SAM i AM

The Impressionist exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum was quite interesting. It was amazing standing just inches away from some of the world's greatest pieces of art, but other things didn't seem to fit. Like the complete lack of any Van Gogh paintings. I'm pretty sure he was an Impressionist (about as impression-y as it could get, actually). The presence of paintings that were clearly not Impressionistic also baffled me. Especially Titian's Danae and the Shower of Gold.

This could've been part of an Enlightenment or Renaissance exhibit if there was one, but not part of this particular exhibit. Also, I don't remember seeing any sort of figure in the right portion of the painting, so the one on display must have been an alternate or something. I guess. *confused* According to the story, Zeus became angry over something (probably that Danae had yet to be ravished), so he came down to her disguised as gold and knocked her up, after which she gave birth to Perseus. How terribly sexist.

Which brings me to another observation: I don't recall any female artists on display in that exhibit. Perhaps there were a couple in the Family/Kids/Kitch gallery (which is related to Impressionism how?). That would figure. It really surprised me to see no Bouguereau paintings in this gallery, though, considering the majority of his paintings consisted of women, women holding babies, babies holding babies, naked girls, naked girls posing in suggestive ways, and so on.

Tell me what isn't wrong about that painting.

And this brings me to yet another thought: Now that I think back on everything I saw at the museum, if there was a naked figure it was always a woman. The only naked men on display were little sculptures and statues down in the Africa/Middle East/Greece/Rome galleries. It's nice to see this idea of female exploitation reinforced so strongly in American society.

Aside from all the sexism inherent throughout the museum, I managed to have a fairly decent time there. I saw one of those typical medieval egg tempera paintings of the Madonna holding her child, but this one was different from all the others in that it included one extremely long, boney, alien-like finger on the woman. I wish I could find a pic of it. Pretty hilarious. I also found it interesting how most of the figures of that medieval gallery were depicted with a sickly green/grey hue to their skin. Maybe egg tempera changes color over time, or there's some sort of color theory in religion. But I'll stick with my first thought and say it was due to the Plague.