Day 302/365 - Phillips After Five

Although I've been a member of the Phillips Collection for two years and can get into the museum for free, I'd never been to one of their "Phillips After Five" events until tonight. Turns out they are pretty damn cool.

My evening started off with the Mortified performance piece in the museum's auditorium. If you're unfamiliar with Mortified, it essentially involves people getting onstage in front of a room full of strangers and recounting some of the most embarrassing and angst-ridden moments of their adolescence. Tonight's participants read from their high school journals/diaries, recited old love letters, and in one case sang childhood songs they'd written about their neighbors and friends. It was a hilarious, empathetic, touching, and occasionally cringeworthy experience. Evidently they stage events in cities across the country, so if one pops up in your neck of the woods you should go.

After the show ended, I ventured up to the third floor to check out the "Paint Made Flesh" exhibit, which highlights the way that the development of oil paints lead to greater skill and interest in depicting the human form among painters. The exhibit features a wide range of works from a variety of artists, styles, places, and eras. When I'd finished perusing it, I wandered around the permanent collection to visit a few old friends amongst the artworks, although I was bummed to discover that one of my Phillips faves -- Matisse's "Studio, Quai Saint-Michel" -- had been taken down from display. Don't know whether it's being restored or loaned out, but it was MIA.

From there I ambled on down to the music room to catch the tail end of a jazz quartet's performance. There was a cash bar there, but I had no greenbacks on me so I had to make like a teetotaller. Boooo. I then wrapped up the evening with a late supper and a bit of bookbrowsing at Kramerbooks & Afterwords Cafe. I guess I'd have to say it was a very yuppified night out. Fun, but definitely yuppified.

(Taken with my iPhone)

Day 212/365 - A Glorious Afternoon

Today, for the first time in over a week and a half, we had blue skies and sunshine. I was damned if I was going to let it go to waste while I toiled away in my office all day, especially given that the rain is supposed to return this evening. So I decided to take the afternoon off. Come 12:30 I turned off my computer, grabbed my bag, and headed for the door.

I decided to spend the afternoon in the Dupont Circle section of Washington, DC. On the subway ride there I ran into JW, who had snuck away from her office to meet up with Samer for lunch. It was a great day for escaping from offices. On the subject of lunch, I opted to take mine sitting on the patio of the Kramerbooks & Afterwords Cafe. I went for the jerked chicken salad, a glass of Riesling, and a slice of blueberry pie. Yummmm on all counts.

Once I finished with lunch, I ambled over to the Phillips Collection to finally see the Morandi exhibit I've been meaning to check out for a while. Morandi was an Italian painter who worked from the 1920s through the 1960s and who specialized in still lifes (on a random note, why is it 'still lifes' and not 'still lives'?). His still lifes are very stark and simple and feature a muted palette and abstract backgrounds. Morandi didn't paint the standard 'bowl of fruit' still lifes. His paintings were of small arrangements of commonplace household items, the artifacts of everyday life.

The focus in his work is always on containers or vessels of some sort -- vases, cups, bowls, tins, pitchers. With the exception of a few paintings of flowers, the containers are always empty. It's as though they are waiting to be filled with whatever the viewer wishes to project into them. For all their stark simplicity, there is something very zen, patient, and contemplative about his still lifes. It was an interesting exhibit. I really need to take an art survey or appreciation course one of these days so I'll know what the hell I'm talking about.

Given the rare dose of sunshine, I couldn't spend the whole day cooped up in an art gallery though, so after taking in the exhibit I headed to the small park at the center of Dupont Circle and sat in the sun near the fountain to read for a while. After about an hour I got a little hot, so I popped into a Starbucks nearby to get an iced coffee and sat there and read for another hour or so.

It was a glorious afternoon and to make matters even better, when I got home I discovered that the Nikon D90 I ordered had been delivered! I had been thinking about replacing my DSLR for the past 4-5 months and earlier this week I finally decided to do so. I've only had my D80 for about 15 months and I got a lot of good use out of it, but its performance in low light and mixed lighting environments was really frustrating. I had originally been leaning toward getting a D300 until I read an on-line review that said the D90's performance was just about as good, but it cost several hundred dollars less and featured newer technology. So after checking with Marie to get her firsthand account of using one, I switched my sights to the D90.

Now I'm just waiting for the battery pack to charge up so I can start playing with my new toy.

(Taken with my Nikon Coolpix S200)

Day 80/365 - Arty Smarty

The Phillips Collection is by far my favorite art museum in DC. It's one of the few museums or galleries I've been to that has it's own palpable personality, which probably comes from the fact that it's largely just one really rich guy's personal art collection that he turned into a museum. Plus it's housed in his former home (and the townhomes of his former neighbors). As the collection expanded, they bought the adjacent buildings, connected them all, and turned it into one really cool art salon. The Phillips Collection pre-dates both the National Gallery of Art in DC and the MOMA in NYC and focuses on the field of Modern Art as that term has varyingly been defined since the late 1800s.

The Phillips' most famous objet d'art is Renoir's Luncheon of the Boating Party, which now always makes me think of the movie 'Amelie.' My favorite works in the Phillips Collection though are Matisse's Studio, Quai St. Michel and Marjorie Phillips' Night Baseball. The Phillips has also hosted my favorite exhibit since I've been in DC, namely the Modigliani retrospective they did a few years back (although I also really like the National Gallery of Art's Edward Hopper exhibit and the Corcoran Gallery of Art's Modernism show).

So anyway, the reason the photo above is of me in front of a sign for the Phillips Collection is that I went there today. I'm a member now so I get in for free (well, not counting the membership dues that is). I really love going to art museums. It's always one of the factors I take into account when planning a vacation. Going to an art museum or gallery gives me a similar feeling to sitting beside the sea -- both settings provide me with a sense of peace, grace, majesty, mystery, and the presence of something bigger than myself. Plus contemplating art is a bit like Pop Rocks for the soul -- it wakes you up and lets you know there is more to life than just an endless string of mental factory-work.

My taste in art has certainly changed over time. Initially I didn't have any appreciation or understanding of art that was even remotely abstract. If it didn't look like it was supposed to look then I didn't like it. As I've gotten older though I've begun to appreciate art that doesn't just look like a form of photograph. I suppose it has something to do with coming to realize that few things are as they seem to be and that much of life is ambiguous and unclear. Despite that, though, I still really like 'calendar' artists such as Gustav Klimt and Norman Rockwell. I guess a bit of reassurance is always a welcome thing.

(Taken with my Nikon Coolpix S200)