Meme-Day 2: Art for Art’s Sake

Scout tagged me for this new meme: Post your favorite paintings. I’m going with two, although there are a million others I really, really love. Starry Night by Van Gogh at MOMA is always a treat. I’ve recently fallen in LOVE with Whistler’s watercolors and his non-figure paintings – many of which can be seen at the Frick, my favorite museum. Goya’s “Black Paintings” that we saw at the Prado in Spain are wonderfully evocative. El Greco’s View of Toledo is one of my all time favorites, and when we went to Toledo I got to see the actual landscape and it was like it had jumped out of the picture.

The first painting I’m going with is Ruben’s Prometheus Bound.

It’s part of the Permanent Collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the museum I grew up in. When we would go as a family when I was young I HAD to see this painting. I remember you walk through the old church room (I guess pre-Renaissance works) and then you come into the European Master’s Room and there was my painting. I loved this painting so much I had a poster of it that I hung in my room. My sister didn’t like that too much, but tough. I’m the oldest. It’s kind of gruesome, but what are you going to do? It’s what I liked at the time.

The second painting I’m going with is Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights that resides in the Prado in Madrid.

That’s the center panel of the tryptich. There’s a good story behind my love of this painting. Maybe I’ve told parts of this before, but you’ll hear it again and you’ll love it! Anyway, I was a senior in college and I still had to take my Art or Music requirement to graduate. I had been waiting four years to take Modern Art, which was only offered once a year in the Spring and it filled up ridiculously early and you basically had to be a senior to get in (seniors had first priority when registering.) So I’ve been waiting four years to take this class and it ends up being at the same time as a seminar on Philosophy of Religion (I was a double major Religious Studies and Philosophy) taught by one of my favorite professors and there ain’t no way I’m missing that. So I still have to take an Arts requirement. I look over the schedule and figure I can’t take music – too hard – so I take Renaissance Art instead. BEST.CLASS.EVER! Seriously. Without a doubt one of the best classes I’ve ever taken in any discipline. The professor was funny as shit – he was weirdly obsessed with the sex lives of these artists and the art was even better. Having been a Modern Art person (Post-Impressionists more than Post-Modern) I didn’t know anything about Renaissance Art besides you know, Leonardo and Michaelangelo and stuff. I FELL IN LOVE! The Van Dycks! The Breugels! The El Grecos! The Titians! The Frans Hals! The Boschs! I was in HEAVEN. I started hanging out at the Frick on a daily basis. I skipped over the Modern room at the Met. I shunned MOMA and the Guggenheim. Instead I dragged G around Italy on a long weekend – getting lost in Venice – searching desperately for a Tintoretto! Then G had a big dinner to plan in Madrid. He was flying back and forth and they were using a Velazquez painting and he had all these private tours of the Prado. He comes home telling me about El Bosco! And this amazing painting he saw! The Garden of Earthly Delights! Did I know it? DID I KNOW IT!!!! It’s the most amazing painting EVER! I mean the weirdness that comes out of the mind of El Bosco puts my twisted imagination to shame. This man was really, really sick. In the best possible way.

One weekend G whisked me off to Madrid. He wanted to take me to the Prado to see my favorite El Bosco in person. We walked into the hallowed halls of that beautiful old museum, the ugly Americans. We passed the Velazquezs. We passed the Goyas. The El Grecos. And finally we asked a guard, “Where’s the El Bosco? The Garden painting?” After much pantomime and speaking loud slow English, he got it and led us to another room. With a wonderfully large empty space on the wall. The Garden of Earthly Delights. The Genius Painting of Hieronymous Bosch. The WHOLE reason for a wonderful weekend in Madrid. The fucking painting was out being cleaned. Can you believe it?!?! We laughed so hard we cried. All was not a loss though. I did buy a couple of posters.

This painting is filled with the most physical, psychic and spiritual depravity ever imagined! I LOVE IT! You could stare at it for hours. In the last year we had some problems with the heat/AC unit in the room where these posters hang and the repair guy would bring his apprentice – maybe this kid was nineteen at the oldest. He would stand there and stare at the pictures – like he was in a trance or something. Then he’d look at me funny and I’d just stand in the doorway, my hands folded over my chest, with a cheshire cat smile on my face. So much fun.

Thanks Scout, for tagging me for a great meme. I hope you enjoy the paintings as much as I do. And you are now IT!