Daytrip to Boston by the Commuter Train
Nice day. We walked, ate and drank along Charles and Newbury Streets, rubbing elbows with my people. Train was empty, almost slept on the ride home.
Dave's Journal, Oct2021
Nice day. We walked, ate and drank along Charles and Newbury Streets, rubbing elbows with my people. Train was empty, almost slept on the ride home.
Visited this museum in Hudson yesterday, with old GE buddy Bill M.
Strictly, it is a 20th century military heritage museum. Very impressive collection of ground armaments.
In a separate hangar, they have a collection of "midget" race cars and a few vintage airplanes (aeroplanes?). An impressive collection (of cars).
Lighting in first building was various kinds of flourescent lights - an awful patchwork of various distracting colors !! - so I shot those B&W.
Been feeling poorly, got tested and, yep, tested positive yesterday. Despite being vaccinated back in Feb/ Mar and always wearing a mask.
I'm 5 days from first symptoms, not terrible sick, but coughing ruins sleeping. Dosed out on CVS meds and seems I have leveled off and maybe even feeling better today.
Deb tested positive just today, using the home test. So we are in quarantine. Mike's running medicine errands for us.
The reason this famous painting looks like a canvas brushed with matte black paint is .... well, you guessed it didn't you?
Not really a Dracula, the vampire, movie.
Prince makes a deal with the devil to get supernautural powers and save his people from invaders.
Ends with him turning all his people into vampires and then killing them all with sunlight.
Another movie the producer couldn't figure how to end.
Great graphics.
I do like some abstract paintings - like this one
When you have no sound and no computer graphics, you need to rely on the actor's sense of drama . . .
One of the very best 1950's sci-fi movies (I'd almost say *the* best of that era). Intelligent script, excellent directing, pretty good acting, no distracting side plots.
I was too old and stodgy to be into this stuff at the time, and anyway they were not big in the US. But, being now that I am cool, and have days and days post-covid recovery and bad weather outside ..... if you keep a very open mind about "what is video art?" ... watch a few of these on Youtube. I really like the artsy look of the videos, but to be honest, I had the sound turned off.
Speaking of visual art, my final assignment (abstract art course) is to write a critique of that painting down there - Yayoi Kusama's "Endless Life".
Wish me luck.
Commentary on Yayoi Kusama's offset lithograph "Endless Life of People" (2010 / 16" X 16")
Note: My comments are based on the attached screen capture, shamelessly downloaded from [https://www.artsy.net/artwork/yayoi-kusama-endless-life-of-people]. I do not have access to it in print or a book.
"Endless Life" is at first glance a picture of microbes, bacteria, etc. under a microscope, except that it is colorful. The lighting is frontal, there are no shadows, extremely few minor instances of shading; there are no transparencies; no signs of layers, or depth or perspective out of the plane of the print.
Rotating the image through 90, 180 and 270 degrees and looking more carefully at each view, shows more than those microbe-like shapes. There are facial profiles, ears, ears with earrings, eyes, eye glasses, mugs and cups. Notably, the facial profiles appear in several other Kusama works labelled "self portrait" - so these may (?) in fact represent Kusama herself.
The picture evokes in me curiosity and thoughtfulness, but no emotions. I see no attempt to replicate "gestural" strokes, sprays or splashes. Every shape is very deliberate, controlled and bounded by an edge or border.
The title suggests to me that we are looking at a universe of life from the microbe level to the human level, or at least, a universe of microsopic life wherein Kusama sees herself embedded. (I found no text where Kusama commented this particular picture.)
Caught in the act ..... Leonard Nimoy had 30 seconds in "Them", and Clint Eastwood about the same in "Revenge of the Creature"
(Gives the XKE a run for it's money.)
