Tuesday, April 15, 2008

More MFA

I'm still in the spell, dear reader. Now that's what you call a good museum, when it gets inside the viewers' heads and stays there. A few notes left over:
The Impressionist paintings are a marvel and slightly more, well, pastel than I expected. I mean when you stand in the doorway to the room you notice a sort of, I don't know, a pinkness.

Some pretty famous names in there, including Monet and his Water Lilies, and those names pull you up. Wow. The guy himself stood right here looking at this thing. You can sense him looking over your shoulder. Imagine Van Gogh, or as one of my students called him, Van Gosh, skulking around amidst the viewers.

'Gustave
This charming picture of what I would call produce, by Gustave Caillebotte, Fruit Displayed on a Stand, got me to stop. Hannaford's doesn't use the lovely tissue paper or actually any paper with its fruit and maybe they should.
Then you get into the heavier stuff, such as Velazquez and all the religious darkness. This one is by Caraggio.
Takingofchrist_1
It's called The Taking of Christ and of course it's all about the betrayal by Judas, etc. Not surprising that it's so dark, and there's almost a cinematic quality to it, the action seems so real and true.
I loved seeing the art students drawing the masterpieces and I guess this is a strategy for them to practice the techniques of the masters. I guess we can't really do that with novels. I mean it would take so long....YEAH, I'M STILL WORKING ON THIS WRITING EXERCISE AND I THINK I'M GETTING THE HANG OF IT.
WHAT PART ARE YOU ON?
THE PART WHERE SHE SINKS TO HER KNEES AND CRIES I'LL NEVER BE HUNGRY AGAIN.
OH YEAH, THAT'S A GREAT PART. KEEP GOING.
I WILL, BUT I KEEP WANTING TO PUT PRODUCE IN IT.

News flash, dear reader. I am going to ENGLAND next month. I will definitely visit the Tate while there, as well as Charleston Farmhouse and other Virginia Woolf sites.

LAH DEE FREAKIN' DAH, BABY.
A bientot
love,
becky

2 Comments:

At 4:54 PM , Blogger Mark said...

I was chatting to my brother just last night about the popularity of creative writing degrees and whether they're a bit bogus. But isn't it just another art? Still not sure what the difference is between teaching writing and painting, but you've come closer to the crux of it than we did! There was that story about Hunter S Thompson copying out The Great Gatsby word for word... not sure how much it helped him though.

By the way, I think if you put the produce in, that's called literary fiction.

And very exciting news about the trip to England!

 
At 5:53 PM , Blogger Becky Willis Motew said...

HAR, Mark!!! Yes, he was in the Produce School and well known for it, lah dee dah.

I didn't know that about HST, my idol of course.

I suppose you can teach technique, but that's about it, eh?

b

 

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home