Matisse Madness
A group of us daytripped to the North Carolina Musieum of Art to check out "Matisse, Picasso and the School of Paris" with special thanks to Ed Cone for helping to bring a few of his family's things to NC for us to see.
The day started out at Mark's place where we picked up our host and traveling companion and headed to Chip's place to grab chip and a bite to eat. This is notable because this is the first time I have ever had Mongolian BBQ and it might be the perfect eating style. It had all types of meat, all types of vegies, plenty of sauces, oils, and dry spices. Anyone with any type of eating style could go there and get a good meal at a good price. Greensboro needs one of these in the worst way.
So after great food we went to the musieum and spent five hours looking at a fraction of what was available to see. We had a 1:30 ticket to the special exibit so we had time to check out egyptian and roman art and artifacts while we waited our turn. Good stuff. It is a wonder to me that someone three thousand years ago can create something better than I can today. Its humbling really.
The special exibit was a good deal of fun. On the ride up we listened to an MP3 from NPR where Ed Cone mentioned that art was even better when you've had a couple of drinks. Sadly, we didn't have a couple of drinks first, but we all had a great time none the less. Its sad that modern mass media has jaded me so much. There was this painting there with a clown in tights sitting down with his legs open wide. There was a young boy on his lap in tights and no shirt. All I could think of was that if NAMBLA had a homepage, this painting would be found on it. I wasn't the only perv in the room either. Sara noticed it first and brought it to my attention. As you walk in to the special exibit there is a sculpture of a young girl child wearing a ballet costume that had a cloth skirt. The men looked at the sculpture, admired its lifelikeness and moved on. The women did the same but still had to try to look under the skirt to see (presumably) wether or not she was wearing underwear. Sara also got a laugh at my expence when she saw the sculpture of Balzac, she said it resembled me. She won't tell me if this is a good thing or not. One exibit I really liked was a study of Picaso's reclining nude. They had all of his pencil sketches that lead up to the final work. It was very educational. I came away from it with the feeling that he made one sketch working with the model and all the others came from the sketch before it. It was most interesting in where the empasis was placed and the choices that were made. He clearly thought the legs were more important than the face but the choices weren't so clearly defined as in the shape, size, and location of the breast. He wasn't creating a painting of a woman he was creating a painting of his interpretation of a woman. We left the exibit through some presumably french school sureal paintings. Since there was no mention in the exibit of Man Ray or Dali I could only presume they were only looking at french school. Sureal is more my style than what Matisse and Picaso were doing. Rococco is my absolute favorite.
So my next stop was the Rococco exibit. I loved the way artist in this period could make a painting so life like that when you viewed the paintings you expected the subject to turn and greet you. Here more than anywhere else in art do I feel that the subject of the painting is trying to tell you something more than the artist. One sculpture of a young woman occupied Mark, Sara, and myself for what must have been thirty minutes. Wheather or not the woman existed I will never know but I do know this, the artist created perfection from stone. Sara noticed that the stripes in the stone even resembled veins just under the surface of the skin. And the skin glowed like satin. Just exactly the way that skin glows on commercials for cosmetics. Revlon, meet marble.
After art, we met up with even more people for dinner at Bullucks BBQ in Durham. Family style yum! The BBQ wasn't bad for gas cooked, a little sweeter than I would prefer but not at all the sickly candy sweet of the BBQ Short Surgar's serves. The fried chicken was plentiful just like I like it even if it was a little bit overcooked. I ignored the french fries. The cole slaw was tasty, but my favorite was the green beans.
Home.
Bed.
