I loved the show on Pompeii that this afternoon, Sunday February 29th, 2009 I drove my family to at the Smithsonian's East Wing exhibit. The show for me had many facets : all of which contributed and spoke to me. You'd say it was just Pompeii that cam alive for me this afternoon? You'd be wrong : it's always the sums of the many parts that create together a whole and fill one's heart and soul, every limb, finger and body muscle and nerve together ( mine here in this specific instance ) and come together to erupt lava , molten and hot and passionate - flaming, smoking, gritty and pure and base and vilely delicious - sublime, heavenly bright and contemplative and soaring majestic all into one .
I'm a wreck a wretch a slob , a master a spy and stealthy stealer of others works that here and there and everywhere my eyes alighted, my ears caught sounds of, my body's nerves and skin felt sensations of ... I took as much in as I personally could fix and snap and pause and record, remember, repeat, preserve, frame and feed my seven senses and pulp of a brain. So many tissues to bury and cast whatever came my way as I drove first, parked and then walked together yet trailing family to this grand event of culture and art.
I'm a bit of a whack at all of this : crazier and more pronounced, more innately, gutturally, unspoken, unknown yet certain most times calculated to best let serendipitous chance and meetings occur. I'm only now really beginning to self my own it and understand it as my body is host willingly/freely and by me now a bit more known and appreciated : to so many things that through it I let pass/push/shove/stumble/rumble, thrust-bust into-through-upon,along, besides ... hard to follow, give you I that. There's music I find now that in cadence and sound and notes whole and broke and pieced again in part or together as was before. And sometimes not this way pieced but more pieces put together - arranged differently and sometime leaving pieces alone to fend for themselves, not used again by me : but left for others to pick-up and use -amuse with themselves.
This wording is a ramble, I grant fully you that. Excuse my excess - my liberty, my brazen willingness to string both you and self mine along for whatever bumpy of unorthodox or scrambled path I'm currently on as I leave my mind free to regroup and address the thoughts as they do pop up, back into my conscious state where I can turn them around, see them from many sides, from up and down, from angle to angle.
It's very much as I did at the show this afternoon on art from Pompeii. That's what the show for me was most about. Granted there's history, beauty of place and tragic loss of lives. I absorbed pieces of all of that, really I did. However, most I absorbed was pieces of stucco and marble, bronze and silver and gold and mosaics of stone on the ground/floor that we walked. My heart a bit weaped as fact of matter would be as others my wife including did over walk said mosaic on floor of warriors and lances and spears and armor and flesh through each did break as feet surely, too did muffle and choke, suffocate and weigh heavily on actions of yore of life and victory and battle of nerves and blood and death or life raged, snorts horses' noses did through air, gasps for life, last breaths they made-announced and our collective feet over did sully and trash ans smash and not pay respect proper or right.
This is I fear fragmented -fermented, yeasts let rampant and loose as in liquid grape musk as well as pulp raw of brain mine. What will your make of all these words and fragments of thoughts mine of now?!? Please of me think not me crazy or in/out/bloody sane. That would be a lowly, miserable bane - a sentence for me so vile and base and demeaning, demoralizing. I here be prizing my freedom of expression, thoughts up rise just as wines be made back in Pompeian times! What did said wine taste of then like?!? Being in today's wine business here in Washington D.C. and of very ripe and fertile and pregnant many times an artistic temperament and imagination that simply must roam and wander or else extinguish in most ghastly, horrible a death that both unspeakable and unthinkable they would be surely to quiet this rebel, this loner, this individual flame that only has any originality that it can find to self sustain! Oh Shakespeare you do influence/inspire this artistic mood in me quite right second , instant this NOW! NOW! POW! WOW! WOW! POP! POW! NOW! NOW! NOW!
I'm lit all around outside and in : the music and cadence, the rhythm and flow, the green light bright now saying GO! GO! GO! GO! BLOW!!!!! I'm quite aglow. I loved the afternoon this one of mine shared family mine with. Somethings I spoke, others I let simmer at surface and some farther inside me with deeper : later me to un-stow.
I was influenced with setting to with begin. The Mall the Smithsonian so many buildings of old and new. The children mine of did speak the carousel, too. The winds over us did sweep and holler and wolf snarl,at us snatch. We brisk did walk to the East Wing and The structure so big, so imposing, the angles the edges - that stones and steeled edginess I must confess I at it ate quite readily up! Thank You Pei Mr. you now make me realize now just you name Pei and the name Pompeii. Coincidence sure and yet the letters so mimic do they at times sound the same?!? In any language, in any accent or voice? I love that thought.
The building with Henry Moore bronzed at it's entrance and small impressionist Vuillard's and Bonard's, old friends years many of me to now. I love that Calder that over me hangs, that Max Ernst sculpture to my left quickly I pass and yet fail not to acknowledge at least a wee wee bit till later I return for more. The open space, the blacks and the whites of Robert Motherwell's paints?!? How can anyone with intentions artistic fail to recognize. So many years they've spoken so loudly to me pumping me full with raw, unchecked adrenalin- flow, go , flow, simmer to close to blow! Blow! Blow!
And then we come face to face, up close and personal if want you it to be with Pompeii of old. I like that thought. I like the getting composed for composed I had to be, on levels some I feared I welcomed - sweeping, creeping, flowing over, under round me my flesh, my bones and muscles and blood and seven senses - to rouse, arouse, carouse ... would I, what part would I permit self mine to play / be permitted to play? What access, what grounds would these relics of past events welcome me to explore? I knew nothing at all as is my preferred state of mind when I go these to types of shows. Me , like a white virgin canvas : I divest myself of perceived notions. I want to fill myself completely as I would a canvas when see things up close and face to face as this and these!
To say the show inspired me would be a more than correct statement. It MOVED ME ENORMOUSLY and I did in fact all senses seven of mine react/interact/grow, absorb, study and analyze and try to into completely get! No easy task : one at which I had to dedicate self mine completely to : this heady new ancient brew I was wanting to change and touch, to alter and make me bits stumble and falter. But I did how it/they accomplish said deeds do their magic me upon, on now?!
I stood close and read and looked at paintings, sculpture and jewels and glass and volcanic glass, too. Up really close : I wanted to breathe their same air and even their air cast-off as exhale they surely must to still be/ come so very much alive! The paint was faded and pale and sometimes quite flat and out completely washed! I reacted less strongly to all of that. I most connected with the stone and the marble and the stucco and bits of marble ground up in that mass! The tiles and mosaics also for me reached out and pulled me closer. It took awhile : like waiting for a glass of red or white wine to open and breathe : it can't be all-of-a-sudden. Or maybe it can. For me it took time for me to adapt and the mood to set in. I was at the back room of the exhibit on the first floor when all of this finally did in fact grasp me my organs mine all from toes to head. I was standing there by the marble statue of a young lady draped in a flowing gown.
I started to realize then quite surely that the artist who carved this stone was in love with the flesh of a certain women or women in general when he lovingly carved her or them and froze the essence of the feminine young lady/ladies here forever to alive quite breathe and pulse for any noticing to see and feel the majesty that she embodied of all her beauty, femininity and humanity. Wow, this artist was quite something! The body under the drapes as well as her marbled skin were exquisite, REALLY they were. I began to come alive in Pompeii now in this very instant. I said so to my wife who passed by us ( me and this female statue ).
Up we finally rose and turned on spiraling heaven-upwards stairs of more stone and marble of Mr. Pei himself. What a lovely contrast these stairs did set. I loved this setting and being in this monumental yet intimate building : what stark contrasts I've just set!
The room above had bronze metal animals all in a semi-circle in the center of the room to greet us and for us to over gawk and marvel and perhaps even slobber! I liked what grreted my eyes. My family quite did love these animals. My daughter even mentioned it again later at dinner.
I studied them some and yet it was not them in this room that really over me brain-heart and soul did win me. I must confess that there in the semicircle was quite a young girl studying and listening to a taped message in palm of hers in it was. She was a slender blond girl quite wrapped-up in this story spoken her to was like this as she looked upwards at animals all bronzed and almost alive. The wild boar was both my daughter and my favorite. Which one did this girl little like the best?
I moved over to my left as spy peripheral vision first me did up serve partial intriguing image in stucco or marble of four half-formed youths : three boy-men and one younger lady. I wanted to more of this slab of marble. These forms were quite extraordinarily worked, molded, true to form and person and quite alive for me, too. The more I looked the more I liked and appreciated them for their exactness and almost life-like flesh and breath and warm, vibrant blood and movement. What purpose they of, what intent upon were they?!? Why three men and one woman.
I loved their poses, I loved their theatrics of body! I could easily have seen them up on a stage. What stage barely really mattered at all.I wanted to look some more. I wanted to more of them see. I wanted that the artist that had carved them had finished his job and the other side of them shown> Was it the molten lava that had stopped him? Was he sculpting as the lava quite dead did him render? Was he , in fact depicting them being swallowed by this bloody unkind molten lava? I think not, but my mind did indeed enjoy this unusual path now it just did take. I salute it for that, I do, really, honestly I do.
For me this show was as much about the artists as it was about anything else. These unsung artists that for me now just did bring a whole world alive. Thank you all of you forgotten artists. Your work has survived brilliantly and so you have not yet as died. That's such grand news, really it is.
I also quite applauded and saluted and liked that the marble statues were devoid of any paint. I understand that once painted from toes to hair on head they were painted. In my most humble artistic opinion that was a mistake as well as a grand " sell-out " to the base and the most shallow of sentiment and states of mind. It would hinder me so greatly from really seeing their beauty or even wanting to see it with so much bright, distracting paint! Why work so hard to then it over cover all the fine proportion, muscles, skin-tone, bone and expression?!?
So I was delighted to be witnessing all these marble statues as they were executed before they were garnished and later up covered! Yes! Hurray! Bravo! I was
lovin' it all now really, truly, completely I was!
In the second room into which I then did walk I began to notice the marble sculpture of both a younger man and woman in the throes of a match of physical strengths? I did not about it read as I was too quite busy around it walking. This would happen again to me in the ensuing next room where I would walk around the marble of one lonely young lady.
I started on the side to the right and stood really quite close to these two marbled people engaged in a struggle of kinds that with firm purpose it did seem to hold. It did not seem so playful, it was more violent, immediate, primal or sexual - or all of the above. Was it a dance of sorts? Was it a regular act, a ritual of theirs?
I was again noticing more about their fine flesh and muscles, tone and their bones in their feet? Were their feet of these two or had they been cut off? I simply do not remember. I did look at a lot of bony feet of young women and marvel at how large and bony some of them were in contrast to the sublime curve and silky and stoned-fleshy-feminine appeal of the rest of their bodies! Cruel fate perhaps to otherwise perfect young ladies?!?
I began to again appreciate the unsung artists as fully around I did slowly go to absorb and note all of their marbled splendor. Wow, these were some beautiful people that out or into marble were carved and preserved. Good thing, too as the molten lava would from our otherwise them permanently erase!
I walked then into this other room with another marbled young lady in the center of the room. In her case she was draped in a lovely flowing , diaphanous dress. I loved how it hung, one strap fallen down over her shoulder and revealing one breast. I loved how the artist in carving all of this exposed so much of her beauty to our ever-hungry-for-more-roving, delving eyes. I became more and more the detective as around her I did walk! I was drawn into this whole scene of a sculpted, marbled, out-fleshed, rounded, true feminine features from tones skin and boned feet and taut ass and small-buttoned, precious nipples exposed or covered in flowing dress.
The skill of these artists was amazing as an eye fro form and detail and overall love of their subjects never truer ever now or before did ring. They were gifted and talented and completely observant in the whole of their marbles. They for me spoke mountains and oceans and worlds and universes of male and female form. Bravo! I'm so glad that this show I did see and slowly with seven senses all of mine ( mostly me eyes ) did eat and devour and praise and salute and from one artist to another did in love with completely, thoroughly fall hard and with complete abandon!
I loved, too the twenty minute or so movie that we all four did watch. It used all this work and pictures of Pompeii to flesh for us quite impressively this time and place back in Italy so many years now past. And yet after today it again lives and beats strongly within me now.
I also know that I have more to say, for I enjoyed more of the mosaics of tiled fish all depicted so close together that upon we could all circle or over walk. I also later enjoyed some of the modern art including one painting done in 1957 by Phillip
Guston. I also loved the
Arshile Gorky painting that dripped and dried done in 1944 I believe? And so much more my eyes on did later feast. I loved it all. It's still just all beginning to settle and to focus and the waters of my mind and guts to clear.
So, I may add to this as it may continue to slow some more when wake morning tomorrow I do. We shall see. Now I will stop and do some checking of spelling and
ungarbling my thoughts that perhaps in haste of typing might have become? Let's now see:
bonsoir mes
amis. A
demain,
dormez bien et revez bien aussi ce soir. TONY
P.S. It's now the morning after and I have been thinking about everyone that goes to these shows with information gathered already about what they will see and hear. I'm against this because I believe it would be so much more powerful and impressionable to discover many of these things on their own and through their own eyes and own seven senses.
People are being robbed of their complete experiences and I believe that that is one big, colossal mistake. It's simply not as enriching an experience. How can people have their own reactions and discoveries when they are being told in these pamphlets and audio hand-held machines what they are seeing and what it means? What about what it could mean to them each individually today and not back then ?
Would that realization not be so much more enriching when filtered by each of us on our own so that perhaps we have something of our own to add to the experience. After all, who's experience is this supposed to be anyway? Are we all just supposed to learn what we are taught
or told and then later repeat it for others?!? I think not : I certainly hope not. Even if what it all means on a detailed basis or large scale to you might be odd and strange to others it is still yours : be proud of it.
I'm not against information : it's good : but they way we access and filter it with our own is important, too. We have to be brave enough to have our own reactions and let our own minds work and or imaginations wander wherever they may ; and then we have to be brave enough to share them with others. That's true learning of the purest kind : like when we were kids and said whatever came to our heads without fear or reprisal or rebuke! We're all running scared and that is a sad fate for us indeed.
Anyway, as I said this show was amazing and I would happily return again to see more. You cannot absorb it all so quickly. My family gave me the award at the end for spending the most time looking and moving slowly through the rooms. They were all waiting for me at the end in the last room : seated for I do not know how long? I bet they were happy to finally see me. But to their credit they did not rush me and for that I am grateful.
It's now Monday afternoon here at home on my day-off at 3:51 PM on March 2
nd, 2009. We are
blanketed in a thick four-inch
canape of white snow and I am loving that. I may add more here later. Until then enjoy what I have already shared. Cheers, Anthony ( TONY ) Quinn
