Day At The Museum

As a surprise early outing for post-retirement Lisa, I scored some tickets for a cool exhibition at The Denver Art Museum.

Lisa and I used to enjoy doing spontaneous weekend museum runs back in NYC. Caught a Pollock exhibit at the Guggenheim shortly before we went west. We both giggled when some posh lady started to pontificate about a huge drip painting to her equally posh and boring friend. That museum was right around the corner from the posh building where Spaghetti worked as a Doorman during his later years. After summer firm softball games, myself and the other CG&R associates used to drink at the Cedar Bar, one of Jack the Dripper’s more notorious hangouts, where, rumor has it, he often got into drunken brawls. I wonder if any blood made it into his drip paintings?

And one July, way back when, in Paris (we were there for Bastille Day, and I read “A Moveable Feast” to Lisa sipping wine on the shore of the Seine), Lisa and I hit all the majors and a lot of the minor museums. Indeed, I have this traveling gnome that I insisted on sneaking into a lot of the photos. Alas, I have the gnome, and cannot find those photos.

It was my pre-iPhone period.

Yesterday’s exhibit featured O’Keefe, Hopper, Pollock, Hicks and a few other All Stars.

I do not take my art history or criticism too seriously, and my color blindness makes it uniquely challenging, but as with most other things in life, I know what I like when I see it.

I cannot seem to manifest that all-knowing and very constipated look I see on many of the other museum patrons as they stand, studiously, in that grand semi-circle before a work with the rest of the lemmings flowing slowly through the exhibit, nodding seriously as they listen to their microchipped head set.

Indeed, I enjoy mischievously and repeatedly crashing that empty space between art and critic circle so I can get close enough to see the stroke patterns in the work and read those wonderful little cheat cards next to the paintings. I’m a hit and run artist, so I never obscure their view for more than a few seconds. And I often like to exclaim in my uncouth, best stage whisper “Holy shit! That’s cool,” with hopes that it makes it past the head phone filters. Yesterday, I was proudly asked not to stand too close to particular Van Gogh. I must have resembled a geriatric climate warrior sans the pigs blood and hand glue.

It’s no surprise that Lisa tends to abandon me at her first opportunity.

Since the Denver Art Museum allows the public to take flash-less photos, I snapped a few of my favorites from yesterday:

Of course we caught a Pollock:

Fun fact: Pollock was born in Cody Wyoming, just North of Casa Claire – https://www.grunge.com/939772/the-tragic-real-life-story-of-jackson-pollock/

And an O’Keefe (whose art always brings out a Pavlovian response in me):

And a Hopper (that reminded me of SoHo in Manhattan):

And a Hicks (which is how I would love Casa Claire to someday appear):

But Lisa and I also enjoyed some of the older works in a separate exhibition, like the Monet(s):

Lisa stood quite a while before a tragic painting, “The Family of Street Acrobats: the Injured Child (La Famille du Saltimbanque: L’Enfant Blessé)” by Gustave Doré. It is based upon a real event in Paris, where a child member of a family of street acrobats was mortally injured. Having been a competitive gymnast in her youth, and always a mother, she was particularly moved by this painting.

But if there was one painting that stole the show for us, it was William Adolphe Bouguereau’s Idylle Enfantine (Childhood Idyll) which Lisa and I both agreed invoked images of our granddaughters Scarlett and Savanna:

Well, having reinvigorated our souls with a cultural booster, Lisa suggested we head back north to the hinterlands and have a nice lunch at Mike O’Shays in Longmont, where we could show our support for a local business on Small Business Saturday and drop off Michelle Caffrey’s books with Lonnie Bell for the MOS Literary Bookshelf.

So we did.

And I was lucky that my good deed was recorded by a local elf who tapped on the window while Lisa and I were having a gnosh:

So, it goes to show you that you must vigilantly remain on best behavior during public forays this holiday season or chance suffering being caught out by the Elf off the Shelf. This particular elf looked a few weeks past his shelf “sell by” date. I’m just glad he didn’t witness my trip to the museum.

With a cultural buzz still upon us, Lisa and I then watched A Good Year and Midnight In Paris which offered me three Marion Cotillard films for the weekend. A trifecta. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Cotillard

Hier était une bonne journée.

Well, Sunday is upon us. Those of you fine, five readers who are not traveling home from somewhere, I hope you can get some rest. And for you fellow travelers, Vaya con Dios.

Now I need to go cuddle a kitty or two.

I also need to do my weekly prep.

No matter what else we do, let us make today a great one.