About
This is just a collection of things I find interesting; I don't often post about my own life. I studied Classics and Philosophy at Queen's and I'm now a student in a law clerk program in Ottawa.Following
St. Gemma Galgani, stigmatist. No idea who the artist is.
Giorgione, The Tempest.
Small studies by Tom Thomson, each just a little bigger than postcards, at the National Gallery; view of downtown through the gallery windows. I always go visit the Inuit collection and the Group of Seven when I’m there, my favourites that are easiest to find. The Caravaggio exhibition was a little more slender than I was expecting, with some of my favourites not there at all and a lot of space filled in by the Caravaggisti. Some of which were pretty great, of course, but quite a few were tired copies.
Whenever I’m at a gallery I always think that there must be some better way than this—the crowds and the sore feet and the tiny information cards and the necessity for the guards who then have to try to make themselves invisible. And none of the added technology, like the audio-guides with the headphones, really does much to fix it. I like galleries, they just seem terrible at the function of letting people enjoy looking at paintings. (Being on your feet or otherwise mobile is great for sculpture and installations, of course, so that’s an exception.) I can’t even think of how I would like to view a collection. A wheelchair would be almost perfect if they hung the paintings lower, and assuming that everyone else didn’t also have wheelchairs. Maybe they’d have to just let people in a few at a time. I don’t know. This is tough.
Theodore Kittelsen, Nøkken, 1904.
Riza (outer protective covering) of gold removed from a Russian ikon.
(Source: Wikipedia)
I put this on Pinterest a while ago but it’s stuck with me. In 1599, the tomb of Saint Cecilia was opened and Cardinal Sfondrato commissioned Stefano Maderno, who was 23 at the time, to recreate the body exactly as it was found. Unlike anything else I’ve seen from that period, forensically beautiful.
Edward Kienholz, State Hospital.
This piece was in a big book about modern art that I used to look at as a kid. It disturbed me, and I think it was the first time that I wished I could unsee a piece of art. (I don’t think it’s bad or wrong as art, but I still wish I had never seen it. I think this is the artist’s intention.)
Why, then, am I inflicting it on you? Dunno.
From the liner notes to Martin Tielli’s The Ghost of Danny Gross.
This one too, from the same pile of postcards. There was a Picasso exhibition that year. Nobody called him an asshole, either. (Not in Ottawa!)
I like David Bowie’s cover of that song, by the way, if only for the inclusion of the lines “Pablo’s feeling better now, hanging by his fingernails…Pablo’s feeling better now, hanging by his picture nails.” (No responsibility if that animation-student-made video gives you nightmares.)
“I want you to feel the way I do: There’s barbed wire wrapped all around my head and my skin grates on my flesh from the inside. How can you be so comfortable only 5” to the left of me? I don’t want to hear myself think, feel myself move. It’s not that I want to be numb, I want to slip under your skin: I will listen for the sound you hear, feed on your thought, wear your clothes. Now I have your attitude and you ‘re not comfortable anymore. Making them yours you relieved me of my opinions, habits, impulses. I should be grateful but instead… you ‘re beginning to irritate me: I am not going to live with myself inside your body, and I would rather practice being new on someone else.”
Jana Sterbak, I Want You to Feel the Way I Do (The Dress.) Text accompanies the sculpture on the gallery wall behind it. I have a postcard with this picture because I always buy tons of them in gallery gift shops; I found the postcard today while cleaning and it made me miss the National Gallery.
