| van gogh: brush with genius pissed me off. a shitty excuse for a “documentary,” ridiculous, and almost offensive. but i found some good news: next month, philly’s museum of art will host an exhibition of van gogh’s later works. i’m so excited and keep thinking about it! i have books of his letters and sketches, but he’s one of the few artists whose paintings i never observe in print, because they just don’t translate. you can look at a reproduction of an audubon watercolor or a dali painting, but you can only look at an original van gogh… or rembrandt, or rothko, or manet, etc. the “great” paintings can have a strong physical impact on the viewer: some people are stunned into a meditative state, some people feel dizzy and nauseous. it’s not only an emotional response. my first such experience was before one of van gogh’s works at the met. i remember how jarring it was to realize that the prints in art books only captured some superficial aspect of composition and color; in reality, the colors vibrated in varying strokes, and the eye did not travel along a flat plane bordered by the picture’s perimeter but was pulled into the canvas with its many layers of paint.
p.s. - i like audubon, but i dislike dali.
here are tiny (about one inch tall) figurines made of sculpey. i made the temminck’s tragopan and pathetic seal, and carrie made the guinea fowl and capybara.
many months ago, i reviewed spartacus: blood and sand. the show was upsetting to me because it was incredibly noisy and bursting with nude and oily men. but i believe in second chances, so i decided to watch spartacus: gods of the arena. i hoped with my gentle heart that this prequel would have a more soothing quality. i hoped the gods of the arena would be aphrodite of love, demeter of the harvest, hestia of the hearth, and thor, the god of thunder hammers. but five minutes into the show, my hope died. because i saw the gods of the arena were not even gods… they were just more nude and oily men! again, they were being boisterous (on purpose) and solving their problems with violence instead of peer mediation. even when they whispered secrets, their whispers were almost shouts and seemed so threatening that i felt panicky and scared. why? why does it have to be this way? but the worst part was, when i watched this show, i couldn’t understand the story. i couldn’t concentrate on the plot because i couldn’t stop thinking about how much the main character looks like an angry bird… :*(
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ETC
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