A Blustery Day

It was a dark and blustery day!  When I took Margaret out in the morning, there were even (horrors!) a few snowflakes flittering down.  Pauline and I asked one another – did we really want to venture forth in such ominous weather?  We did.  Our trip to the museum got off to an inauspicious start when our bus broke down and we had to transfer to another.  The other was not actually going where we wanted to go, and the driver, who assured us that it would all be okay, had a convoluted solution which involved the bus tunnel, several escalators, and then another bus.  We decided to risk being blown off our feet, and to hoof it, despite the weather and the seediness of the area. We arrived at the art museum intact, and ready for culture! 

This exhibition was, I think, my favorite of those Pauline and I have seen lately.  “You liked it better than the Picasso?” my friend Mia gasped when we met her on the bus going home.  I have to admit that I did.  I have long loved Picasso, and have not been particularly wild about Gauguin – until now that is.  I had always thought of him as a ribald boor, trotting off to foreign lands to paint naked ladies.  There were indeed lovely sloe eyed naked ladies, but their sad serenity and otherworldliness gave them a sort of magical purity. Perhaps their sadness was because they knew that the world Gauguin was painting was one that had already disappeared. 

Obviously, not Gauguin

Afterwards, we had an artistic lunch in the museum cafe.    We ordered our usual – our favorite – tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches.  Yum.  True comfort food for a blustery day. 

Also not Gauguin!

This one reminded me of one of those New Yorker cartoons with the little old ladies from the outback gaping and wondering if this could truly be art.  I guess Pauline and I were those ladies today.  We didn't get it!

Notice in the SAM ladies' room

It was like trying to decipher those mysterious words so that you can leave a comment on a friend's blog!