Week 2, part two

 

So after work one day I decided to go straight into town to see some art galleries that were supposed to be especially interesting, or at least, they seemed that way to me. Something I'm really liking about working in D.C is that as soon as work ends I can get to the Metro and be on the other side of town in a matter of minutes.

 

After spending most of the day inside there is nothing better than coming across a garden like this;

 

 

 

This was a courtyard in the middle of the Freer Gallery, and it impressed me as much as the art itself.

That being said, the art was well worth seeing, especially as entry is free (another amazing thing about D.C!) because the Freer Gallery (like the Sackler and National Gallery of African art) is part of the Smithsonian institution.

 

It's fantastic to be able to go from staring at paperwork in an office, to staring at an 8th century tomb-guardian statue (Chinese, Tang dynasty) in less than an hour. I also discovered that several Buddha statues were found to have originally had haloes, which were later removed. Interesting.

 

There was also contemporary Oriental art, like Xu Bing's Phoenix exhibit, linking Chinese folklore with modern socio-political issues (according to the description...) but I'm always more inclined to appreciate ancient manuscripts over contemporary art of any kind. I wonder if people throughout history have always preferred historic art to that of the present? Or if the majority of people have always liked older styles, and only a small minority looked beyond this to initiate some kind of artistic change.

 

I like looking at art that depicts something I already know the context of. The African art gallery had a great painting of the Battle of Adwa (in which the native Ethiopians defended themselves against the Italians, 1896) painted by an African artist. The great thing about that painting was the sense of nationalism - ironically a European idea exported via the colonies - that whilst the Italian soldiers all had the same faces and expressions, the Africans were portrayed as individuals. However, after writing this I think that perhaps as a European it might just be my own world-view (Weber's weltanschauung) that made me see the painting like that.

 

Smithsonian Castle Building (the main information centre for the museums & galleries)

Front garden

African National Gallery skylight
 

 Art is kind of like a visual display of history (among other things). One of my favourite things that I learnt from these galleries was the influence of the Graeco-Roman world on ancient Oriental art. Buddhist art was particularly influenced by Western style, depictions of the Buddha develop symmetrical features (a Western ideal, apparently), the robes of monks start to look more naturalistic and flowing, and even the portrayal of hair becomes more textured!

National sculpture garden (archives in background), note the shiny silver tree!

There was a room in one of the galleries called the Peacock Room. It was a display of a collection of Oriental objects, deliberately set up as it had been in Victorian London. The collection included a painting of a Western, English-looking woman in Oriental clothing, a kimono perhaps. The juxtaposition of East vs. West in that one painting, and the whole collection, mirrored the fact that the entire ensemble of objects had been translocated from London to Washington D.C. It reminded me of myself, and of this blog, and of my blog compared to my sister's.

I like this clock tower, looks European. I wonder if that's why I like it. Incongruous in central D.C.

 After walking around the galleries for a bit I went along the National Mall. What suprised me was the number of ordinary people doing ordinary things there. People walking dogs, families playing catch (with American-style baseball gloves) and whole teams training for various sports. It's weird to think of life going on as normal with the historic backdrop of the Capitol.

Chinatown entrance

 

Another part of the courtyard in the Freer gallery.

Vocabulary learnt;

"aluminum" - tinfoil. Learnt this after someone in the house came knocking to our kitchen, and unfortunately I answered the door, leading to 5 minutes of gesturing, confusion and eventual realisation. Didn't help that the person had a really deep, Southern accent (they're from Arkansas, I asked them).

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.