populated entirely with green-faced creatures based on Toulouse-Lautrec's art....

Saturday: in a fit of home improvement, D. had maintenance out to fix the kitchen faucet, which had calcium (or something) buildup and was losing pressure and leaking all over the counter. It is now replaced by one of those inverted "U" shaped spigots that stays nicely above the volume of the sink, so we can stack dirty dishes and still have room to fill the Brita water pitcher :P

Continuing the home improvement I went to target to replace the shower curtain - while furtively looking for dark chocolate M&Ms. Alas! The plain ones were sold out and I don't care for the peanut butter ones. Luckily, they DID have new dark chocolate Hershey's Kisses! My favorite poison in a perfectly sized dose ;)

Sunday: rapier fencing. Got my ass handed to me because... well, I'm new at this :P Also, I was practicing with a borrowed weapon made for someone far taller than me, and I lack the strength to keep holding a 49" weapon aloft for 15 minutes at a time. I need to start working out the muscles right next to my pectorals - the front of the shoulder where the arm meets the torso, whatever those are called (anyone?).

General: I'm now in constant low-key "Hermoine-mode" in preparation for my class. I'm going to try and read as much of the main textbook as possible before the class starts on 5/31 - I may not understand all of it, but at least I'll know what's coming :P

Comments

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

is it possible to be a fangirl for a piece of art?

There are paintings that I would drop everything and fly around the world to see if I could. So I think the answer to that is yes. (I tend to refer to Vermeer's Kitchen Maid as "my girl in Amsterdam." : ) )

I have not seen a lot of Toulouse-Latrec, but the exhibit sounds wonderful.

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

Sounds like you get the "art fangirl" thing! I'm sure I drive other patrons nuts squatting down and otherwise hovering to see just how the brushtrokes work together, etc.!

I envy your trip some time ago to the Prado - I've always wanted to see Bosch's "Garden of Earthly Delights" "in person"!

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes, Bosch. No print can do "Earthly Delights" justice -- I found it really disturbing, and ended up having to go sit down for a while. Of course, I was severely jet-lagged when I first saw it (I went back to the Prado a couple of days later, but didn't spend a lot of time looking at it - I was more interested in hunting down the Goya).

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

I envy you that :) And it completely skipped my mind that there's be plenty of Goyas too!

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

Also, as far as the brushstrokes thing... I would give anything to know how Vermeer manages to have light come *out* of a canvas. It's breathtaking. And I could stand and look at Van Gogh's brushstrokes for days. One of the things that I found disappointing about seeing Starry NIght at MOMA in New York was that they had it hung behind glass. Given how famous a painting it is, I can understand it, but it made it hard to look at the brushstrokes, which is really important to seeing Van Gogh.

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

I am guessing they put it behind glass for protective reasons - if I'm right, it's sad but probably necessary - these things dont preserve on their own very well :(

I saw the "Van Goghs Van Goghs" exhibit here in 1998 and a number of the paintings were without glass. What was most telling was that a few of the heavily spackled "points" on the paint were flattened, indicating that they may have been part of one of Van Gogh's painting "sprees" where he'd crank out a canvas a day and store them one on top of the other while not quite dried.

I missed the Vermeer exhibit here and while I can't claim to be a fan, after seeing "Girl with a Pearl Earring" I kinda regret missing it. What do you recommend as representative of his work?