A few weekends ago I went to visit my friend KTBB in Chicago, where we spent a lovely Sunday at the Art Institute. There we saw George Seurat's "Sunday Afternoon on the Isle of La Grande Jatte":
Or as I kept thinking when I was in the room with it:
Sunday
By the blue purple yellow red water
On the green purple yellow red grass
Let us pass . . .
Or also: dot-dot-dot-dot-dot-dot-dot-dot-dot-dot-dot-dot-dot-dot-dot-dot
In another room, we found, I must say, the fattest baby Jesus I have ever seen in my life, the son of an equally rotund Virgin Mary. I forget who the artist was, but -- living up to stereotype -- he was a medieval German.
The Art Institute also has a wonderful Matisse collection. Matisse is my favorite artist, and I'm always on the lookout for images of this room:
The carpet and red curtains recur here, as you can see:
and the furniture, draperies, and carpet also come up in The Inattentive Reader at the Tate Gallery and Interior with a Violin Case at MoMA. I hope very much this room is preserved in Nice somewhere. . . . If you ever see any other images of it, let me know.
Art museums always make me want to take artistic-seeming shots of my own, like these pictures of a perfect stranger looking at a map and his digital camera:
The afternoon ended, unexpectedly but delightfully, with tea at American Girl Place. Say what you will about the evils of Pleasant Company, they do a bang-up afternoon tea, complete with champagne, many delicious sandwiches, scones, and our very own doll on loan:
To paraphrase Sondheim again:
There are worse things than staring at the pictures
while you're visiting your best friend
having tea in corporate girldom
in the city of Chicago
on a Sunday . . .
Or as I kept thinking when I was in the room with it:
Sunday
By the blue purple yellow red water
On the green purple yellow red grass
Let us pass . . .
Or also: dot-dot-dot-dot-dot-dot-dot-dot-dot-dot-dot-dot-dot-dot-dot-dot
In another room, we found, I must say, the fattest baby Jesus I have ever seen in my life, the son of an equally rotund Virgin Mary. I forget who the artist was, but -- living up to stereotype -- he was a medieval German.
The Art Institute also has a wonderful Matisse collection. Matisse is my favorite artist, and I'm always on the lookout for images of this room:
The carpet and red curtains recur here, as you can see:
and the furniture, draperies, and carpet also come up in The Inattentive Reader at the Tate Gallery and Interior with a Violin Case at MoMA. I hope very much this room is preserved in Nice somewhere. . . . If you ever see any other images of it, let me know.
Art museums always make me want to take artistic-seeming shots of my own, like these pictures of a perfect stranger looking at a map and his digital camera:
The afternoon ended, unexpectedly but delightfully, with tea at American Girl Place. Say what you will about the evils of Pleasant Company, they do a bang-up afternoon tea, complete with champagne, many delicious sandwiches, scones, and our very own doll on loan:
To paraphrase Sondheim again:There are worse things than staring at the pictures
while you're visiting your best friend
having tea in corporate girldom
in the city of Chicago
on a Sunday . . .