But is it Art?
Then it started to rain pretty hard, so I went to the National Gallery. It’s a huge collection, and I just scratched the surface, mostly viewing the paintings. I enjoyed some of it, but I do find the long European period of dark religious art to get a bit tedious. That, and the innumerable portraits of vapid-looking nobility. Still, the masters of painting had a certain sense of light, texture, and color that I can admire when I look past the content. What else could they paint but what was around them? So I looked for elements that I could connect with.
One special section was entitled “The Stuff of Life.” It was about the depiction of ordinary objects in painting. Of course the still life was a major focus, but there were also exhibits pointing out the significance of certain objects in relation the people or actions in the rest of the painting. It was interesting.
The most fascinating thing I saw was a video displayed in a continuous loop on a plasma screen. It was time-lapse photography at its best, having been taken over a span of nine weeks, condensed into about 5 minutes. It was a “still life,” with a dead rabbit lying on a table, one rear leg pinned up on the wall above it, and a peach sitting next to it. Then the film runs.
Over time, the rabbit decays and is infested by a swarm of maggots and other buggies that come to feed on the corpse. The fur falls off the drying skin. The gut, which is apparently attacked first by the critters, splits open. The rear leg not pinned up slowly sinks, and the body collapses in on itself. The skull pokes through the diminishing skin on the head. For a while, the wall becomes wet with the fluids being evolved from the carcass, and then it dries up again near the end. By nine weeks, only a parched, blackened, stripped corpse remains.
Astonishingly, the peach remains intact! The caption says that this was a complete surprise to the artist. It was an underripe peach, picked very early, and it happened not to change noticeably in the nine weeks spent sitting on the table. Green fruit lasts well, apparently.
Of course the point is to depict decay, which is actually often what still lifes are showing—fruit and meat and other items poised at the peak of edibility, but also teetering on the edge of going bad. And yet, ironically, the rabbit is a tribute to the continuance of life in some sense. Think of all the happy maggots that benefited from its death. Or something. (One is reminded of the very British phase, “But is it art?” I think so).
Tired, I picked up some food in a modular restaurant called EAT (I guess my appetite was still intact!). They have sandwiches, salads, cake, fruit, sushi, juice, yogurt, etc in self-serve refrigerators on the side, as well as pizza and a Starbucks-like coffee selection behind the front counter. The food is a cut above basic, with sandwich choices like hummus, carrot, and ginger; and feta, tomato, and mint. I had some sushi and Thai chicken noodle salad. I like it because people with varying degrees of hunger can all go, and no one feels like they’re getting too little or too much. Those items plus a bottle of water only cost 4.50 quid.
On the way back, the Underground was held up at a station because “we have reports of an alarm at the station ahead.” I sat there wondering if I was about to be involved in a major disruption of the Underground as happened a couple months ago. After all, it was rush hour on Friday, a prime time to strike. But it was only a routine difficulty of some kind, and we were on our way shortly.
Then next day, it was home again, home again. I caught the free bus to Heathrow, smiling at the row of folks waiting for the Hotel Hoppa with their 3-pound tickets. And I was pleased that upon buying a bottle of water, an apple, and a trinket for a friend, I had exactly 1 pence left in coins. How’s that for perfect? I still had one 20-pound note, however, which is an annoyance. It’s too little to exchange, but it’s a significant amount of money. Ah well, I'll just have to go back!
One special section was entitled “The Stuff of Life.” It was about the depiction of ordinary objects in painting. Of course the still life was a major focus, but there were also exhibits pointing out the significance of certain objects in relation the people or actions in the rest of the painting. It was interesting.
The most fascinating thing I saw was a video displayed in a continuous loop on a plasma screen. It was time-lapse photography at its best, having been taken over a span of nine weeks, condensed into about 5 minutes. It was a “still life,” with a dead rabbit lying on a table, one rear leg pinned up on the wall above it, and a peach sitting next to it. Then the film runs.
Over time, the rabbit decays and is infested by a swarm of maggots and other buggies that come to feed on the corpse. The fur falls off the drying skin. The gut, which is apparently attacked first by the critters, splits open. The rear leg not pinned up slowly sinks, and the body collapses in on itself. The skull pokes through the diminishing skin on the head. For a while, the wall becomes wet with the fluids being evolved from the carcass, and then it dries up again near the end. By nine weeks, only a parched, blackened, stripped corpse remains.
Astonishingly, the peach remains intact! The caption says that this was a complete surprise to the artist. It was an underripe peach, picked very early, and it happened not to change noticeably in the nine weeks spent sitting on the table. Green fruit lasts well, apparently.
Of course the point is to depict decay, which is actually often what still lifes are showing—fruit and meat and other items poised at the peak of edibility, but also teetering on the edge of going bad. And yet, ironically, the rabbit is a tribute to the continuance of life in some sense. Think of all the happy maggots that benefited from its death. Or something. (One is reminded of the very British phase, “But is it art?” I think so).
Tired, I picked up some food in a modular restaurant called EAT (I guess my appetite was still intact!). They have sandwiches, salads, cake, fruit, sushi, juice, yogurt, etc in self-serve refrigerators on the side, as well as pizza and a Starbucks-like coffee selection behind the front counter. The food is a cut above basic, with sandwich choices like hummus, carrot, and ginger; and feta, tomato, and mint. I had some sushi and Thai chicken noodle salad. I like it because people with varying degrees of hunger can all go, and no one feels like they’re getting too little or too much. Those items plus a bottle of water only cost 4.50 quid.
On the way back, the Underground was held up at a station because “we have reports of an alarm at the station ahead.” I sat there wondering if I was about to be involved in a major disruption of the Underground as happened a couple months ago. After all, it was rush hour on Friday, a prime time to strike. But it was only a routine difficulty of some kind, and we were on our way shortly.
Then next day, it was home again, home again. I caught the free bus to Heathrow, smiling at the row of folks waiting for the Hotel Hoppa with their 3-pound tickets. And I was pleased that upon buying a bottle of water, an apple, and a trinket for a friend, I had exactly 1 pence left in coins. How’s that for perfect? I still had one 20-pound note, however, which is an annoyance. It’s too little to exchange, but it’s a significant amount of money. Ah well, I'll just have to go back!
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home