Monday, March 05, 2007

Pink Velociraptor Wave of Vengeance: Seize Have!

It has been a busy week and it ain't over yet, except it is. The Yummy Biker just went back to working days, after having spent last week working nights, and my pineal gland is really really upset about the whole thing.

The Stainless Steel Amazon took me to an art show at the Frye exhibit hall in Seattle!!
I was ready to take The Leaker, but The Yummy Biker insisted we take the Park Avenue, an automobile which is essentially a geriatric care facility with a big block.
Yes, my pimp hand was showing strong.
Still, it looks exactly like one of the big unmarked sedans the sherrif's office uses, which means it's really fun to pull up behind a carfull of teenagers and tailgate them for a couple of miles and watch them throwing shit out the windows and checking the mirrors. There are always compensating factors if you just take the time to look for them.


You can just tell that that is a building filled with interesting, priceless and important works of art, can't you? Unfortunately for you it was and unfortunately for you again, they were real buttheads about the whole 'no photographs' thing.
Review:
Mr. and Mrs. Art Collectors went over to France a lot. France was getting tired of Realism. Paintings where you could tell what they wuz were going for firesale prices to make room for the Impresionists. Mr. and Mrs. Art Collectors had cash. They came home with a geeeet big pile of paintings. Unfortunately, Mrs. Art Collector seems to have been the one who did the picking (while Mr. Art Collector stood in the background, signing checks and rolling his eyes one assumes). The collection on display is mainly pretty girls, pretty children, pretty saints, pretty landscapes, pretty buildings and pretty groups of farm animals.
Life sized farm animals.
Duckies, goosies, chickies, piggies, sheepies.
Horsies.
Cowsies.
Life sized.
Imagine that in your dining room: this bigass wall - cow looking at you with it's cow eyeballs while you tuck into your standing crown roast.

There were a couple of Hoch landscapes that I thought were very fine. Early Impressionist, standard fare, but rendered very poignant by contrast.

Part of the permanent collection on display, an interesting Nouveau 'evocation of lust', after Edvard Munch, but with some odd Manet-style brushwork thrown in for good measure...set into the most ridiculous frame I have ever seen.
What were people thinking? It was the size and shape of a Rumford fireplace, all in gold leaf. Poor Ms. Lust in her green, dusty cave with her carnival prize anaconda peeps out at us from under the mantlepiece, utterly cowed by her frame. I imagine the men of the period found her very stirring nonetheless but I felt kind of sorry for her, stuck in the fireplace with her goofyass snake.

Oh, and there were some ok Dutch Modernists from the 'Giant Enormous Fucking Canvas' school. I liked one called 'Film' but had nowhere to hang it.

Here are some pigeons that tried to mug us on the way out:

The fattest, sleekest, roundest pigeons I have ever seen. You could actually hear their feet pattering as they surrounded the car and started to rock it.

Later the Stainless Steel Amazon and I got lost looking for La Conner and ended up on Camano island. Here is a picture of the exclusive supper club we dined at:


Mainly, it was a nice 'girls day out', no boys allowed. We drove around and discussed things like how buouyant are ducks really, and if one went over a waterfall would it sink or bob back up and if it mattered how big a waterfall it was.
Yeah.
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16 comments:

  1. Not in reply to your post, lovelyful though it really is, I thankfully *don't* live in Portland anymore. I lived there for 28 days, and then I fled for my life.

    I am now safely ensconced in Berkeley.

    I'm so glad to hear that someone else found it depressing. As you can see, Berkeley's a happier place. Not as many trees, but a heckuva lot more jobs.

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  2. Sounds like a fun day, indeed.

    I've been meaning to ask you - any thoughts on Klimt?

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  3. w2: hell, i grew up in portland. 18 yeqrs of rain, depressing rain, weather, bums, rain, bridges, bums and rain.
    i miss it.
    danator: excellent misogynistic painter of likeable pictures of women in various stages of drunkenness.

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  4. you two are just like the gilmore girls, aren't you...

    sounds like a fun day. who doesn't enjoy looking at bad art through a critical and judgemental eye? i know i certainly do.. *smug*

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  5. I've never understood why they have pictures of animals in the dining room - it seems to have been fashionable years ago and complusory for the upper classes.

    I bet the pigeons have been gorging themselves on peoples left over McWendy finger-licking Whopper thingies

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  6. Did you see "Tea with Mussolini"?

    Cher played this gauche American buying art in Italy just before the Second World War - great film.

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  7. Your post titles are modern art themselves, in that they bear no resemblance to reality.

    When I come to the west coast (in some distant future life) we are going to an art museum together. I will bring the chocolate.

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  8. I will comment shortly
    I will
    I will
    But I am stuck at work at 11.30 pm and havnt got time to read the whole post between sorting out dumbass's in Mumbia and being yelled at from New York.
    Harumph

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  9. Pigeons remind me of sea monkeys. All they ever seem to do is shag.

    You know you can rely on me for culture.

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  10. Anonymous10:20 PM

    Oh, it would bob back up. The ducks. Over the waterfall. Why did you even have to have that discussion? Isn't it obvious?

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  11. Such interesting and stimulating conversation. Can I tag along next time?

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  12. I like art museums/galleries , its fun to lurk around looking intently at a fire extinguisher(or something) , scratching your chin and making little mutterings , before long you will have a little crowd 'apreciating' with you , as most people in the place havn't got a clue what they are looking at , so follow everyone else.
    I had some sea monkeys Tickers , I was really dissapionted after the wild promises of the advertising , they looked like shrimps to me

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  13. claire: like the gilmore girls if the gilmore girls were really nerdy and constantly did monty python routines which they had memorized and argued about what kind of shoes goats would wear if they wore shoes. yeah.
    frobi: fat on croissants and chocolate decadence cake from Starbucks, probably. and no, didn't even know about the mussolini movie. She was fantastic in 'Moonstruck', though.
    cb: you are so welcome! that would kick ass. come on out!
    beast; arguing with the voices in your head is bad. but getting paid to, that's sweet. are they hiring??
    tick: the kind of culture found in a petri dish. dried shrimps screw? what? i never did the seamonkey thing. i had an ant farm, though. all they did was march around and make tunnels.
    kristy: any duck? what about a duck going over niagra falls? huh? yeah. see?
    awaiting: do you know anything about duck seaworthiness? because you have to present credentials.
    beast: seamonkeys are a protien rich addition to any liquid diet and taste great too! try a quart today!(use a BIG straw though.)

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  14. I think goats would wear these.

    But what about Klimt's landscapes? I just saw the forest series for the first time and wanted to climb into the pcitures...

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  15. Anonymous3:44 PM

    I'm sure the pigeons weren't there to mug you. They look pretty friendly to me...
    Your pal Brian P

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  16. i reckon it was the self same pigeons that hassled me one night. evil bastards!

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