Today was the day that we visited art museum number two, the National Gallery. Unlike the Tate Modern, the National Gallery was less about art that made you think and was instead more about the art that keeps you looking. There were no puzzles or riddles to be deciphered, every piece of art was at its fullest the moment you laid your eyes on it. This ranged from landscape pieces, to paintings of Christ, and most importantly to the thousands of portraits of people that I have never given a shit about. While exploring this museum I had a brief moment of understanding, is a piece of art that pisses me off more interesting than art that is just really boring? Who knows, all I know is that the stupid receipt from the Tate Modern still makes me angry. Now that I have rambled, let’s talk specifics. There wasn’t any piece of art that I really hated (other than the portraits), so I instead want to talk about two pieces that I simply enjoyed looking at. The first is a painting of a train chugging across the London Bridge on an exceptionally cloudy day, and the second is of our beloved baby boy Jesus Christ. The choochoo train was fascinating to me because of the fog effect the painter was able to create by mixing the paints in such a light fashion. It almost even looks like he made a full painting and then went back over it in order to sensor it. The image just kinda reached out to me and locked my eyes in place. It was a little hypnotizing. The artist did so much with so little and I can’t get that image out of my head. The other painting was that of Jeezy boy Christman. It was the polar opposite of the steam train, and it was intimidating to a certain degree. The image itself meant very little to me because I am not a very religious person, instead it was the specificity of the piece that I found so interesting. It was massive, and every last part of it was made with a clear and purposeful intent. It separated itself from the rest of the art in the room because, unlike some of the other pieces, it perfectly portrayed the artist’s heart. I could sense the importance of the piece through the detail that he added, and I could see how beautiful all the people were because I knew the time the artist put into making them. These were two pieces that elicited the same feelings in, but had completely different methods of creation. I’m not sure if I’ll return to the National Gallery, but if I do I would like to see if I still feel the same way about these pieces. But that is just a theory, an art theory.
(the quality of these photos is really bad and I am sorry for that)
Theatre in London U of A 