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I went to DC for a few days…

and got back on Monday. While I was there Sarah and I went to the Corcoran (William Eggleston—I missed it at the Whitney), the Hirschhorn, the National Gallery and the Phillips. I am not really sure what to say about it all. A lot of what I saw and liked were the things I see every time. This is in no way a bad thing, but does not necessitate a posting. Seeing the great Vermeers, Cezannes, etc is always a happy day. Two of the museums had shows based around the body, and both were of mild interest and value. I think the two things that engaged me most on this trip were:

1. The exhibition by Spanish painter Luis Meléndez at the National Gallery. I liked the degree to which he rendered the items in his still lives, and as one might expect of me, I enjoyed the darker colored compositions. The image above was probably my favorite in his exhibition.

2. The Eggleston show was solid. I don’t know if it offered any surprises, except the one I am going to mention. I have seen most of the work before in some form either prints or books. And in the case of the films I have seen some excerpts—enough to glean what they are. What I found of interest was this.

It was pointed out by the docent leading tour doing something Sarah dislikes (one of Sarah’s pet peeves is tour leaders that just spew facts off their list and not asked the tourees (i guess tourist is the word i should use but this implies, at least to me, being subjected to something rather engaged in it)) instead of asking what the tourist like or think somethings is—one of her jobs at the Brooklyn Museum was to lead special tours. But if i had not overheard the tour and the docent had not been going down her list, I might not have looked at it twice as it is very similar to the well known image.

Eggleston has said he doesn’t take two pictures of the same subject. In the exhibition there is an example of this not always being the case. It was nice to see an exception. The image in question is part of the Los Alamos series and a variation on the Image above. I couldn’t find the variation online which was an 8X10 print, and is mostly like not too well documented though it may be in the catalog for the show.