So Much To Do…
I spent an astonishing stretch of time in the Prado on Saturday, in an operation that experience and aesthetics have taught me to pace properly. I pick a particular artist or cluster of artists and focus on them for an hour or ninety minutes (visiting the parts of the museum that are relevant to them, not focusing on anything else, more or less), then I find the cafe, get a cup of coffee and a tasty, and relax for a bit, glowing from the experience. Then I plan the next pieces of the museum I will visit next and begin my focus on that part. The temptation with a museum the size and complexity of the Prado, with the remarkable depth it has in its collections, is just to show up and try and see everything in whatever order you find them. This results in confusion, superficiality, and major headache and backache, at least for me. I’m happy to go in and see a subset of what is there really properly and in context rather than just “see stuff”.
So of course I mostly focused on Spanish painters – several of the masters before the 20th Century – and later, other masters who perhaps were creating work in a Spanish context of some kind, and later, particular masters who happen to have examples of some of their great work housed in the Prado, whether there be a Spanish context or not, of which there are several such examples.
The collection is amazing. About 1/3 of my time was spent on Goya, in fact. (I wisely […] Click to continue reading this post
I got these two items about lists of 50 things within 8 hours of each other. They don’t seem connected, so I think it is a coincidence of some kind. Interesting…
Ah yes. I’ll admit it: Except for the moustache and a few other details, the scene is eerily familiar… 😉 (The embed for the video is below.)
Another meteor shower is almost upon us. Next week it is the turn of the Leonids. Now, as the name implies, these have their apparent origin in the constellation Leo. So how visible it will be for you, if you live in an urban area, might depend upon Leo’s position in the sky relative to your local bright city lights at the time of viewing. But it is worth trying. Look for a public park, rooftop, or other open area of sky. Parks can be better for pulling you away from some of the immediate lights, and then sit still and look at one patch of sky steadily for a while (generally in the right direction!) To get guidance, have […] 
