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Werner Herzog and Norton Simon (unrelated)

Werner Herzog
While painting last night, I watched but mostly listened to The Grand via netflix instant play. Directed by Zak Penn, who also did Incident at Loch Ness (again with Herzog—the director’s et al. commentary is priceless), the film was done in a documentary style is about some fictional poker player during a tournament. In this film Herzog plays “the German.” His lines were almost out of My Best Fiend. I might listen to it again while I work tonight. Overall, not such a good movie despite a good cast. I mean Phil Hellmuth (who was in the movie) on tilt or Mike ‘the Mouth’ Matusow on tilt or a buddy pic of them talking about all the people who have sucked out on the river with a gut shot straight or how many times they have lost with Ace-Ace or Ace-King would be more entertaining—save Herzog’s performance.

Norton Simon
Today amongst my errands, I went to the Norton Simon Museum. They put up some different paintings—I was going to say new, but the most recent one is probably 100 years old. They also moved some painting around. On the good side, they moved an oil on paper still life by Cezanne to the adjacent wall. The light is a little different—seemed like a less lit wall—and it looks so much more intense. On the bad side, they replaced the Pieter Claesz still life with some landscape. The Museum has a Berkeley landscape by Richard Diebenkorn (the image above). I was hoping it would be up, although I like his Bottles painting which is on view very much, the landscape wasn’t.

Me
On my painting efforts, nearly there. I’ll be updating my artist’s homepage next week.