We went to see the Picasso exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery today. I would recommend not going on a Sunday as it was very busy, but I recommend going very enthusiastically. It was a different way of looking at Picasso for me -- in the categories of the women who acted as his "muses" -- Fernande Olivier, Olga Khokhlova, Marie-Therese Walter, Dora Maar, Francoise Gilot, and Jacqueline Roque. It showed the influence the women had on different periods (especially Cubism and Surrealism) in Picasso's creative oeuvre -- the influence of someone like Dora Maar whose photography helped him explore new ways of seeing and expressing what he saw and Marie-Therese, whose influence was more emotional and physical. It was interesting to see one woman morph into another as Picasso lost interest in one relationship and found a new "muse" to be inspired by. Of course, ideas we have about Picasso -- the harsh angles and broken faces in multi-planar views -- are almost cliches, but seeing his work in all its variety was really exciting. I hadn't remembered (or maybe been aware of) his use of colours other than blue and grey and rose -- but there were lots of bright, Matisse-coloured pieces -- with yellows and reds and purples. Right next to highly Cubist work, painted at around the same time, are rolling sensuous pictures with lots of soft lines and starry eyes and playful scenes of his children.
One piece I had never seen came upon me as a complete and lovely surprise -- "Claude and Paloma" painted in 1950. I was looking at that famous picture of Dora Maar which is all terrible angles and tears and sharp fingernails and agony and then I went around the corner and saw this lovely brown and white and grey portrait of two round soft children in elaborate children's clothes, their faces placid and innocent, almost like dear little dolls. It brought tears to my eyes, because it was so beautiful and hopeful and sweet. After looking at Dora's record of Picasso's work on "Guernica", which is enormously moving in a completely different way, this picture really captured me.
Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed the show and would recommend it to all and sundry. I think it is best to go through the whole show and read all the blurbs, because I found them very helpful in pointing out the relationship between the woman and the work and then take a break and go back and just choose a couple of pieces that you really love and really live with them for a while. A couple of my other favourites were "Woman at a Window" which shows Francoise smiling softly as she looks out a frosty window, with her large hands placed on the icy pane, and the sculpture of "Head of a Woman" (1931) which has huge ping pong ball eyeballs and a big flap nose (supposed to be Marie-Therese). And all the reclining figures and a beautiful grey nude of Dora, with her reclining on a chair and she has her arms up to cradle her head and you can see both her profile and the soft side of her cheek and chin and her sinuous backbone and the muscles in her shoulders. It's magnificent. All of it gave me a new and stronger appreciation of Picasso and it's not like I didn't like him before. It on until October, and I will likely go again, because it was so great.
Sunday 31 July 2016
Tuesday 19 July 2016
My Word is my Bond
Be careful what you wish for! Poor Melania Trump has been caught in that nightmarish scenario that many high schoolers dream about -- she plagiarized her speech and has been found out! And the speech she stole was from one of her biggest enemies, I guess. If you judge by the way Donald Trump talks about Obama. Funny how Michelle Obama and Melania agree on so many "values"!
Whatever was she thinking . . . or maybe she wasn't. I know that when I catch kids plagiarizing things, they are always quite surprised that I figured it out. How would I ever know? Well, people who don't do a lot of public speaking, or reading, for that matter, often seem surprised that you would remember what someone else said or wrote. When I'm marking essays, if someone writes the same sentence, I do actually remember it. I look back through the papers and invariably, there it is!
If it doesn't sound like the person who's writing it (let's face it, your writing has a voice -- if you struggle with grammar and suddenly, there's a great sentence, I know something's up -- if you write like I do, and suddenly, you're writing like Kanye West, then I know), you say, "hey, this doesn't sound like this person!" And it's so easy these days to google it and see -- "Oh, this is a quote from Martin Luther King" . . .
If they had taken responsibility, then you might be able to forgive them. If she'd said, "oh, I was quoting Michelle Obama -- I loved her speech. I didn't know I had to say it was her speech", you'd shake your head, but it wouldn't be out of character with the rest of the campaign, let's face it. But she said she'd written the speech HERSELF, with "a little help" (of course, she didn't say it was Michelle Obama who'd helped her). She said, in the speech, that HER WORD WAS HER BOND. She said that. I guess most of Trump's supporters will think that it is, as Trump handler, Paul Manafort says, just regular every day words, just a coincidence that they came out in EXACTLY the same order as Michelle Obama's and that Hillary Clinton (who has said nothing on the issue) is making a big deal about it because she is threatened by Melania's beauty and charm, but I think most of us know what's going on. Just another sign that you can't trust these people and that, really, they can't trust themselves!
On a brighter note, I went to the Folk Festival on Sunday and it was FAAAANTASTIC! It was like I imagine Woodstock, but better organized (and less mud). There were six stages with different kinds of music going all day and then the MainStage at the end featured the legendary Bruce Cockburn ("If I Had a Rocket Launcher", "Lovers in Dangerous Times", etc.,!!) and a great visual and noisy band called "Lord Huron" who were superlatively dramatic. At the end, there is a lantern procession to lead everyone back to their normal lives and it is magic -- all these lovely lanterns in different shapes wending their way through the crowd. I have never been before, but I will go again for sure!
Hey, everyone -- I'm sitting here in my back yard and a dark cloud has wafted over me and I am feeling raindrops! When is summer going to start? Have we had one day in July without at least a bit of rain? I mean, I know we live in the rainforest, but this is ridunculous! (What's with autocorrect? I MEANT "ridunculous" of course.)
Whatever was she thinking . . . or maybe she wasn't. I know that when I catch kids plagiarizing things, they are always quite surprised that I figured it out. How would I ever know? Well, people who don't do a lot of public speaking, or reading, for that matter, often seem surprised that you would remember what someone else said or wrote. When I'm marking essays, if someone writes the same sentence, I do actually remember it. I look back through the papers and invariably, there it is!
If it doesn't sound like the person who's writing it (let's face it, your writing has a voice -- if you struggle with grammar and suddenly, there's a great sentence, I know something's up -- if you write like I do, and suddenly, you're writing like Kanye West, then I know), you say, "hey, this doesn't sound like this person!" And it's so easy these days to google it and see -- "Oh, this is a quote from Martin Luther King" . . .
If they had taken responsibility, then you might be able to forgive them. If she'd said, "oh, I was quoting Michelle Obama -- I loved her speech. I didn't know I had to say it was her speech", you'd shake your head, but it wouldn't be out of character with the rest of the campaign, let's face it. But she said she'd written the speech HERSELF, with "a little help" (of course, she didn't say it was Michelle Obama who'd helped her). She said, in the speech, that HER WORD WAS HER BOND. She said that. I guess most of Trump's supporters will think that it is, as Trump handler, Paul Manafort says, just regular every day words, just a coincidence that they came out in EXACTLY the same order as Michelle Obama's and that Hillary Clinton (who has said nothing on the issue) is making a big deal about it because she is threatened by Melania's beauty and charm, but I think most of us know what's going on. Just another sign that you can't trust these people and that, really, they can't trust themselves!
On a brighter note, I went to the Folk Festival on Sunday and it was FAAAANTASTIC! It was like I imagine Woodstock, but better organized (and less mud). There were six stages with different kinds of music going all day and then the MainStage at the end featured the legendary Bruce Cockburn ("If I Had a Rocket Launcher", "Lovers in Dangerous Times", etc.,!!) and a great visual and noisy band called "Lord Huron" who were superlatively dramatic. At the end, there is a lantern procession to lead everyone back to their normal lives and it is magic -- all these lovely lanterns in different shapes wending their way through the crowd. I have never been before, but I will go again for sure!
Hey, everyone -- I'm sitting here in my back yard and a dark cloud has wafted over me and I am feeling raindrops! When is summer going to start? Have we had one day in July without at least a bit of rain? I mean, I know we live in the rainforest, but this is ridunculous! (What's with autocorrect? I MEANT "ridunculous" of course.)
Saturday 9 July 2016
Long Time, No Write!
You might know what a list maker I am, especially in these halcyon days of summer, and I put "blog" on my list today because I realized that I hadn't written in a very long time. I had a difficult end to the year but I hope things are on the upswing now and I wanted to get back into at least a weekly blog through the summer, which we haven't had much of, here in the Lower Mainland, what with rain practically every day since Canada Day! We need the rain, of course, and it will make our water worries and forest fire fears (great alliteration, there, huh?) abate, but it would be nice to have a few of those sunny days where you can sit outside in your backyard and read or go for a nice dry walk in the park without having to haul along your umbrella and towel the dog down when you get home.
My first week of summer was spent making those lists and trying to get things done and I did manage most of the business matters that were hanging over my head from last summer! It is a great feeling to tick off the items on the list -- you get a real feeling of accomplishment.
One of the things was to book our trip to France, which I did! We are staying in Paris for ten days and now I am reading a novel about Paris, because that's a great way to get ready for all the great things we're going to see. I am reading Paris by Edward Rutherfurd (yes, it's FURD, not "ford"). He has written lots of big novels about different places and he traces the history of the place through the eyes of families who have lived there for centuries. Long ago, I read his novel, Sarum, which is about Salisbury in England. I think Rickie and I had just returned from a trip there and it was a great read, although I don't think Edward Rutherfurd is a great writer. Part of the Paris book is about the building of the Eiffel Tower, which lots of Parisians hated as it went up, much like the CN Tower was hated in Toronto. Most people nowadays picture the Paris skyline Eiffel'd, but lots of people thought it was an ugly industrial looking eyesore when it was going up. I expect the lads will want to go up in the Eiffel Tower, and although it is not on my list, I will bow to their need to do the iconic things. I am most excited about the museums, of course.
Last night I saw a movie called "House of Sand and Fog" about the battle for a beachfront house in California. It was an epic journey with characters who were deeply flawed -- neither good nor bad entirely, which is what people are, I believe. It seemed like a petty argument, but both parties had reasons to desperately want the house and in the end, the consequences were horrific. I also recently saw a movie called "Woman in Gold" about the Austrian government's complicity in the theft of art from Jews who were persecuted and murdered by the Nazis. I thought this movie avoided dealing with a lot of complicated issues and made it a simple story of good and evil -- I didn't think the characters were treated as interestingly as they could have been. Of course, Helen Mirren is always good, but she didn't have a lot of interesting things to do -- the actor who played the character as a young woman (Tatiana Maslany, of "Orphan Black") was much more interesting.
"Ghostbusters" is the subject of a lot of talk these days, with the female version about to be released. To me, it is emblematic of the dearth of imagination and new ideas in Hollywood, that they have to remake an old movie and put women in the lead roles, instead of men! Why not write something new for women to do? Something I did notice with "Woman in Gold" was that it was refreshing to see a movie about an older woman. We can be interesting, we older women, if only someone would hear our stories. I think I have a lot to offer, still, but I guess it would take someone who could really write to make my story worth hearing and make people who have been brought up on explosions and super heroes to want to see a portrayal of it. Maybe it could be about an old genii! (Get it? I made a little pun there.)
My first week of summer was spent making those lists and trying to get things done and I did manage most of the business matters that were hanging over my head from last summer! It is a great feeling to tick off the items on the list -- you get a real feeling of accomplishment.
One of the things was to book our trip to France, which I did! We are staying in Paris for ten days and now I am reading a novel about Paris, because that's a great way to get ready for all the great things we're going to see. I am reading Paris by Edward Rutherfurd (yes, it's FURD, not "ford"). He has written lots of big novels about different places and he traces the history of the place through the eyes of families who have lived there for centuries. Long ago, I read his novel, Sarum, which is about Salisbury in England. I think Rickie and I had just returned from a trip there and it was a great read, although I don't think Edward Rutherfurd is a great writer. Part of the Paris book is about the building of the Eiffel Tower, which lots of Parisians hated as it went up, much like the CN Tower was hated in Toronto. Most people nowadays picture the Paris skyline Eiffel'd, but lots of people thought it was an ugly industrial looking eyesore when it was going up. I expect the lads will want to go up in the Eiffel Tower, and although it is not on my list, I will bow to their need to do the iconic things. I am most excited about the museums, of course.
Last night I saw a movie called "House of Sand and Fog" about the battle for a beachfront house in California. It was an epic journey with characters who were deeply flawed -- neither good nor bad entirely, which is what people are, I believe. It seemed like a petty argument, but both parties had reasons to desperately want the house and in the end, the consequences were horrific. I also recently saw a movie called "Woman in Gold" about the Austrian government's complicity in the theft of art from Jews who were persecuted and murdered by the Nazis. I thought this movie avoided dealing with a lot of complicated issues and made it a simple story of good and evil -- I didn't think the characters were treated as interestingly as they could have been. Of course, Helen Mirren is always good, but she didn't have a lot of interesting things to do -- the actor who played the character as a young woman (Tatiana Maslany, of "Orphan Black") was much more interesting.
"Ghostbusters" is the subject of a lot of talk these days, with the female version about to be released. To me, it is emblematic of the dearth of imagination and new ideas in Hollywood, that they have to remake an old movie and put women in the lead roles, instead of men! Why not write something new for women to do? Something I did notice with "Woman in Gold" was that it was refreshing to see a movie about an older woman. We can be interesting, we older women, if only someone would hear our stories. I think I have a lot to offer, still, but I guess it would take someone who could really write to make my story worth hearing and make people who have been brought up on explosions and super heroes to want to see a portrayal of it. Maybe it could be about an old genii! (Get it? I made a little pun there.)
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