Wednesday, January 26---
---The big thing today is a tour of the National Gallery, a sprawling museum filled with art from all over the place. The place is huge, so I get my notepad ready for a day of feverishly scribbled notes. Here are some of my finds: I’m amazed at the size of many of the works of art I studied last year. Two of the Van Eycks that I looked at (especially the Man in the Red Turban) were much smaller than I thought they would be, while the famous Leonardo cartoon by Da Vinci was absolutely huge (it had to be five feet wide and a good six or seven feet tall. A quick aside: it used to be hanging freely and in the open. That all changed when a man came in and shot it with a shotgun, almost ruining the rather fragile work. Now it’s completely behind bulletproof glass and shrouded in darkness.)
Some big British painters that I learned about: Thomas Gainsborough, a famous landscape painter who adored painting nature and was quite adept at it, but no one liked that type of picture at the time, so he was forced to do portraits of the aristocracy (something he was also quite good at.) This type of painting bored him to death, so he decided to make the best of things and place his subjects in front of scenes from the great outdoors. That allowed him to paint the things he loved while still raking in the dough. A rather smart fellow, I reckon.(A funny note: Gainsborough used to use concrete objects to look at when he paintinged things in nature. When he painted water, he looked at a mirror to get things right, and when he painted trees, he used sprigs of broccoli to get things just so, and that’s why all of his trees look a little strange - they’re not trees at all; they’re actually Pres. Bush’s favorite vegetable...)
Another notable Brit was John Constable, quite simply the best landscape painter I’ve seen to date. His lush scenery and buildings are captured with remarkable detail; I highly recommend getting to know some of his works. My personal favorite is the Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows. Truly beautiful.) Our guide tells me that people in the old days used to say, “If you’re going to look at Constable’s paintings, you better bring an umbrella,” because his work characteristically has such dark and cloudy skies. Quite funny.)
I notice things from my past studies that come flooding back to me. The works of Hans Memling, Dirk Bouts, the Van Eyck brothers, Rogier van der Weyden, etc. The symbolism of so many paintings - St Peter always being portrayed with his keys, Jerome with the lion, Samson getting his hair cut, Mary with white containers around her (to symbolize both her purity and her being a vessel / container for Jesus), etc. This is all rather invigorating because I remember so much of what I had learned.
Two new painters that I find and become intrigued by: Andrea Mantegna and Canaletto. Mantegna is an Italian (tough to figure that one out, eh?) who paints almost completely without color; his works all have lots of blacks and whites and grays, so the figures look almost like statues. It’s very interesting, and then when you hear why, it all makes sense. He painted these things to hang above doorways or on the top of stairs so people would be looking up at them, and so he wanted the figures to actually look like carved statues of stone that would come popping out of the wall. Very cool.
Canaletto, on the other hand, uses lots of colors and creates some of the most realistic and beautiful shots of buildings that I have ever seen. Him, along with Francesco Guardi, also very good at this, capture buildings and city scenes with remarkable detail. You look at the paintings and are positive that they are photographs and not the work of a brush and paint. Look into him.(The two best from both Guardi and Canaletto: Venice- Punta Della Dogana with Santa Maria della Salute, and London - Interior of Rotunda at Ranelagh. Spectacular.)
A trend I find in British paintings is that they can fall into one of two categories: human or natural. They are either portraits of the aristocracy or shots of nature and animals (or both, if you’re looking at a Gainsborough.) This love of nature apparently is due to every Brits’ lust for land and the good life, one not found in the crowded cities, but in the sparsely populated towns on the fringe of the world. They all want a quiet existence, according to one of my lecturers. One similar to the notion we have in the US of wanting a nice lawn, the white picket fence, the tire swing hanging from the tree in the back, the whole nine yards. That’s why they painted so many landscapes and so many animals -- to them, this was capturing paradise with paint. (One guy, Albert Cuyp painted cows in almost every one of his paintings. That’s it. Cows grazing, cows sleeping, cows dancing the Irish jig. What a strange fascination with our bovine buddies. I heard he hailed from Wisconsin...) The paintings with the animals are almost always of horses or dogs, and if it happens to be a portrait of a person, you’ll notice that the subject is often seen on his horse of with his dog. Man’s (and a painter’s, thanks to the paycheck) best friend, indeed...
Eventually, paintings of landscapes and stuffy rich people fall out of style and maritime paintings become all the rage. James Turner was huge with naval paintings like this, showing the tumultuous sea and majestic boats in painstaking detail.
After the Gallery I make my way to the BBC, aka the British Broadcasting Company, to take a tour of their facilities. We get to see several interesting montages and film sequences of the history both of the station and of the world around us (and their resulting coverage of it, which, as it turns out, was really quite cool. To hear some British radio clips of the JFK assassination or the moon landing was quite surreal.)
Among the fun I experience (and held produce) an amateur radio show about a haunted old house (I provide the sound of a wine bottle being opened by popping my finger out of my cheek. I practice long and hard before taping and end up pulling a muscle during the live bit. The doctor says I’ll be better in two to six weeks...), I mix the sounds of a symphonic performance, carefully adjusting the volume levels for the different instruments when they have solos and whatnot, I put on a puppet show, etc. The highlight, though, was doing British broadcasting for TV segments. I covered a tape of a tennis match (which I did quite well on since I know about tennis) and also a cricket match (which, despite my meager understanding, drew comments from several passersby when the taped replay was aired. Both my teacher and two strangers unknowingly said the clip sounded very authentic, and when I told them it was me, they were shocked. (I’m telling you, my accent kicks arse when I want it to.)
When this is through, I head back to the Gallery to finish off seeing what I missed before, this time using the ultra-nifty feature of the free audio tours the museum offers. It’s a portable Discman that has a CD in it, and you walk around to the different paintings, punch in the number they have posted by it, and then you hear a three to five minute discussion / explanation of each and every work, if you had the time and the inkling. Very cool, both for knowledgeable art folk and the clueless amateur (and those somewhere in the middle, like me.)
I stagger home around nine, head swollen with knowledge of varying sorts and a hunger burning in me from this intense session of brain burning. I fix myself a fisherman’s pie (yet another British dish that contains a layer of meat -- this time fish -- covered by potatoes and baked. Tasty, yet ever so bland and unoriginal.) and head to bed with my engorged head.
Thursday, January 27 ---
---The day begins like any other -- same old morning ritual, same old grind getting to work, etc. Funny thing happens, though -- work doesn’t suck quite as much today (today it’s only like a Hoover on ‘low.’) I run around, shrugging off work and responsibility with the greatest of ease (actually I have to do some research, but the rest of the time I’m careful not to stay at my desk for too long -- hitting an intern with mundane tasks is easier than hitting a fat person with a pea.)
I end up taking off early, and maybe that’s why the day isn’t quite so unbearable (and so I shan’t look this gift horse in the mouth) and I run back to the flat to prepare for the big weekend trip to Amsterdam. I frantically pack my hiking bag, artfully remembering to pack pants this time around (see? I’m learning...) and then run off to Marks & Spencer to change over some money into Dutch Guilders and Belgian Francs.
That done, we board the bus and begin our weekend o’ fun! Our driver, Eric the Irishman, and our tour guide, Billy the Scotsman, inform us about the particulars of our journey. Eric is a rather quiet, grim looking fellow, your typical Irishman (yes, replete with red hair,) while Billy is a rather jovial little Scot, already cracking jokes and pumping us up for the trip.
The first leg of our voyage is a bus ride that takes about two hours to get us to Dover, our stop on the English side of the Channel. We board the Channel train, bus and all, and await our trek through the tunnel. This is really quite nifty -- the tunnel is like something out of Star Wars; I could almost hear someone whispering, “Use the Force,” into my ear (that’s because the wiseacre behind me actually was, but it still was rather unsettling.)
The Chunnel is 31 miles long and dips you, at the lowest point, to 100 meters below the surface of the Channel. It was started on Dec. 1, 1987 and the first connection was made in 1990. This was a rather mammoth project, and during its construction over 15,000 men were employed to work on it, 10 of which died during on the job accidents. The Chunnel cost roughly 10 billion pounds (or 17 billion bucks) and six years to complete, and the whole journey takes only half an hour from Dover to Calais, France.
Once out of the Chunnel, we drive from Calais to our overnight destination of Ostend (or Oostende, as they spell it there), Belgium. We arrive at the Holiday Inn there after passing such romantic and storied visages of the Belgian highlands as Carpet Land and Aldi, unpack the coach, and head off to our respective rooms.
Eventually, the entire gang rendesvouses back at the bar (surprise) and most head out for a night on the tiles (not the brightest move, in my estimation. What’s the first thing they decide to do when in a strange and utterly deserted locale? (This place was a ghost town on the way in. We saw all of two cars and one old man walking his dog. That’s it. Maybe there’s a reason no one is out driving or wandering around. Maybe that’s just me being silly, though...) Let’s get rip-roaring drunk and mindlessly wander the streets of a place that doesn’t seem very safe and friendly. Good idea. I’ll be right behind you...
I decide to treat myself to a nice little mug of Stella Artois, a Belgian beer, and after that refreshing treat, I head back to the room to watch a little telly and turn in early. Making like a Californian on a ten foot breaker, I surf around the channels and find Melrose Place with Belgian subtitles. After watching this pinnacle in TV programming (the subtitles plastering the bottom of the screen are the strongest examples of solid writing the show has ever seen) I happen upon Belgian porn, fully equipped with nasty looking girls and more subtitles!
Watching this for sheer laughs (just like certain people read Playboy for the articles) I get to see what, “Give it to me, bitch,” and, “Oooh. Yes...,” look like in Belgian (Here’s a hint: they’re about fifty letters long, with over three-quarters of those letters being consonants, i.e. just like every other word in their insane language. Seriously, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such nonsensical strings of symbols before. The language’s founders must have been getting paid by the character. Can you imagine doing crossword puzzles in this language? The clues must be something like, “65 letter word for corn,” or, “34 letters -- ‘cat in ___ hat.’)
Baffled and increasingly exhausted (trying to concentrate on porn when giant things are flying at your face (in this case words) is much too taxing (Huh. Almost like the real thing...)) I turn in for the night, ready to greet Amsterdam in the morning with a smile and a swift kick to the slats.