The greatest piece of art housed in Spain: Diego Velázquez's "Las Meninas." Three or four different sources at Madrid's Museo del Prado spouted statements that said, effectively, that "Las Meninas" is not only the greatest Spanish painting of the 17th century, but the greatest painting of the 17th century, period. I am inclined to actively ignore such statements out of hand, but just as sure as the Lord made little green apples this is one heckuva work. What is the artist shown in "Las Meninas" painting? The girl at the center? The two adults seen in the mirror at the back? Us? And what use of proportion; it must have taken Velázquez months just to work out all the lines in the painting (not seen well in the image I linked to). Kim and I must have spent close to ten minutes in front of the work, thinking, thinking, thinking.
The greatest piece of art housed in England: Rebecca Horn's "Concert for Anarchy," which, when translated from pretentious English into conventional English, roughly means "The Killer Piano." See. This is the thing. There is a large room in the Tate Modern. In this room are about four pieces of art. One of them is a baby grand piano, all closed up, suspended from the ceiling perhaps 10 feet from the floor. Trés bien, I thought. This work is challenging my inborn perceptions of pianos. Pianos are on the floor, and this piano is in the air. Interesting. (This is only somewhat sarcastic; my perception of "Anarchy" at that point struck equilibrium between enchanting and kinda stupid.) So I said to myself, "Self, I am going to stand under that suspended piano." And so I stood directly under the piano, looking up, when there was a loud atonal piano chord coupled with a loud creaking coupled with a giant piano seemingly falling to the floor. I ran about 10 feet, peed-pants-worried1, looked back, and saw this. Perhaps five minutes later, while some softer atonal piano chords were played, the piano atrophied back to its original position. The work’s inconsequential unless one searches far and wide for some tortuous subtext, but it is absolutely, utterly awesome.
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1 Please trust me when I say that I mean that solely metaphorically.
oh so lovingly written by
Matthew |
i sincerely do not know what you are doing here. are you lost? were you
looking for your delicate calico cat, and did you follow her up two flights of stairs
to this room? she is not here. she was here, yes. we gave her a warm bowl of milk, we talked with her about campaign finance reform for a time, and then she bid us good day. i believe she was
going to the post office two blocks down, but i don't quite recall.
for surely you did
not find your way from prinsiana, the least traveled site on
the internet. if you did, though, perhaps you are looking for humor. perhaps you are looking for profundity. perhaps you are looking for answers.
i'm sorry, but you shall go naught-for-three.
