inundated with images | day in pictures

today has been an image-heavy day.  so it's only appropriate that the associated blog post would be the same.

we started at the national gallery of art, which houses such beauties as these:

 

{"night on the boulevard montmartre" by pissarro}

{van gogh's "a wheatfield with cypresses"}

{renoir's "gladioli in a vase".   renoir who said, "i just let my mind rest when i paint flowers."  

thank you pierre-auguste.}

 

{a personal style fav, "lake keitele" by gallen-kallela}

 

{and the day's winner: seurat.  i'm mesmerized by his colors.  in addition to learning how to make popup books this summer, i want to venture into pointilism too.}

after only finishing half of the national gallery, we had to give our over-stimulated brains a break, so we wandered through trafalgar square,

and grabbed lunch at pret-a-manger and ate it in st. james park.  that park is right out of this movie:

{okay, the park here is actually regent's, which i haven't made it to yet, but st. james felt the same}

per the show we saw last night ("silence"), i closed my eyes after lunch, on a park bench, and listened for a while.  i remembered how at the ranch once, we were out in the canyons, and mom asked us to sit in quiet and see what we could hear.  spencer loved that.  and then i thought why is it that sight is our primary sense?  we rely on it for all our information.  why can't hearing be that sense--the one through which we construct the world and perceive ourselves?  what if how beautiful someone was was based on the noises they made rather than the shape of their face?  beauty could be based on the texture of their voice, their footfall (i come from a long line of heel-walkers...so i'd fail this one), or on how they breathe.  we pay attention to the tiniest details of sight, down to the pores on someone's face, so why shouldn't how someone breathes be a factor in how we understand them?  hence i'm trying to relearn the world through hearing.  just in case i ever go blind.  (which reminds me of this day...apparently i am subconsciously concerned about going blind!)

after lunch we walked across the horse guards parade enroute to the tate modern:

and we found large green turf furniture by the national theatre:

walked past construction sites

and found ourselves some modern art!

here's the thing.  i love modern art.  loooooooove.  i'm like a little girl on christmas morning when i walk into modern art exhibits.

this was a favorite at the tate modern today: jenny holzer's blue purple tint.  aphorisms scrolled and scrolled up the message boards.  kind of felt like ticker tape, or like when you first start to read and by the time you've figure out what the fourth word in the sentence says, you've forgotten what the first word was and hence have no idea what the point was.  kind of like what i imagine losing your mind to old age would be like.

lines i loved:
giving free rein to your emotions is an honest way to live
go all out in romance and let the chips fall where they may
if you have many desires your life will be interesting

you may read all of them here

and then there was the guerrilla girls exhibit, all about how women artists need better representation.  this was too good not to post.

we also saw some oldenburg (who is a favorite)

and lichtenstein,

whose "house" in the sculpture garden in dc i spent a good hour puzzling over.

and lastly, the red fabric staircase from heaven.  the whole thing is made out of fabric.  at this point, my brain was pretty frazzled...which i think amounted to me enjoying this way more than i should have.

the last piece was saw in the tate modern was a video of a man kicking a metal bucket through the streets at night.  i couldn't stop giggling (again, frazzled brain)...but seriously?  a man kicking a bucket?

modern art, i love you.

and then home sweet home.

(home, but only after GELATO of course, which today was ferrero rocher and raspberry.  the raspberry was like i was eating real raspberries.  real raspberries!)