Not much activity in the office this morning. Said good bye to Fiona which was sad as I wanted to hear more about her project on the promise of salvation by way of Uranium in the 20th century--sadly she had to leave a little prematurely. I ran into Deborah while posting updated schedules in the hallways and in the elevator. She seemed interested when I said I was off to the hermitage and came along. She met me a bit later when I was off from office duty as Katia arrived to relieve me. Over breaky she told me that Saskia, our visiting poetry teacher, was to heading to the museum and would be there at noon.
Providence happened and luckily we ran into her fighting and dealing with the incredibly rude soviet era ticket sellers. These women are horrific. I can't describe how cold and much shit they give you in lieu of basic human courtesy and that really lost notion of customer service. I had to yell at one of them that didn't want to sell Saskia a ticket for 100 rubels, the Russian price, but rather charge her obnoxious sums as a foreigner. The beauty of our Spravkas is that we get Russian prices because we're reigstered as students at the Gherzin University.
Well yelling aside we had a lovely afternoon of first Impressionism, including the contensted collection that was found out in a bombed out building in Germany when the Russians were driving for Berlin. They sent the collection back to Russia and its been at the Hermitage ever since. The collection contains, Degas, a number of Renoires, Cezannea and several Van Ghoghs that date back from 1889 and 1890 which was shortly before his death. Saskia made note of how his brush strokes had become more and more angry at that point, or more aptly put, bolder and bolder, with thicker paint on the brush and around the stroke. The sun in the sky of a field was painted out in that style that we so well know in Starry Night, with the halo. Thanks to Molly I know that doctors believe he had Meiner's Disease which is a disfunction of the inner ear that causes the mind to overcompensate for physical imbalance resulting in fatigue, headaches, and that kind of distorted vision that would create halos. Although very stylistic, it could be very much ther esult of what Vincent was seeing/experiencing. The collection has been under contention by the german government, they want it back as its "stolen" or the "spoils of war". Yeltzin promised to return it, but as you can see, we have Putin, and its still at the 'tage...
From there we wandered around, into that gorgeous room, the war room of 1812, then up to the third floor which is dotted with early Picassos from the cubist period, some toward the very latter end that are so emblematic of the final cubist style that reduced the sign and symbol of the middle period into a distilled shape as signifier. I wonder if Pollack studied Picasso's middle cubist period because that kind of newsprint feel, that blending of styles from the early period of Le Mademoiselles de Avignon is so evident in the early Pollack that we call Abstract Expressionism vs. the later drip pieces.
Around the corner are the famous Matisse pieces like Harmony in Red
and Dance...
We skipped the Leanardo Madonna's: that's just tourist central and those rooms drive one insane in the membrane... seriously... it hurts. I was sad not to see th Michelangelo, but I didn't think about it as we pushed on into the Dutch painters and saw the wonderful Rembrandts and then off to the sculpture room with the 17th century French sculptures of Roman Gods including that fairy I photographed last year... she's still my favorite...
From there it was briefly down to ancient Egypt and then back up to visit the Raphaelite hall that is a reproduction from the one in the Vatican that is the hall of natural wonders, a very stylized painted hall that catalogues the known species at the time of its painting... its a cool thing to see.
Saskia wanted to see the 16th century Flemmish collection and we wound our way back to it. The detail is amazing, but I think the dutch, like Van Eyck have the cornerstone of inscrutable detail.
I'm running out of time... so i'll just wrape this up. The Hermitage is unbelievable. I've never done the Louvre so I can't complain, but if you ever hav the opportunity spend 3 hours in there, then go rest, then come back the next day. You start hurting by the fourth... or take breaks and go to the cafe...
K... off to a reading but first I'm taking Saskia to the pro camera shop in search of Kiev knockoffs...
shislivo vsem!!!
xo
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