Museum of Finer Things

We deeply apologize for the long break. Hopefully things have not been too rough for our readers without an update from us.

So there’s not really much to say, I just felt like we were in a desperate need for a new blog post. In art-related news, I visited the MFA yesterday. Unfortunately we could not go together because one of us refuses to go with the other. The MFA has always been a kind of wonderland for me. But this time there was something melancholic about the place. Might’ve been the weather, but every painting seemed like it held a lot of sadness or wistfulness or nostalgia or something. Or maybe it was just me, projecting my thoughts onto history. The impressionism section has always been my favorite, and it still is, but this time around I spent almost all of my time in John Singer Sargent’s room. I don’t think I’ve ever really appreciated how fluid or effortless his painting seems. And it’s not really about technique or precision or even whatever the message may be behind the painting. I don’t know. You just feel something when you look at his paintings. I kept staring at the youngest daughter in the Daughters of Edward Darley Boit. Probably because I’m short so she was eye level with me, but it also felt like we were both waiting for something.

There was a new Chinese painting room. Which on the one hand was nice because there was a new Chinese painting room, and on the other hand was a little underwhelming because it was a tiny room with five or so paintings. I don’t know. The gap between our two cultures feels so discouragingly large sometimes. I felt irrationally worried that it would give Americans the wrong impression of Chinese painting, but honestly any progress is progress.

I do this annoying thing at art museums where I take a picture of the whole piece and then I zoom in to take a picture of some corner or section of the painting that I like a lot so that I can study it later. It could be anything, from the way the artist got the fabric to fold to the way light reflects on a puddle of water. I don’t know why I do it because I could also just zoom in on the picture I’ve already taken and it gives all the security guards anxiety, but here are some close ups I took. All credit goes to Monet, Renoir and Sargent.

Also I just noticed that the MFA has literally no glass or rope in front of any of their paintings and barely any guards, and I feel like they should really up their security. 

Sincerely,

A concerned fan

CQOTD: “The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody'd move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole, with their pretty antlers and they're pretty, skinny legs, and that squaw with the naked bosom would still be weaving that same blanket. Nobody'd be different. The only thing that would be different would be you. ”