I've been pretty antisocial since my return to Omaha. Lots of reasons, but that's not the point. Here's the point: I almost never go out. I'm changing that today. I'm heading down to Kansas City to hang out and think with an old friend:
This may be my favorite painting that I've actually seen in person (the fact that I live a day's drive away from the Art Institute of Chicago and have never been is a damn shame). When I was an undergrad at Rockhurst for two long and awful years, I used to walk to the Nelson to sit and study this Caravaggio for hours. Images of John in the Wilderness pop up again and again in iconographic art, but the chiaroscuro in this one lends the figure a despondency that belies the greatness John would eventually achieve.
So I'm heading to KC to hang out with my old friend Carole and stare at "my" painting. But tonight, the Omaha Symphony is performing a program which includes Vaughn Williams's "The Lark Ascending," possibly my favorite piece of orchestral music and the apogee of the Romantic movement. Let's think: Renaissance painting with Carole, or Romantic music by myself?
Gotta go with Carole and sociability. I've been in the cave for far too long.
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