Week 1, part four

 

I think that I should end the whole Nikita-misses-her-fieldtrip story. I did get to visit the Smithsonian National Art Gallery, a few days later. I genuinely enjoyed the architecture as much as the art contained in the building. There was this courtyard with a glass ceiling, and trees inside. There was running water along the floor, which was great for cooling off our feet!

 

The building of the gallery itself was all white and marble, neo-classical style, like Union Station, but more art noveau. There were paintings of Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, some abstract stuff involving television screens hidden amongst shrubs, and neon lighting, and the obligatory collection of Presidential portraits. There was also this painting;

 

 

It's called Among the Sierra Nevada (mountains in California) and it's by Albert Bierstadt. The contradiction in this image is between realism and idealism, something I studied last term. The reflection of the mountains on the surface if the lake is so undisturbed it borders on surreal. Equally, the harmony and beauty of the scene, reproduced with such detail to light and composition, is false. That is to say, it was not produced from a true image, not painted from a single scene, but designed with the most beautiful elements of several scenes, combined to make the overall image. The fact that this painting is supposed to represent the perfect landscape, and yet is completely unattainable in reality, represents for me the enduring appeal of the American dream, a mentality that seems to surive until the present day.  

 

 

A fellow intern described how she sees the architecture of Washington D.C; "when in doubt, go Grecian". Although she meant it as a joke, there's some truth in that statement. Here is the national archive building as visible from the National Gallery of Art's Sculpture garden. As we were trying to find the gardens, we came across a long queue and wondered if it was for the gardens. After a confused 5 minute conversation with a security guard we realised that the word "queue" was throwing everyone off, and once replaced with the word "line", everyone was on the same page, and soon we were able to enter the gardens without having to wait in either a queue or a line, because it turns out that the people we saw were actually waiting to go into the National Archives. I used this opportunity to photograph the building regardless.

Detail of the National Archives

 

Inside the gardens we sat around the edge of a large pool, which everyone was sitting with their feet in on account of the heat, which was considerable despite the fact that it was about 6pm! There was a free jazz concert, and some steel drums playing and everything. Live jazz music, especially outside, is quite unusual in the UK, so we were very happy to get a chance to here it. I think jazz is one of the only types of music to have originated in North America. Listening to jazz music on a warm evening, with a slight breeze, the setting sun and dragonflies casually flitting in and out of the water has got to be one of my favourite moments in D.C so far.

 

After the concert we walked around that part of the city (Gallery Place) for a bit, and came to a strange area in which the pavement had been decorated as a map of the world. It's just another example of the weird things you can find here if you know where to look, or if you're paying attention.

 

Vocabulary learnt;

 

"Natitude" - the campaign launched by the Washington Nats, a professional baseball team, to encourage, seemingly, more enthusiasm from their home fans and more confidencce for their players

 

"jay-walking" - walking across the road or onto a pedestrian crossing despite the fact that the lights are still red/ you aren't supposed to walk yet

 

"red neck" - ok, I knew that a "red neck" was used to describe uneducated farmers who worked in the fields all day and got burnt on their neck from bending over, but I didn't realise how much that this word had spread into common usage as a description for anyone who is supposedly lower working-class (well, what we would think of as lower working class in Britain) and completely uneducated to the point of total ignorance. So it's an insult with historical origins, much like the contemporary debate in England surrounding the short hand for "Plebian", meaning someone who was not a Roman citizen, and did not have the right to vote.