Sweet Bird of Youth

It's not every night you admit your days on the back of a motorcycle wearing nothing but cutoffs, a tube top and flip flops.

I may forever be trying to educate myself to compensate for that kind of youthful stupidity.

In the first of a two-night art nerd-athon, I went to the annual Mellon lecture at VMFA.

Either the number of art nerds is increasing or the topic was hot, because the lecture sold out.

Degas' "Little Dancer Aged Fourteen" was what got everybody going.

Lecturer Richard Kendall was the well-spoken Englishman who had gone so far as to cut up copies of Degas' preparatory drawings for the sculpture in order to figure out the artist's thought process.

For Degas, it was all about "legs that didn't move" (as in the artist moved around the model) and a bold new sculptural realism that had some critics crying, "Ugly!"

Kendall's sense of humor showed in remarks like, "Imagine this when you're practicing ballet in your bedroom tonight," when showing us a sketch of dancers' feet positions.

Like practicing ballet in my bedroom is what I'd want to be doing there at night?

The lecture ended with Kendall thanking the audience and all at once the lights came on.

You don't get to ask questions at a Mellon lecture. Just ask any art nerd.

Which was fine because I had a friend to meet for dinner and, as it was, my stomach had growled throughout the lecture.

I walked into the Magpie to find a decent crowd at the small bar. Walking the length of it, I took a seat near the end.

Only then did the friend I was meeting wave and say, "Hi, Karen" from his perch at the other end of the bar.

Yes, he saw me walk right by him and let me do it for his personal enjoyment.

Once I got a glass of Arido Malbec, he asked me what I'd been up to.

I mentioned how much I'd enjoyed Bootleg Shakespeare the other night, knowing that owner Tiffany is a big theater fan.

Next thing I knew, the guy sitting on the other side of me joined in, recalling his bootleg experience two years ago.

You never know when bar talk will turn into a theater roundtable.

The Magpie had just switched to their new Fall menu, so there were some tempting new choices like Rappahannock River Oysters 5 Ways.

But after last night's bi-valve extravaganza, I was moving more in the land direction tonight.

Fried butternut squash gnocchi with smoked Gouda and apple sauce was an interesting take on autumn flavors. The flavors of the sauce nicely complemented the crispy fried gnocchi.

Braised beef cheek in lobster broth with charred scallions and baby carrots was listed as a small plate, but easily made a meal.

The cheek was fork-tender and the richness of the broth elevated the veggies to something out of the ordinary.

I feel certain even young veggie haters would change their mind about clearing their plates if they were served them in lobster broth.

Since we'd arrived later, when the kitchen closed, we eventually had Chef Owen regaling us with stories of his childhood hunting trips.

There were only three rules on the trips. You had to be at least ten years old, no females, and no gambling (too many guns and too much alcohol to risk it).

In his family, it was a rite of passage to learn to cut up what you killed so at age eleven he found himself being told to slice open the deer he'd shot.

He laughed telling us about how he cried, not because of having to slice an animal open, but because he was throwing up so much at having to do it.

There's a visual most eleven-year olds will never have.

Even so, he said he wouldn't change a thing about his childhood. Including zipping his younger brother into a sleeping bag and throwing him down the stairs.

My friend shared that he told his younger brother that Crisco was icing and the poor kid took a huge bite. Owen was impressed with my friend's big brother brilliance.

It was one of those rare times that I was just grateful I grew up with five sisters.

Owen remembered that the stack of Playboy magazines at the hunting lodge was taller than the toilet they sat next to.

Heady stuff for a boy, no doubt.

I remember my father's stacks of Playboys in a bin in our basement. We girls didn't consider them particularly heady.

Sister #3 had the right idea, though. She sold a dozen or so of them to boys in the neighborhood, sure my father would never notice their absence among so many back issues.

She wouldn't have made a dime if we'd had brothers.

And I certainly wouldn't have let any brother of mine tell me how stupid I was for wearing so little on the back of a motorcycle.

Ah, youth.

I Love It When You Hang 'Em High

How lame was I today?

I got a hankering to spend a free afternoon admiring art and before I knew what I was doing, I was online checking on what the current exhibits at the Muscarelle and UVA Museum were.

WTF?

Despite not one, but two visits of late to the recently reopened VMFA, it wasn't my default first thought.

Sorry, guys, but you were closed a long time, so perhaps you can understand how such a thing could happen.

I do so enjoy being able to enter the museum through the Boulevard entrance and it's how I hope every first time visitor experiences the new VMFA; personally, you couldn't pay me to go back to being a backdoor patron.

In a recent conversation with the President of the VA Historical Society, I shared my longing for them to also return to a Boulevard orientation.

A grand street is the way to enter grand spaces, if you ask me (and no one did).

I decided to do it European-style this afternoon, so I'm taking a mistress.


Mais non!

With so many more objects on display, I prefer to concentrate on one area at each visit.

I was leaning European today, in large part because I began by coming through the Tapestry Hall which put me squarely in the 18th century gallery, which focuses on the age of Reason and the Enlightenment.

I'm intrigued by how fascinated the Romantic era was with all things scientific (me, I'm all about the romance, but the science not so much).

But what I loved most about this gallery is that it's hung salon-style and while some people find it chaotic or a challenge to their neck muscles, I find it especially appropriate for paintings that would have been originally hung that way.

The only downside in this particular room was that it's narrow and a through-way, so in places it was challenging to get enough distance to properly admire some of the higher-hung pieces.

Still, I applaud the choice to do so and wish more of the galleries were hung like this.

Next up were the British Sporting Art galleries, also known as Paul Mellon's pride and joy.

I like these galleries for the glimpses they provide of a way of life I'll never know.

And as a former beagle owner, I have no problem looking at depictions of hordes of hounds (none as cute as mine was, but that's neither here nor there). I found the elaborate pictures of hunting scenes fascinating for their minute detail.

Which led me to a complaint with these galleries; only one of them had benches provided for distance viewing.

The center gallery had four benches and only one was worth the space it was taking up.

It faced a large hunting scene and offered the perfect place from which to take in the extensive action of the hunting party.

Two of the benches faced the archways between galleries and the fourth faced a storage door.

Where is the logic there?

There were four pieces of sporting sculpture on pedestals in the room and with some minor adjusting, the benches and sculpture could have been rearranged, resulting in a far more functiona, not to mention better viewing space.

Sure, some people use the benches to simply take a load off, but I am certainly not the only one who uses them for a more advantageous viewing point. If there's a VMFA suggestion box, that's going in it.

I finished in the 19th and 20th Century Painting and Sculpture in France galleries, enjoying a healthy dose of Corot, Pisarro and the "king of the skies" Boudin (and not to repeat myself, but Boudin so often worked on such a small scale that he's a natural for being hung salon-style).

The art progressed back into the Impressionists, although clearly a good part of that collection is still not on view; I know that there are at least two more European galleries slated to open in 2011.

The Degas gallery off to the side was a treasure trove of the artist's sculpture, discovered after his death for the most part.

It's challenging to look at it with modern eyes and know how poorly it was received for its "ugly realism" at the time.

The inclusion of a few of his paintings in a space largely devoted to three dimensional work was a good way to put his down-low sculpture work in the context of his well-known painting efforts.

By then it was closing time and I heard one guard tell another that now they just needed to get "all these people outta here so we can go."

I completely understood.

And don't you just know that I made my exit stage right from the Boulevard door?