Friday #8: Hand in hand with Eliot and a penguin

Friday #8, 12/28/12 I took two friends with me: Eliot and Backyardigan Pablo the Penguin...

Christmas was sort of anti-climatic, Liam was in therapy that day, and Eliot had needed an outing. 

I told him "we're going to the Art Museum" and he kept chanting it to himself on the drive there....

Required sticker proof of presence...(it took a long time to get this photo believe it or not because E was not happy about Pablo wearing a sticker...)

Pop art!

"Hmmm...which way..."

(Yes, he really said all the quotes...)

"We go this way! To the art museum! To do some painting!"

"C'mon Pablo! We're going to the art museum. Art museum! Art museum!"

(What I didn't document here are the three other kids who came up to Eliot and wanted to admire Pablo. That's how you make friends as a 2-year-old, with a Backyardigan side kick. Seriously. Kids were dragging their parents over to us in delight at seeing this penguin).

On to the Kohl's art studio to do some painting. Pablo drawing by Jamie...

How did this day spin back to autism?

Because it always seems to.

The tidy 6-year-old sitting next to us observed to her put-together mother (the one who I wasn't quite sure if she was nanny or mom until we started talking): "That boy is so neat when he paints! My brother could never do that."

And so I asked about her brother. Mom looked up wearily and explained her son (also 2)'s hyperactivity and his biting ("and the worst part is that he seems to take pleasure in hurting his sister...").

I showed them the bite scars on Eliot's arm, told them about Liam's autism, explained what sensory seeking is, and told them what a child who is very oral might need (gum, chewies, etc.). I pretty much did everything but make any diagnosis or conclusions about her son.

I'm there for Eliot and not trying to get too pulled into this autism story. Just for 1 hour please.

The mom was tight-lipped, to say the least, so we leave it at that, but perhaps the seeds have been planted. Maybe she will look at her son differently...maybe this conversation will change his path (from the psycho kid to the autistic kid who needs therapy?)...

But in the meantime, let's just focus on painting a penguin please...

Or gathering massive amounts of plastic animals...

"Too many animals mama!"

"Shark attack!" (Eliot's favorite game is to run screaming "shark attack" and then tackle. Adam taught him this...)

Yes, he can sit and paint a penguin carefully; but, tell him he can't cross the rope to touch a painting:  full-on meltdown...

"All better now mama...hold hands mama?"

As we were leaving, I saw a mother and her son, walking hand in hand through the galleries. They were near the triangles my son loves. And this woman looked a lot, a whole lot, like my Grandma Merriman, who died last summer.

 I watched them, surreptitiously snapped a picture, and held my 2-year-old's hand, hoping that we might still hold hands when I needed his strength and guidance as much as he needs mine now.

See you next week.

Friday #5: PJ Party After Dark, Reflections

On Friday #5, it was time for the nighttime museum again. MAM After Dark Pajama Jam.  Sticker proof of presence (bottle of wine optional): 

You can see from the festive Rosemary Tree in the background that the holidays are upon us. This meant the Pajama Jam was also a Holiday Party of sorts. 

As I said in an earlier post (Girls Night Out), I was really looking forward to seeing what people would wear as they interpreted PJ party through the complex social lens that is the Art Museum at night. I expected all sorts of non-G-rated happenings. I even bought a sassy little night dress, a short, black, silk robe, and some daring teal slipper boots for the occasion. I thought I'd be mild, but when I was getting my "lord-yes-she's-old-enough-to-drink" bracelet, the woman behind the counter hooted to her fellow bracelteer: "Wooo-eee! She's brought her lace!"

Indeed, I brought two lace cuffs to this PJ party, and that's the sort of party it was. Wild on the margins? Tame even by Victorian standards? There were lots of flannel pants, bathrobes, a few bold adults wearing footed PJs, and everywhere the ubiquitous co-ed PJ uniform of patterned pants and a tank top.

Adam wore the silk kimono his dad brought him back from China a few years ago. I don't think it's ever been seen in public, and he strolled like a lord through the art museum halls.  

We also brought David and Liana, our fav couple friends and fellow After Darkers.  This is totally a posed shot, but I like the bask-in-blue feel to it.

So, if the above is the posed, simulacrum of life (and boy is that a great word to throw around in relation to both Art and the holiday season as the appearances of holiday joy, cheer, and bliss, are staggering to keep up with), then this is what the night was really like:

Messier, darker, more real by half. I love this photo for the background screen shot that was projected above our heads (along with a lot of incongruous silent rap videos with the toned female rappers in silk PJs), and for the way Liana's laughing, and David is saying something funny.

And this is what Adam really looked like:

And as I looked at this and the other photos I took that night, I realized that this was a night all about reflections. I was captivated by the reflection of the tree, the screens, the bar, and the caterwauling karaoke stage in the concave windows-turned-mirrors of the art museum windows.

I was drawn to art like this: mirrored vessels in a  mirrored box:

And I snapped a quick picture as my friend looked at herself in a 500-year-old looking glass (gawd, I might be pretentious for typing that rather than mirror). I love this picture because it makes me think about all the other people who might have seen themselves in this mirror over the many, many ages of the world.

Even Adam and I have been spotted in it in an earlier life (1/20/12):

And all I've got at the end of it is this message: FOOL. Resonating in the silent halls of the art galleries (where I was talking too loud) as the PJ party went on far away. 

See you next week.

Friday #1: Women of Interest (11/10/12)

I know, I know. I'm already a week behind in the writing, but I've got the sticker to prove it happened (and no photoshop to make it reverse, apologies).

Day one of Fridays at the MAM was all about Women of Interest.

My husband, Adam, and I got there right as they opened at 10am. We were alone in this fleeting hour snatched away from our children, our lives, and our piles of work.

I love everything about the museum, including the parking garage:

I love the feeling of driving into the belly of a whale (which is what the architect was going for). I love the soft lights and arching ribs. I love parking our gray minivan in a spot near the door of the museum. But all of that is just prelude. As soon as we step inside, I catch my breath. I love the coils of white marble that curve into circular staircases. I love how my boots sound on the marble as we ascend to the ticket counter. I love the quirky art students, with their short-short bangs, black glasses, and serious eye liner who scan my membership card and give me an admission sticker.  I love that moment right after we get our stickers, when we turn away from the counter and pause. This unspoken moment of "what next?" can determine the whole tenor of my day. Inevitably, I look up.

And that is a step in its own way. I am instantly reminded of cathedrals, skyscrapers, and ambition. I am reminded of sky, steel, and my love of Ayn Rand heroes as a teenager all at once.

"I want to go in there," Adam tells me, pointing to the feature exhibition, Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Gainsborough: The Treasures of Kenwood House, London.  And, so we step out of cathedral space and into gallery space.

The art in this exhibition is really more Adam's wheelhouse than mine- he likes sweeping pictures of ships, columns, and other Neo-classical type art (this is the man who wants to build follies in our backyard someday, sigh).

I like the dark corners where history, art and literature intersect. Here's a good example: This is a painting by Anthony van Dyck, of Princess Henrietta of Lorraine with a page (1634).   Princess Henrietta of Lorraine Attended by a Page, 1634 Oil on canvas.

Not my favorite painting, with all its overt and weird race and class elements (and remember what I was saying about short-short bangs?), but what peaks my interest is this fact: this painting was owned by the unlucky Charles I.  When he lost his head in 1649, this painting disappeared. According to the card at the exhibit it was not acquired by the Kenwood House until the late 19th century. So my question: where was it? Who was holding on to this giant painting while Parliamentarians called for the blood of royals in the 17th century? Where did it go in the time after the Restoration? Did  playboy Charles II bring it back? (I can't imagine him loving this one). Who had it? What basement/attic/back room was it hanging in before it emerged as a star of the exhibition?

Besides these dark corners, I am also always drawn to people on the margins of society.  Like prostitutes. I love paintings of prostitutes because of the unique place they held in society.  Because of the risks they could take. Because of the dare they offered. Take Kitty Fisher for example. It was Kitty's beauty that caught my eye, but her allegory that made me pause. This is famous courtesan, Kitty Fisher, painted as Cleopatra, by Joshua Reynolds.

In this painting, she's dropping a pearl in wine, just like histories most dangerous Cleopatra did.

Here's the legend according to the British Museum: "As the story goes, Cleopatra invited Mark Antony to compete with her in providing a banquet, boasting that whatever he spent she would outdo him. When it came to her turn, Cleopatra simply removed a splendid pearl earring and tossed it into a goblet of wine in front of her. According to Pliny, the pearl magically dissolved in the wine, which Cleopatra then drank. But for the protests of the onlookers, including Mark Antony's, she would have followed with the pair, which, like the first, was worth 100,000 sesterces." (http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/online_tours/egypt/cleopatra_history_to_myth/william_kent_after_carlo_marat.aspx))

As I look at this painting, I'm also reminded of Emile Zola writing about Nana: 

"Thereupon Nana became a smart woman, mistress of all that is foolish and filthy in man, marquise in the ranks of her calling. It was a sudden but decisive start, a plunge into the garish day of gallant notoriety and mad expenditure and that daredevil wastefulness peculiar to beauty. She at once became queen among the most expensive of her kind. Her photographs were displayed in shop windows, and she was mentioned in the papers. When she drove in her carriage along the boulevards the people would turn and tell one another who that was with all the unction of a nation saluting its sovereign, while the object of their adoration lolled easily back in her diaphanous dresses and smiled gaily under the rain of little golden curls which ran riot above the blue of her made-up eyes and the red of her painted lips. [...} There was a nervous distinction in all she did which suggested a wellborn Persian cat; she was an aristocrat in vice and proudly and rebelliously trampled upon a prostrate Paris like a sovereign whom none dare disobey. She set the fashion, and great ladies imitated her."

Emile Zola, Nana, Chapter X. 

Here's E. Manet's 1877 Painting of Nana, just for some cross-talk between these works: 

***

As I turned away from Kitty Fisher and thoughts of Nana, a girl in the gallery caught my attention. 

She was young, lovely, and wearing a shockingly inappropriate (for 10am) skin-tight, off the shoulder black elastic dress with slouchy boots. It was just enough on the side of revealing that it made me pause. She was clearly not a prostitute, but in every way she was Kitty Fisher or Nana reincarnated in a time and place where she could dare to wear what she wanted. It amused me to no end to see this girl-- did she know she was being watched?-- pause in front of the mirrored vanity that marked the transition into the exhibition gift shop. As she stood in front of the mirror, she let her hair down from a ponytail, and shook it out. She turned her profile from side to side and preened, oblivious to the old man shuffling past her.  She was totally caught up in her own reflection until we walked past, and her eye caught mine as she glanced quickly at Adam. 

I longed to capture this moment of life and art reflecting each other (sorry for the mirror pun), but the moment passed almost as quickly as we did. She turned back to the mirror, we turned away from the trinkets in the gift shop. 

***

With only 20 minutes left of our Friday at the MAM, we ambled and stumbled into something we didn't even know we were looking for. There's an "Art goes to the Movies" exhibit at the MAM, which I wanted to check out for a friend whose Aspegian 2nd grader with is determined to be an animator. 

There we found the last and darkest of the day's Woman of Interest; one of my earliest favorite, marginal, misunderstood women: Maleficent. 

As in Disney's dark villainess from Sleeping Beauty. Just the way her name rolls off my tongue delights me. When I was a girl-child, she was my favorite anti-princess. 

Poor girl, all she ever wanted was to be invited to a party. She didn't get what she wanted, so she took action.  She used her brain to think of a curse that was bound to ensnare; she gathered her minions (goblins whose inspiration was the fevered imagination of painter Hieronymus Bosch); and then she  retreated to her fortress to listen to Beethoven's 9th (as a child, this was the music of darkness to me because of this movie) brood, and practice turning into a dragon. Badass.

I love all the pointy angles in this sketch-- from Maleficent's chin, to her horned hat (which is distinctly devilish compared to the heart-shaped versions of this medieval hat), to the angles of her clothing.  

Clearly this is a woman with edges. Beware.

And we'll end the first Friday there. With the knowledge that in times gone by, Women of Interest were prostitutes or witches (as Bettleheim or anyone who studies fairy tales has pointed out).

Women on the margins are dark, dangerous, daring creatures. They steal hearts, they are beautiful, they are sharp.  They wound.

And I am entranced by their narratives every single time.

See you next Friday.