Carnival at The De Young

So I went to the De Young Museum with Irwin and Marlon yesterday, which was AWESOME.
I happen to enjoy the De Young, despite some funky arranging on the part of the curator. (As Irwin and Carlo and I, and later Irwin and Marlon and I discussed) The transitions between the periods and places is a little awkward in some parts... ok, most parts... It's a little ADD. Kind of like the average American attention span in museums... So I guess in some respects it might hold the interest of Americans a little better, but at the same time the ones that DO have the attention span to enjoy museums might find it slightly choppy.
The artworks they have there are really great though. I have some favorites in their permanent collection.
Also there were not only some great temporary exhibits up, but it was Carnival, and they were having a costume party where they were teaching everyone the basic salsa steps.
Afterward the three of us went to this Indian restaurant over on 9th between Irving and Judah. It was delicious and cheap. A great combination. Then we walked down the block past a more expensive Indian place and over to the bar there for a drink before Mar dropped us off at my place.
That was a fun time. And we made plans to hang out over at Mar's place sometime to play pool.

The Lion Museum Continued (Bringing more of The Met Museum To You)

This is a detail from Claude Lorraine's painting The Trojan Women Setting Fire to Their Fleet. I liked the expression, the movement, the detail... The ships were also well done, very detailed... But the painting is huge, and everything in it is small. Small and intricate. It would have been a stronger composition if Lorraine (who's real last name was apparently Gellee.) had chosen part of his painting and made it bigger. And some of my friends are going to laugh that I'm talking about the composition, cause they think that's just what people comment on when they have nothing better to say, but I'm serious. The composition was seriously lacking. But hey, who am I to criticize? The guy painted better than I ever will.

This is Georges de La Tour's The Fortune Teller. I liked the old gypsy's wrinkly face, and how the young gypsies were picking his pockets. I don't know, I guess it was just done well.

This glassy eyed Madonna by Caravaggio was interesting to me because of the expression on her face and how she seems a bit... I don't know... tired of the whole thing. Like she wished someone had asked her if she wanted the whole deal. And also cause the toddler Jesus is in a kind of bratty show off superior pose as if he's lording it over his cousin John how he's the center of attention (really, no horribly inappropriate pun intended, I promise). It's not that I'm dissing any of the religion or any of the people in the pictures. I'm really not. I'm just saying that you hardly ever see such a human looking portrayal. And I'm sure it wasn't intentional...

I thought this girl was a riot. She had binoculars to counter my camera. It was great.




Ok, I know, it's a chair. But if you look closely, it looks like someone drew a chair and it sprang into being. Like Athena from Zeus's head. I mean... Look at it!










German made ivory portable diptych sundials. are they awesome or what? Mid 1500s to very early 1600s.


A table clock and it's guts. I thought it was so cool how they had removed all the inner workings of these clocks and watches so you could see how they worked. I want to make one...









Roemer. Isn't that a cool name? I dunno. It's a map on a chalice. Why would you use a diamond engraving tip to put a map on a glass chalice? Because you're that bad-ass a cartographer, that's why. Dutch mid-17th century.







Padlock and Key. The card is actually quite legible if you look at this picture in full size. Just click on it!


The gate in the middle of the Medieval Statuary was pretty cool. I liked walking through it, so I did a few times more than was strictly necessary. The museum guard raised an eyebrow at me, but what does he know? He gets to walk through it all the time! How often am I in there?

A statue of the Virgin Mary of the Annunciation.














The two Marys. The one facing the camera is Mary Magdalene and the other is the Virgin.













A Statue of Saint Catherine of Alexandria.















This is a leaf from a Psalter. It's from an English court school around the mid 1200s. It's tempera and gold leaf on vellum.











This is enamel on copper-gilt. There were a lot of little scenes like this that were apparently affixed to the front of books and stuff.


A Super old Mahzor (Prayer Book). This thing is from the 1400s. It's Italian. Tempera, gold, and ink on parchment. And sooooooo pretty.....












These little reliquary things freaked me out. People used to carry around little pieces of saints and stuff in these... yeaaah....



A Japanese mask. There were a lot of really cool Japanese things. Unfortunately, my camera was on the blink at that point... Yea.... I think it's cool that they put the beard on the mask, and kinds think it's creepy cause some guy probably cut off the lower half of his beard and stuck it there...




A really awesome lock and key. There were actually several of these locks and keys around this part of the museum. It was awesome.












A Siren statue. I thought the tentacles were interesting. And I'm not sure if it was intentional or if one of the spikes fell off cause I'm not tall enough to really examine it, but I also like the asymmetrical nature of her crown.

Here's the tiny little gallery they made for the Byzantine Egyptian exhibit. It's under the Grand Staircase. I kind of think they just knocked down the janitorial alcove and put in the brick to make it look cool. I giggle cause I keep imagining the janitor from SCRUBS and this facial expression if they knocked down the little room where he and his posse hang out. I'm giggling now! And I'm pretty sure the people behind me in that gallery thought I was loopy. Because after all, the Byzantine Egyptian exhibit is a very serious place! hehehe!

I liked this little Madonna and baby Jesus statue cause it was the only one in this whole gallery where she looked happy and he looked adoring, not judging, and she wasn't holding her bare breast. It just looks so much happier than the others did.






This is a gondola bow. I particularly like the little sea monster on the top. It makes me think of the monster impression my mom used to do when I was little. I know she'd really like this one too. So would Irwin.

This is a room that was just taken out of a Palazzo in Venezia. Yea. Just taken. Original Floor boards and all. Crazy huh? I wonder what they did in the palace. Did they build another room there or is it just a giant hole where a room used to be?

There were a lot of people painting in the European Paintings Gallery while I was there. You have to apply for a permit to be allowed to paint with anything but watercolors in there, so it's kinda cool that people do it. They had their easels set up with their drop clothes and their wooden cases of oil paints. Most of them were listening to music on their headphones so they could ignore the docents and tour guides and the gawking museum goers such as myself who might otherwise have been tempted to try engaging them in conversation. There was this one girl who was a ridiculously good copycat (It looked more like the original than the original did! Just kidding). I think she might be practicing to become a master con-artist. Or maybe that's just my overactive imagination and she's learning the way the old masters did, copying other masters' works to develop technique.
Unfortunately, my camera battery died while I was in the armory. Which is unfortunate. But really, you can't go through that place in one day. So I'm going to go back. And also you can't get a real picture of the place from my crummy snapshots anyway. So if you're ever in New York, go visit the Met Museum!!! Even if you've been before their exhibits are always changing, as with any good museum.

The Lion Museum (Bringing The Met Museum To You)

Ok, so it's not really called "the lion museum", and I'm not talking about the Zoo. I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art today! I call it the Lion Museum because every exhibit I saw had a lion somewhere in it.
It was wonderful!
I walked there from the 33rd Street PATH train station. It's a great walk, past the zoo and all these really cool playgrounds. Why are the playgrounds in Central Park so much cooler than the playgrounds in Golden Gate Park? It's really not fair. (By the way, anyone not in the know, if you're in the Bay Area and you're wanting to go down a giant concrete slide similar to this one only longer, there's one in the park connected via tunnel to the Berkley Rose Garden! But you have to navigate there through Narnia. I'd highly recommend it, especially if you bring your own cardboard. The sand is already there. You throw the sand down the slide right before you, who should be seated on the cardboard big enough that you can hold on without scraping your fingers, start sliding. It'll make you go faster and keep you from wearing out your cardboard as quickly.)
Anyways, I got there and went in. I'm apparently not supposed to use the pictures I'm allowed to take in their galleries except for personal use. But their rules strictly prohibit the distribution of those pictures or the public showing of them... So if it's a blog, and that's KIND OF like a journal, does that count? It's not like these are professional grade pictures. In fact they're pretty crappy because of the lighting (which I know is supposedly to preserve the paintings, but I also think is to discourage photography). And if I say they're in the Met and this is to encourage anyone who DOES happen to read this to go and see the real ones since the pictures don't do them justice? Whatever. They can come yell at me if they find me.

There were a LOT of lions in that museum. All kinds of lions. In all kinds of contexts. It was pretty sweet.
















There were a lot of other things too though.

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes's Don Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zuniga. An art history note (that most readers of this blog probably won't need): Christian art often uses birds to symbolize the soul, and Baroque art used caged birds to show innocence. The card by this painting speculated that "Goya may have intended this portrait as an illustration of the frail boundaries that separate the child's world from the forces of evil or as a commentary on the fleeting nature of innocence and youth." It goes on to say that this painting "may have been executed after the child's death in 1792, since the imagery and sinister undertone seem more characteristic of Goya's works of the 1790s."

Soap Bubbles, by Jean Simeon Chardin. I love this one. Apparently soap bubbles used to allude to the transience of life when used in paintings. Did anyone know that? I didn't. I guess that's something I'd know if I took an art history class...

Jean Marc Nattier did a bunch of paintings in the European Painting Gallery wing, a few of which I found interesting. Or at least parts of them. Like his portrait Madame Marsollier and Her Daughter. Apparently the woman was a well known beauty of the court born and bred and known as The Velvet Duchess for her pretensions. But what I liked were her daughter's eyes. The daughter was the only thing that seemed alive in the whole painting. The duchess was far to posed and glassy eyed.

Nattier's portrait of some courtier I forgot to make note of posed as Diana. I think it's funny cause Diana would never have worn so hindering a gettup, so the fur masks nothing. And Diana's recurve bow would have been strung with a usable string. The one the model was using had a string tied around the nocks and was ridiculously long. Did they think it dangerous to have a woman hold a usable bow? That she'd hurt herself or accidentally shoot someone with it? I bet she was amused too. She looks amused by something. Am I too critical of these paintings? I know they were all vanity portraits. Done in a very stuffy prude era none the less, so she would never have been allowed to pose in any sort of dress that Diana really would have worn...

Nattier's Louise Henriette de Bourbon-Conti, Later Duchesse d'Orleans. From the late 1600s to early 1700s. I liked how she was waist deep in water that was spilling out of the jar. Like the Mississippi river was flowing out of her water jug.





This incredible landscape was done by "El Greco" (Domenikos Theoto- kopoulos) sometime in the late 1500s or early 1600s. It shows Toledo from the north. Apparently the artist took some liberties with the placement of the buildings so that you could see the cathedral which would have been blocked from view from that angle.