Here’s one thing that never ceases to amuse me:
Burnt orange street signs with little longhorn logos,
because how else would you know that you’ve hit the UT campus?
The Blanton Museum of Art is a part of UT; their weekday hours are somewhat limited (10am-5pm) and I don’t usually choose to venture downtown on the weekends if I can help it, but on the third Thursday of the month they stay open until 9pm. Also, every Thursday is free admission, and I plan to take greater advantage of that fact because the art museum is awesome.
It’s even more fun with friends who are willing to be giggly/wildly irreverent with you. I mean, not that my friends would ever do that. Just…hypothetically.
“Wow, that is one tubby horse.”
“Right? He kinda looks like a cow.”
“Wait, is that a dinosaur behind him?!”
*snort*
“It’s an ostrich.”
“Same thing.”
Through September, Blanton’s special exhibition is In the Company of Cats and Dogs: “a multifaceted look at our relationship with felines and canines through the ages.”
In the shadows of the foliage
The black cat’s eyes
Golden, ferocious
- Kawabata Bosha [artist: Shoda Koho]
This is a beautiful piece, no?
The accompanying text is even better:
That wanton girl.
Outside the special exhibition hall was a set of TV screens playing various loops of cat videos, and we stood as a part of an ever-growing crowd just staring and “awww”-ing and laughing at cat videos. I repeat: we went to an art museum and had a collective experience with YouTube videos.
Art is awesome.
The museum itself is not especially large, but it does have an impressively diverse collection representing many different periods and styles. This was the part where I realized that our reconnaissance mission to get a feel for the place was not nearly sufficient enough to appreciate everything within it. I could (and would like to) spend hours and hours more here.
If I were asked to pick a favorite part of the museum, sculptures would come in at a close second.
But first place would go to modern art.
I don’t think I can fully express the upswing of emotions that modern art gives me. I could spent hours up close studying the light in a Rembrandt or appreciating the minute hatch marks in a DΓΌrer – classical painting, even the Impressionist pieces, are very fascinating to me on a technical level: I want to know how they came into being.
But modern art hits me right in the gut: it transcends the cognitive and goes right to the visceral. I want to stand back, see it as a whole, and let the emotion of it wash right over me. I bounced around this room like a kid in a candy store, I guess is what I’m saying. I wanted to see it ALL and I wanted to see it ALL AT ONCE. (Did I mention that I want to go back? Because I think I could spend a whole day just in this room.)
NO BUT SERIOUSLY I LOVE THIS
SO. MUCH.
Though I won’t say that I always…get it.
I still love every little bit of it.
My life is about to get very, very busy with traveling and special events and general early-autumn-into-winter busyness…but if I can get a few hours away again then I would really like to come back here.
And just sit for a few hours.
Because art is awesome.