Up before dawn to get to school for my ‘early’ lesson and still there were traffic jams – though, thank god not of the soul screaming variety. I do find that looking like a Kathe Kollwitz drawing on your way to school as you battle suicidal motorcyclists and cutting cars is not conducive to looking as placid as a Zubarán when you finally get in front of a class.
The similes are obviously a function of my wandering fingers in the art section of my scattered library. These art books are volumes that I find particularly difficult to get into any kind of order as the temptation to turn the pages and look at the pictures (why they were bought after all) is overmastering.
The most disastrous piece of information associated with the paintings is the caption which tells you where the particular canvas or piece of wood is actually situated: the tug of foreign galleries is almost irresistible!
It has always been one of my ambitions (quite modest in the scale of things) to go and visit the Alte Pinakothec in Munich which houses the wonderful canvas by Gerard Terborch of “A boy picking fleas from a dog.” I first saw this painting in a volume of the Hamlyn history of art series of very small books which had large colour plates and small amounts of text and I have been fascinated with the paintings every since.
I once got out an atlas of Europe and looked at what I could cover by flying to Munich and then spreading out a way to see what galleries were within reach of the city. Needless to say in a few minutes I was a thousand miles away from Munich in my imagination drawing a cultural route on the map which made the eighteenth century Grand Tours look like Thomas Cook Day Trips!
There is something about a map which encourages a flight of fancy because you trace your fingers over representations of reality as you skim mountain ranges, lakes and oceans in a god-like overview of geographical space. I suppose travelling by map is the nearest we get to the Starship Enterprise concept of being beamed up to a location! Or perhaps it’s only me.
I would like to go to that gallery; but as soon as I say that, I immediately consider other places which also demand my presence. For someone who is much more at home in the pictorial representations produced by the hard edged Northern Renaissance than the soft sumptuous Renaissance of the south I have visited precious few galleries of north and what one of the gold-diggers in ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes’ referred to as “the central of Europe"! Time enough in the future and the Prado does have a wonderful collection of the mystically disturbing and disturbed paintings of Jeroen Anthoniszoon van Aken or Hieronymous Bosch as he is better known – certainly better known to me – but it is wonderful what information one can palm off as one’s own with judicious use of Wikipedia!
Up to Terrassa after school to visit the recovering in hospital. Although he was in a fairly nice room sharing with only one other person when we got there the other patient in the room had at least three generations of his family chatting and running around soon to be joined by three generations of the family of the patient we were visiting. By the time we left it was difficult to remember that we were in a hospital and not in a grand family reunion!
Back home I realized just how tired I was. Still, Friday tomorrow and the hope of a decent weekend.
The similes are obviously a function of my wandering fingers in the art section of my scattered library. These art books are volumes that I find particularly difficult to get into any kind of order as the temptation to turn the pages and look at the pictures (why they were bought after all) is overmastering.
The most disastrous piece of information associated with the paintings is the caption which tells you where the particular canvas or piece of wood is actually situated: the tug of foreign galleries is almost irresistible!
It has always been one of my ambitions (quite modest in the scale of things) to go and visit the Alte Pinakothec in Munich which houses the wonderful canvas by Gerard Terborch of “A boy picking fleas from a dog.” I first saw this painting in a volume of the Hamlyn history of art series of very small books which had large colour plates and small amounts of text and I have been fascinated with the paintings every since.
I once got out an atlas of Europe and looked at what I could cover by flying to Munich and then spreading out a way to see what galleries were within reach of the city. Needless to say in a few minutes I was a thousand miles away from Munich in my imagination drawing a cultural route on the map which made the eighteenth century Grand Tours look like Thomas Cook Day Trips!
There is something about a map which encourages a flight of fancy because you trace your fingers over representations of reality as you skim mountain ranges, lakes and oceans in a god-like overview of geographical space. I suppose travelling by map is the nearest we get to the Starship Enterprise concept of being beamed up to a location! Or perhaps it’s only me.
I would like to go to that gallery; but as soon as I say that, I immediately consider other places which also demand my presence. For someone who is much more at home in the pictorial representations produced by the hard edged Northern Renaissance than the soft sumptuous Renaissance of the south I have visited precious few galleries of north and what one of the gold-diggers in ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes’ referred to as “the central of Europe"! Time enough in the future and the Prado does have a wonderful collection of the mystically disturbing and disturbed paintings of Jeroen Anthoniszoon van Aken or Hieronymous Bosch as he is better known – certainly better known to me – but it is wonderful what information one can palm off as one’s own with judicious use of Wikipedia!
Up to Terrassa after school to visit the recovering in hospital. Although he was in a fairly nice room sharing with only one other person when we got there the other patient in the room had at least three generations of his family chatting and running around soon to be joined by three generations of the family of the patient we were visiting. By the time we left it was difficult to remember that we were in a hospital and not in a grand family reunion!
Back home I realized just how tired I was. Still, Friday tomorrow and the hope of a decent weekend.
No comments:
Post a Comment