tourist trap but, my my, what art!

Why oh why do people like to stay in Bruges? I got there and was instantly stuck in tourist-trap glue and glum. It seemed unavoidable but ....

There are some really fine paintings in Bruges, especially if you are fond of the Flemish primitives (15th century). The Death of the Virgin by Hugo van der Goes is one of my favorite paintings ever and it is at the Groeningemuseum. What's that? It's your favorite painting and you were remembering her gown as red. It's blue. The red one is by Caravaggio (and not in Bruges). I don't think any of my Stendhal sighs today were audible but the St Luke Drawing the Virgin by Rogier van der Weyden brought tears to my eyes. It's in the same room as the Hugo van der Goes and the Virgin and Child with Canon van der Paele by Jan van Eyck. Oh, and a Memling and a Bosch. There were quite a few people in the gallery but we were mostly respectful and gently moved around each other. When I looped around on my way out, I had the gallery to myself for a little while.

The Groeningemuseum has paintings all the way up to the 20th century. I found some more works by Gustave van de Woestyne, including a large Last Supper. The last gallery had a Magritte and a lot of Marcel Broodthaers.

Before I got to the Groeningemuseum, I stopped in at the Cathedral of Our Lady to see the Bruges Madonna by Michelangelo. If you saw the film Monuments Men or have read about the protection and movement of art works during World War II, you will remember how close this work came to disappearing. Well, it's there, it's beautiful, it's smallish but incredible.

After the Groeningemuseum, I went to the Memling Museum at Sint Janshospital where there's the incredible St John Altarpiece and several other Memlings including the St Ursula Shrine and a round Madonna and Child (the latter, courtesy of Christie's). Just wow! Upstairs, they had a Christian Boltanski installation of Les registres du Grand-Hornu, a memory-piece about the people who worked the Grand-Hornu mines. Very effective setting for an emotional piece.

On to the treasury at the Church of Our Savior (St Salvator) where they have the Martyrdom of St Hippolytus by Dirk Bouts and Hugo van der Goes. It's a gruesome scene -- St Hippolytus was stretched by horses attached to his limbs -- but a beautiful painting. I love the flattened space with the narrative circling around the saint's body almost like a zodiac. And St Hippolytus seems to be in some kind of sublime and serene ecstasy. What do you expect? He's a martyr.

After the St Salvator treasury, I went outside to sit and contemplate and see if there was anything else that needed to be done in Bruges. It was nearing 5 pm so I decided not to rush off to the Belfort tower for a 376-step climb even if the view would have been incredible. Once I'd relaxed, I could ignore the thousands of others milling about, the boats going by with a couple dozen tourists each, etc etc and just enjoy the pretty scene across the way:

Then off to the train station to come "home" to Ghent. I stopped at Hasta Mañana, hoping for a margarita but settled on a caipirinha which doesn't, alas, go too well with chips and salsa. And then back to the hotel. I didn't take many pictures today and you may have noticed that most of the works I mentioned are linked. And several of them are well enough known to even have a Wikipedia entry on the painting alone, not just as part of the artist's article.

Bouts? nope

When I saw this painting by Gustave van de Woestyne earlier today at the Museum voor Schone Kunsten (MFA) in Ghent, it looked a little like the portrait of an old man by Dirk Bouts at the Met. Or maybe some Memling somewhere. Truth to tell, I did say "Memling" in my head but as I looked at Google responses, I'd clearly mashed together several portraits. I was not familiar with van de Woestyne and another of his paintings was perhaps the most unusual Christ in the Wilderness that I have ever seen.

His left eye really does look crossed (perhaps appropriate for a Jesus?). Van de Woestyne was a favorite of the long-time director Robert Hoozee who died in 2012. The special show was a tribute exhibition and also included a room of drawings by the exquisite minimalist Raoul de Keyser.

I was at the museum for almost four hours, not including lunch. They have two good paintings by Hieronymus Bosch: Christ Carrying the Cross and St Jerome in Prayer. I especially liked the St Jerome, aka Hieronymus. And there were two amazing paintings by Maarten van Heemskerck: a Man of Sorrows and a Calvary. The hand of Jesus in the Man of Sorrows was partly covered by the robe and it is marvelous:

His abs are pretty good too. There was also a fine Man of Sorrows by a follower of the Master of Flémalle. The website gives the creator as Entourage of the Master of Flémalle but be warned that the illustration there doesn't get the sparkle of the painting (duh, I'm surprised?).

So after being in the museum for four hours, I decided I'd just eat lunch at Mub'Art, the museum brasserie which looked kind of expensive. Why do I do this to myself when I'm traveling in Europe by myself? Rather than just going into a restaurant that looks good, I walk around and around and pass on things because there's no one there, or the prices look high, or I cannot decipher the menu. As I was eating lunch and reading Carsick by John Waters, he quoted Nora Ephron as noting that you should always overtip because it's just a few dollars. I need to remind myself that the main difference between a nice meal and a sandwich or slice is usually pleasure.

found the art nouveau building on my first day in Ghent

Some years ago when I was in Ghent, I saw this building and fell in love. I told my NYU friend and colleague Andrew Lee about seeing this building and he knew about the building because it was built as the festivities hall of a workers' cooperative. The Vooruit building has been a cultural arts center since 1982 and Open Monuments Day is on the 14th. I am back in Ghent and will actually be here on the 14th.

I am still in the haze of an overnight flight, jetlag, arriving too early to get into the room, too little sleep, inappropriate eating but .... I am in Ghent again and noticed the Vooruit building as I walked from the train station to the hotel. I left my bag at the Hotel Erasmus and went to find Den Hoek Af (at the corner) which the hotelier recommended. Basically a coffee house but the organic yogurt and muesli with orange juice and coffee fit the bill.

I looked at the guide book as I ate and noted that the Ghent University Library is by Henry van de Velde and is under renovation and was just a few blocks from the coffee shop. On the way there, I found the Dagblat Vooruit editorial office building:

It was designed by Fernand Brunfaut (1886-1972) in 1930. On to the university library where most of the building is closed because of the renovation. There are pictures and a model on the first floor, in exhibit cases. The pictures of the room at the top of the tower looks really marvelous but it is not currently open. They've painted "Outside of a dog man's best friend is a book, inside of a dog it's too dark to read" on the street in front of the library.

Meandering is a pretty good thing to do when you are in the jetlag haze but I've discovered my memory of the hazy sights is, well, hazy, so I'll go back around on this circuit.

As you know if you've been to this blog before, I don't post too often. Johanna even told me she enjoyed my posts but was rather glad that I didn't post too often. The next couple weeks may drive you crazy then as I think I'll use this blog to post on my Belgium trip rather than doing a separate one as we did for Sicily in March 2013.

jihad or crusade

If you were a young person and the path to dropping out of school and drugs seemed more attractive or popular than studying and going to college, if you were a young person of color or a punk and the cops harassed you if you stood around on the street corner, if you were a young person who did not find much support in Christianity, might you be tempted to convert to Islam? If you lived in a society that glorified guns and soldiers and vilified terrorists and immigrants, if you lived in a country that gave early boarding privilege to uniformed servicemen and women, might you be tempted to join a military adventure? Today's New York Times has a profile of two young men from Minnesota, one white and one black, who became jihadists. One, the white guy, went to Somalia and died there in 2009. The other joined ISIS and died this year in Iraq.

If you cannot imagine that, think back a thousand years. The local priest or nobleman is calling on people to join a crusade and rid the Promised Land of the infidel.

Work for peace and justice. Another article on the front page of today's paper was about Al Fawwar, a Palestinian camp in the West Bank, where architect Sandi Hilal and local residents have created a public square. The camps were opened as temporary settlements but have persisted for generations. Social public spaces are important, especially for women in the Middle East, even if they challenge ideas about permanence. Interacting with others in ordinary ways is the foundation of a diverse and peaceful society.

Highclere or bust

Driving home from Rochester along Route 15 almost to East Avon, probably under the influence of Downton Abbey, I noticed this drive leading to a break in the trees and presumably leading to a French château or English country house:

Or not. It was just a McMansion:

Sigh.

but with more precision, dear sir, do not go too fast

Sunday, 2 March [1919]
Dine with Princess Soutzo at the Ritz -- a swell affair ... Marcel Proust and Abel Bonnard ... there as well. Proust is white, unshaven, grubby, slip-faced. He puts his fur coat on afterwards and sits hunched there in white kid gloves. Two cups of black coffee he has, with chunks of sugar. yet in his talk there is no affectation. He asks no questions. Will I please tell him how the committees work? I say: 'Well, we generally meet at 10.0, there are secretaries behind ...' 'Mais non, mais non, you are going too fast. Start anew. You take a car to the delegation. You get out at the Quai d'Orsay. You walk up the steps. You enter the Great Hall. And then? With more precision, dear sir, more precision.' So I tell him everything. The sham cordiality of it all: the handshakes: the maps: the rustle of paper: the tea in the next room: the macaroons. He listens enthralled, interrupting from time to time. 'But with more precision, dear sir, do not go too fast.'

This is part of Harold Nicolson's diary from the negotiations at Versailles at the end of World War I, quoted in In Europe: travels through the twentieth century by Geert Mak (page 127). Nicolson's recounting of his diplomatic experience is heartbreaking, especially in light of the futility of war. He continues with talk of the inevitability of more conflict because of the terms forced upon the Germans.

As horrible as the thoughts are of the futility of the war and negotiations, I cannot help but be thrilled by the precision that Proust wants, the same care that goes into descriptions in In search of lost time.

MoreMostArts

Don't want to get boring but the MostArts Festival just gets more wonderful every day. Today's lunchtime concert included the Poulenc Sextet for Piano and Wind Quintet (opus 100, for 100% fine!). New music to me, excitingly played. Tomorrow, as well as the evening gala concert, there's a Roman glass demonstration at the studio of Angus Powers, up the hill, just past the farm. And raku demonstration too.

If you happened to land on this post first, the previous post here was an introduction to the MostArts Festival happening this week in Alfred.

MostArts

This week has been the inaugural MostArts Festival: summer music & art. There have been evening concerts and noontime hour-long "Sound Bites" all week. I don't think I realized how much I'd been missing hearing live music. Today's noontime "Sound Bite" included Piano Trio Number 2 by Dimitri Shostakovich. I have a recording of piano trios 1 and 2 by the Oslo Trio and it's one of my favorite CDs but I don't think I've ever heard Number 2 live. I was thrilled.

As the trio (piano, violin, cello) progressed, I noticed that a student with whom I've had a number of interesting conversations got up and left. I ran into him as I walked home and he said he was viscerally disturbed by the music and had to leave. Each to his own, and I just responded that the visceral reaction showed he was alive.

The noontime chamber concerts have been my favorite part of the festival, with a few works each day by a variety of composers. The musicians are from around North America and vary quite a bit in age. There's a clarinetist -- Camila Barrientos Ossio -- that I love. She plays beautifully and it is interesting to watch her move to the music. She was part of an ensemble that played the Mozart Clarinet Quintet in yesterday's Sound Bite.

Also as I was walking home, one of the pianists that is judging the young pianist competition (Anthony Pattin) was remarking to a local couple that he's been pleased with the festival so far and that chamber music festivals of this quality are not common. He predicted that they'd be lining up next year. I sure hope that Lisa Lantz, the responsible music professor at Alfred University, can pull it off again.

left and right, peace and justice

When we were kids, my grandmother was married to a great man, her second husband after my birth grandfather had died the same year my dad was born. Ahva J.C. Bond was the dean of the Seventh-Day Baptist School of Theology at Alfred University. He had six daughters with his first wife and they and their families just seemed way too wonderful for words. My sisters, brother, and I always felt we were a little normal for such a fine clan. Though I've never met some of those step-cousins and haven't seen many of them in recent years, I still hold them collectively in high esteem and some are Facebook friends. The Facebook feed of one of them just indicated that he'd commented on a Conservative Tribune post that was captioned:

A powerful congressman just came out and said that ALL Americans need to unite against Obama, no matter what party. This needs to be spread everywhere, because he's absolutely right. It's about defending liberty from Obama. Period.

And another that was captioned:

BREAKING: This is fantastic... American citizens are rising up against Obama, turning back buses filled with the illegals he's deliberately shipping all over the country. Good. We the People will NOT be silent while Obama destroys our border and our sovereignty. We support these patriots 100%. Do you support citizens defending the border?

Me, I just don't get it. I'd open the borders. I have no problem with Executive Orders on matters that the Congress won't even talk about in a reasonable, legislative way. And this morning, I watched President Obama's video of his meeting with LGBT folks for Gay Pride Month. He was smart, personable. I still cannot quite believe that we have a smart president who is a man of color.

Perhaps the screed from the Conservative Tribune turns my stomach and makes me weep like the stuff from Impeach Bush Now or Hillary in 2016 does for folks who follow and agree with the Conservative Tribune material. I don't always agree with President Obama but I'm fundamentally proud of him as our president.

all things pencil

When I was at the Amon Carter, archivist Paula Stewart and I loved exchanging pencils from our travels. She had picked up the habit from the photography department where she worked before her years as archivist. My pencil-philia extends to sharpeners, erasers, pens, and other related objects. Even art ....

Vija Celmins

Pencil, 1966

(on view at Brooklyn Museum)

or cartoons ....

Hankin, in The New Yorker, May 27, 2014

And of course everything relates back to cataloging. When I was checking for the title of the Vija Celmins work which I saw at the Brooklyn Museum several years ago, I happened on an article that also included her Flying Fortress. Wouldn't you know that yesterday I submitted a SACO proposal for "Fighter planes in art" for the Erik van der Weijde book I was doing for MoMA.