BATHING IN CULTURE

I mentioned before that I visited the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento this Christmas holiday. I was very intrigued by it: it was huge, and I only got to see the contemporary wing, but that's what I'm usually most interested in anyway. They also had a Native American section which I walked through, and there were some beautiful artworks there as well.

What I noticed with a lot of the art here-- I think most or maybe all of it was by American artists-- is that it was a little dystopian and almost negative about society, but it was all depicted in a creative and often strange way. I liked paintings like Eduardo Carrillo's Las Tropicanas, which looks like a spooky but good party; Julie Heffernan's Moving Out, showing people fleeing a place with the world's contents dragged along with them; and Irving Norman's My World and Yours which is very disturbing but captivating at the same time. For the rest there were a lot of surrealist pieces (I loved Dorr Bothwell's Mental Terrain, also because of the title) and some modern paintings that looked almost like photos (for instance, Jack Mendenhall's R/B Furniture). And there was some very fun art, like Maija Peeples-Bright's painting filled with walruses. 

The Crocker is a very large museum: I spent two hours there and only worked through half of the third floor. So if you want to go, you might like to open up a day for it! There's something for everyone there-- contemporary art, Asian and African art, European art and some temporary exhibitions. It's also one of only three big museums in Sacramento I believe, so if you're close, you have almost no excuse ;)

1. Julie Heffernan: Moving Out

2. Michael Stevens: Spike

3. Dorr Hodgson Bothwell: Mental Terrain

4. Maija Peeples-Bright: Walrus Willamette with Whale Walkers

5. David Klamen: Parenthesis #4

I live in the part of Amsterdam called 'Oud-Zuid' (the Old South). It's near Rijksmuseum, the Concert Hall and Vondelpark, and is known for its decadence and wealth. When I mention that I'm from there, I sometimes get asked if I've played hockey or the violin as a kid, or if I love horses, or if my parents have an art studio at home, or if my mother wears pearls and I grew up with lots of money. I didn't. I do know that lots of neighbours of mine meet at least one of those requirements.

What I've noticed lately is that the people, and especially the elderly, have a very distinguished sense of style here. Some of it is due to the money that supposedly is predominant in this neighbourhood, but some of it also stems from a certain idea of elegance. And yes, maybe this elegance is related to the wealth. But it's also related to a certain way of thinking that belongs to people born and raised in a big city. I actually wrote a piece on this, and set out to take pictures of typical 'city people' but then I came across all these wonderful elderly people in my neighbourhood wearing classy, sometimes strikingly bold winter outfits. The men walk with their hands behind their backs and their heads held high. The women walk determinedly and with quick, big paces. And all of them have an attitude that could be seen as cockiness, but I prefer confidence. 

And oh my god, those Dalmatians are too beautiful.

I never lost anyone that close-- a parent, or a lover. Someone who is there all the time, in your house, until one day they are not. Max Porter made me feel on the one hand like I understood that feeling: I felt it, the pain, their pain as if it were mine. And on the other hand I was so very clearly aware that I wouldn't ever feel it, unless it happened to me. Wishing avidly for it not to happen, of course, not any time soon.

Thank God for new writers who don't keep to the 'rules' of a novel. Thank God for those who dare to create a different shape, something new and yet not any less alluring, drawing-you-in. Thank God, too, for the use of literary references so carefully knitted into a story that you don't realise it until it slaps you in the face somewhere at the end. Ted Hughes. Crow. Sylvia Plath. And if you haven't read the work it is based on, like I haven't, this book makes you want to read it first thing. We actually read a Hughes poem in English class this week. All the things I felt during Grief is the Thing with Feathers came back up, and the poem-- Daffodils, about Plath's death-- was beautiful.

Porter weaves poetry and prose, stream-of-consciousness and clear sentences together to form a novel that is too short for its topic, too short for its beauty, but I can almost guarantee it will say with you longer than it took you to read it.

If you need an idea for a Christmas gift and you're not afraid to make it a little profound-- and maybe a bit melancholy-- this book can be a good present for anyone!

Pictures by me.