Back-Yard Impressionism

A

First, I would like to recommend opening a banana with Kung-Fu. Seriously. It will change your day… if not your life.

Second... well, there is no second.

What I did today was more PR, conveniently inside of the Frist Center, downtown Nashville, where they just so happen to be having an Impressionist... ism... Exhibit. Yep, Monet, Manet, Courbet, Renoir, Degas, Cézanne… right here in Hicktown.

Gloria went with, since I didn’t want to go alone and I didn’t think that I could pull off the seeing-eye-dog thing again. Not at an art exhibit.

Did you know that you can stand in front of a Monet all day, and it will never sink in that that is a real Monet, or whichever? God, and the picture frames. I know, I am so starved for art. Anyway...

Despite all the famous names, this was my favorite… Jules Bastien-Lepage, Hay Making

There are times when you see things so beautiful, you think, I am done, I need nothing more from life. It was that beautiful. I wanted to cry. I did cry. I came so close to touching it… touching her. Gloria told me not to.

The painting is enormous, the size of a wall. You walk in the room and she is just sitting there in that field. The clarity is stunning. She is so tired and worn thin, dazed, with the world and life all a blur around her, the realization that this is how the rest of my life is going to be just dawning on her. Twelve inches from her face and I swear I could hear her breathing.

Anyway… You know how if you don’t really know a lot about a certain form of art… a movement or a trend… it all kind of blends together…say for instance how one generation says another’s music all sounds the same. And it does. That’s because all of the artists of that age, that moment, have figured out what is ‘right’ and they are all trying to create their version, their interpretation of the same ‘right’. Distinctions are minimal and miniscule and tough to notice if you’re not pretty hung up on that particular scene. There’s nothing wrong with it. It was just kind of funny to walk into a room with five different heavy-hitter artist’s work, and have to make an effort to sort out who is who… and I know who is who.

Oh gawd, and one hick gal was about eight inches from a Monet—nothing famous, one though, from the time in his career when you really needed to step back from the work to see things in 'focus', unless you were appreciating the brush strokes—but I don't think she was and she says, “Gawd, now that’s just ugly.” She was amazed by what three steps back did for the work. I didn’t give her a flyer.

Then I thought we would never find the truck, because I put down bread crumbs and there are pigeons by the truckload in Nasville. Nothing works like it used to back in the old days.