Culture

Lovely coffee. Real stuff. I’m going to be up late tonight. An interesting day. Got thrown in the deep-end of what we call ‘culture’ and came up for air in the National Art Gallery. The Dutch Masters. Entirely worth it, if only for the Rembrandts. I was minorly disappointed that the first memorable (I may have seen one when I was younger) Rembrandt original was that of an old man with white hair. Impressive, but not stunning. They improved from then on, and in the expansive exhibition I found my favourite of the day in amongst the Van Ecks and such – a small self portrait, a Rembrandt. There was so much more in the way of beautiful, detailed, realistic, artistic, carefully composed paintings and I found the best (subjective) in simplicity and light. Ha, you wonder why he’s famous. After lunch, I made my way upstairs to explore the photography. Only a small amount there, a collection called, “Skin”. And here I entirely recant what I was thinking when I placed myself on the ‘without pictures of naked people the world would be a better place’ side during Ethics (class) as there was no middle ground. The human body is beautiful. “No longer in the nude, I was now naked, and I could see the contempt in the lip lines of the assembled constabulary…” (Malachy McCourt – A Monk Swimming) Strangely enough the differentiation of a word creates a chasm. We may abuse bodies visually in this (in any) society, but not always. To have another ‘best’, there was a photo at the end of the room, a little out of character with the rest of the work, a portrait, a face of a girl. Amazing. Thanks God for culture and beauty, for the human body. Thanks for being a creative God. You are good.