Let's call it an Art Tasting Menu that lasted a weekend.
Amuse bouche
"One Year: 1968, an American Odyssey" at the National Portrait Gallery
This delightful starter, a small, one-room exhibition, whetted our appetite for what was ahead by featuring a psychedelic anti-war poster, a photo of RFK sharing a crust of bread with Cesar Chavez after his hunger strike ended, plus Hendrix, the Dead and Joan Didion in bell-bottoms leaning nonchalantly against a Corvette. So much happened that year.
Bonus: Learning that Mr. Wright once had a crush on Peggy Fleming.
Soup course
Despite lines at both, the portraits of Barrack and Michelle Obama were must-sees. The magnificence of Michelle's skin tones in Amy Sherald's portrait were as striking as the meaning-laden fanciful flower background of Kehinde Wiley's image of her husband.
Downside: Most people seemed to be there for the selfie, with little time spent looking at the portraits.
First course
"Eye to I: Self Portraits from 1900 to Today" at the National Portrait Gallery
With 75 pieces, this was a meaty look at how American artists chose to portray themselves. Forget selfies, these were drawings, photographs and even a life-size bronze tomb sculpture of artists such as Elaine de Kooning, Edward Hopper and Diego Rivera. I have no doubt that a young Andy Warhol adored the way he looked in his staged photograph.
Bonus: A chance to see how someone sees him or herself may be the most revealing glimpse possible into their state of mind.
Second course
"Flickering Treasures: Rediscovering Baltimore's Forgotten Movie Theaters" at the National Building Museum
As much time as I spend at the Byrd Theater, how could I not be seduced by an exhibit about a city that, in its heyday, had 240 movie palaces? Vintage photographs of theaters such as the Apollo, the State and the Schanze - the latter a white theater in a black neighborhood, known for hosting Yiddish performers - accompanied photographer Amy Davis' images of the boarded up, renovated and demolished buildings today. As much an architectural exhibit as an oral history project, it also documented social segregation.
Bonus: Mr. Wright giving me the building's origins as the U.S. Pension Building, right down to the worn, sloped stairs built to be hosed down easily from any blood spilled by pensioners there on business.
Third course
"Gordon Parks: The New Tide, Early Work 1940-50" at the National Gallery of Art
Although Lady G and I had sort of seen the Parks exhibit at the end of November, we'd been so enthralled with "Corot: Women" that we hadn't allowed enough time to fully take in the 150 pieces in this exhibit. For the second time, I left the National Gallery marveling at how adept Parks was right out of the gate. The man had no learning curve when it came to photography. Talk about born ready.
Bonus: After a stop for bagels, we arrived 10 minutes before the museum opened at 11 to find a line forming. But once inside, the lack of crowds was startling. Had people been scared away by the government shutdown? Dunno, but it sure made for spacious gallery walking.
Dessert
"Japan Modern: Prints in the Age of Photography" at the Freer Sackler Galleries
After a stroll through the Enid Haupt Garden, we made our way downstairs to see the strikingly beautiful series of colored woodblock prints that looked nothing like woodblock prints. Most used ink and watercolor to transform the often heavy lines of a woodblock into something soft and colorful depicting the changing face - or remembered past - of late 19th to mid-20th century Japan. Like the shift from savory to sweet, the series of images was a welcome finale to a feast of art.
Bonus: The prints from the 1960s showed the influence of the cultural revolution taking place in the Western world, more abstract and definitely less traditional.
With so much art to dine on, meals had to be fitted in around gallery time, but we managed a four hour session at Cuba Libre's bar - killer black bean soup, crab guacamole with plantain chips, jardin salad and crab fritters - when we arrived in late afternoon, sipped through multiple glasses of a Portuguese white blend and left long after dark.
Even better was an extended late brunch at Jaleo where the hostess, unbidden, led us to the back-most table and shared that it was the best seat in the house. Next to a window with a view of bustling F Street and away from the masses, we'd landed in our own little private corner where our server confirmed that the crowds had dropped off precipitously in the past few days.
Every time I go to Jaleo, I discover a new favorite and today's was the flauta de tortilla de patatas, a long, crusty roll spread with chopped fresh tomato and a Spanish omelet with potatoes and onion as its centerpiece. Yum.
How did I not know that omelets belonged on sandwiches before now?
Anyone who thinks they don't like spinach needs to try Jaleo's version done with raisins, apples and pine nuts and get back to me on that. Dragon breath ensued after downing spicy garlic shrimp while ensuring that no one else was getting anywhere near us, but as long as you have two garlic breaths, the rest don't matter.
Of note this weekend was that there had been no dessert, but that was corrected this afternoon with chocolate custard rolled in chocolate cookie crumbs. It sat under a crown of the thinnest of bread slices, which had been caramelized, and near a scoop of brioche ice cream resting on more cookie crumbs. Divine and much appreciated.
In dessert, as in life, sometimes you do without until you find exactly what you need. Or want. Cookie crumbs? They're just a bonus.
Showing posts with label national portrait gallery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label national portrait gallery. Show all posts
Sunday, December 30, 2018
Tuesday, September 20, 2016
Here I Go Again
I'll just be blunt about it: without the food angle, there'd have been no art.
My weekend away was set in motion two days after returning from France, when an email arrived July 12th notifying me of another in the Smithsonian's culinary lecture series (so far the series had rewarded me with evenings listening to Anthony Bordain and Ruth Reichl), this one called "Mid-Atlantic Cuisine on the Rise."
As a life-long resident of the mid-Atlantic (where every grade school child had to study the history and bounty of the Chesapeake Bay), my interest was piqued not only by the topic but by the chefs discussing it: Spike Gjerde of Woodberry Kitchen (where I'd enjoyed a lovely meal a year and a half ago) and Jeremiah Langhorne of the Dabney (where I haven't eaten, but will).
So, with a primary stated purpose of learning - regional focus! culinary history! chef humor! - I could then concoct a well-rounded couple of days in support of my food curiosity and slide in a little art as long as I was in the neighborhood.
Or so I told myself as I set out to fill up 48 hours with all tomorrow's fun.
Stop #1 for lunch was brasserie Le Diplomat, because an outside table on a sunny afternoon is the best kind of welcome back to my hometown, even when spoiled kids and incompetent parents are just on the other side of an open window.
That the meal involved an exquisite warm shrimp salad with lemon buerre blanc and mesclun that I will surely dream about in days to come only added to the welcome back vibe.
Dinner was a dream, set at Kinship, which was clearly styled by a designer with an eye for subtlety and style and lit with hanging pendant lights and recessed lights so as to be completely flattering to my fair sex, no matter her age.
But I'd have eaten a torchon of white mushrooms in the dark, so fabulously conceived was this dish, but then I'd have missed the gorgeous purple tones of huckleberry gastrique on which it sat next to baby beet and wild mushroom salad.
Never - at least in my experience - have mushrooms tasted so much like duck liver.
Green and white striped tzatziki terrine of grilled octopus with dill-lemon vinaigrette was far lighter in flavor and rosy yellowfin tuna tataki felt very regional with spring onion and butter pickle salad with shiso tempura for crunch over a chilled bowl of dashi - a kind of Japanese stock - gelee to tie all the flavors together.
Agreeing with the woman at the table next door who had raved about it, I only managed to score a bite of pan-seared lamb ribeye with crispy eggplant, patty pan squash and green tomato chutney, but it was a mighty fine bite.
Our server scored high points for his relaxed attitude, patience and humor (when asked if he had a spiel about the menu, he said yes, "But I'll give you the colloquial version") as he came and went throughout the night, appearing out of nowhere with exactly what we needed before we even asked for it.
Full or not, I wasn't leaving Kinship without dessert, savoring whipped chocolate nougat with every bite, but probably most impressed with the one-two punch of whipped creme fraiche under a drizzle of espresso caramel, although the incredible smoothness of chocolate sorbet didn't hurt, either.
After a meal like that, there's not much more you can do beyond sleep for ten and a half hours and get up and go see some art in the pouring rain.
At the National Portrait Gallery,"In the Groove: Jazz Portraits by Herman Leonard" delivered stunning black and white photographs from the '40s through the '60s of iconic musicians.
A young Quincy Jones in a sporty striped shirt, pencil in hand, sheet music spread out in front of him, appears to have been caught mid-studio session. A still life of Lester Young includes all the sax player's essentials - his instrument case, his porkpie hat, sheet music and his lit cigarette atop an empty Coke bottle - suggesting that he's just momentarily stepped away.
At the Smithsonian American Art Museum, "Harlem Heroes: Photographs by Carl van Vechten" provided a sepia-toned history lesson of handmade gravure prints from a series of significant black figures of the Harlem Renaissance such as James Baldwin, Langston Hughes and Richmond's own Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, strikingly shot shirtless.
It's not that art is exhausting or anything, but lunch necessarily followed at breezy, blue and fish-focused Drift on 7th, with a voluble server who admitted that on this soggy afternoon, he wanted nothing more than to be home, curled up with his dog.
Instead, he went out of his way to ensure that we enjoyed our lunch of tuna tartare with avocado and crispy shallots, fish tacos and fish and chips along with the palest of pink Provence Roses to wash it all down, but he was still probably glad when we finally moved on so he and the pup could be reunited for a rainy day nap.
Bar Pillar had barely opened its doors when we stopped by for a pre-lecture glass of bubbly before high-tailing it to the main event, the mid-Atlantic cuisine lecture.
Washington Post food section editor Joe Yonan moderated Spike and Jeremiah's discussion of what mid-Atlantic cuisine is - a combination of what grows here, how the local people have used those ingredients for centuries and, duh, the Chesapeake Bay - so we're talking oysters, crabs, rockfish, country ham, apple butter, sorghum, lima beans and peanuts.
And corn, of course, since we made full use of what the Native Americans taught us about growing and cooking corn after stealing their land.
Both chefs were wildly enthusiastic about their insistence on only using ingredients from the collection of eco-systems located within 150-200 miles of their restaurants.
Unfortunately, that local sourcing didn't extend to the wine glass and both admitted to a huge carbon footprint when it came to their wine lists.
For shame, gentlemen, although Spike did allow as how Virginia wine has made huge strides since his first 1991 restaurant.
On the food front, he laughed about how "older people love their shad roe" but how few today would embrace terrapin or canvasback duck on a menu.
Talking about the over-abundance of eel and snakefish and trying to find uses for it, he said that even commercial fishermen are reluctant. "They'll say, I don't know why you'd want to eat that!" he laughed before Jeremiah called salmon "the bane of my existence. I hate having to have salmon on my menu!"
It's a sentiment I share.
Both showed their testosterone by rhapsodizing about working with fire - Spike uses a wood-fired oven, Jeremiah a wood-fired grill to cook everything - which inevitably brought us back around to the evening's theme: "It all comes back to pizza."
What man doesn't agree with that?
As for the female vote, my favorite quote of the evening came from Spike and was heavily seconded by Jeremiah. "Chefs learn by failing." Can I get an amen on that?
Since we were already on the Mall, we headed up to Barrack's Row and EatBar for dinner, a place where an entire wall is covered with thousands of cassette tapes in boxes and represent the gamut when it comes to music. As in Oingo Boingo to White Snake, with a list of juke box album offerings on the back of the menu.
Music and food, my kind of place.
Argyle Brut paired perfectly with Trinidadian chicken wings, batter-coated and pulling off spicy and sweet at the same time, while the most obscene award went to ham fries, which combined potatoes, ham, chili paste and balsamic-glazed pearl onions for a rib-sticking indulgence that sent me straight to the tomato, corn and winter savory salad with buttermilk dressing in penance.
A fair amount of my attention went to the juke box (why not, it required no cash outlay?) where I played everything from the Velvet Underground's "All Tomorrow's Parties" to Paul Westerburg's "Dyslexic Heart," with a somewhat protracted tangent about who produced Bowie's "Modern Love" (Nile Rodgers) after I played that song.
And why? Because my food curiosity is matched only by my music curiosity, which is roughly matched by my art curiosity.
Wait, did I mention the Spanish singer/guitarist and drummer/percussionist we randomly caught at Rumba Cafe? It wasn't planned, but there's always time for for some things. I can sleep in Richmond.
Consider that the colloquial version of the story and I'm sticking to it.
My weekend away was set in motion two days after returning from France, when an email arrived July 12th notifying me of another in the Smithsonian's culinary lecture series (so far the series had rewarded me with evenings listening to Anthony Bordain and Ruth Reichl), this one called "Mid-Atlantic Cuisine on the Rise."
As a life-long resident of the mid-Atlantic (where every grade school child had to study the history and bounty of the Chesapeake Bay), my interest was piqued not only by the topic but by the chefs discussing it: Spike Gjerde of Woodberry Kitchen (where I'd enjoyed a lovely meal a year and a half ago) and Jeremiah Langhorne of the Dabney (where I haven't eaten, but will).
So, with a primary stated purpose of learning - regional focus! culinary history! chef humor! - I could then concoct a well-rounded couple of days in support of my food curiosity and slide in a little art as long as I was in the neighborhood.
Or so I told myself as I set out to fill up 48 hours with all tomorrow's fun.
Stop #1 for lunch was brasserie Le Diplomat, because an outside table on a sunny afternoon is the best kind of welcome back to my hometown, even when spoiled kids and incompetent parents are just on the other side of an open window.
That the meal involved an exquisite warm shrimp salad with lemon buerre blanc and mesclun that I will surely dream about in days to come only added to the welcome back vibe.
Dinner was a dream, set at Kinship, which was clearly styled by a designer with an eye for subtlety and style and lit with hanging pendant lights and recessed lights so as to be completely flattering to my fair sex, no matter her age.
But I'd have eaten a torchon of white mushrooms in the dark, so fabulously conceived was this dish, but then I'd have missed the gorgeous purple tones of huckleberry gastrique on which it sat next to baby beet and wild mushroom salad.
Never - at least in my experience - have mushrooms tasted so much like duck liver.
Green and white striped tzatziki terrine of grilled octopus with dill-lemon vinaigrette was far lighter in flavor and rosy yellowfin tuna tataki felt very regional with spring onion and butter pickle salad with shiso tempura for crunch over a chilled bowl of dashi - a kind of Japanese stock - gelee to tie all the flavors together.
Agreeing with the woman at the table next door who had raved about it, I only managed to score a bite of pan-seared lamb ribeye with crispy eggplant, patty pan squash and green tomato chutney, but it was a mighty fine bite.
Our server scored high points for his relaxed attitude, patience and humor (when asked if he had a spiel about the menu, he said yes, "But I'll give you the colloquial version") as he came and went throughout the night, appearing out of nowhere with exactly what we needed before we even asked for it.
Full or not, I wasn't leaving Kinship without dessert, savoring whipped chocolate nougat with every bite, but probably most impressed with the one-two punch of whipped creme fraiche under a drizzle of espresso caramel, although the incredible smoothness of chocolate sorbet didn't hurt, either.
After a meal like that, there's not much more you can do beyond sleep for ten and a half hours and get up and go see some art in the pouring rain.
At the National Portrait Gallery,"In the Groove: Jazz Portraits by Herman Leonard" delivered stunning black and white photographs from the '40s through the '60s of iconic musicians.
A young Quincy Jones in a sporty striped shirt, pencil in hand, sheet music spread out in front of him, appears to have been caught mid-studio session. A still life of Lester Young includes all the sax player's essentials - his instrument case, his porkpie hat, sheet music and his lit cigarette atop an empty Coke bottle - suggesting that he's just momentarily stepped away.
At the Smithsonian American Art Museum, "Harlem Heroes: Photographs by Carl van Vechten" provided a sepia-toned history lesson of handmade gravure prints from a series of significant black figures of the Harlem Renaissance such as James Baldwin, Langston Hughes and Richmond's own Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, strikingly shot shirtless.
It's not that art is exhausting or anything, but lunch necessarily followed at breezy, blue and fish-focused Drift on 7th, with a voluble server who admitted that on this soggy afternoon, he wanted nothing more than to be home, curled up with his dog.
Instead, he went out of his way to ensure that we enjoyed our lunch of tuna tartare with avocado and crispy shallots, fish tacos and fish and chips along with the palest of pink Provence Roses to wash it all down, but he was still probably glad when we finally moved on so he and the pup could be reunited for a rainy day nap.
Bar Pillar had barely opened its doors when we stopped by for a pre-lecture glass of bubbly before high-tailing it to the main event, the mid-Atlantic cuisine lecture.
Washington Post food section editor Joe Yonan moderated Spike and Jeremiah's discussion of what mid-Atlantic cuisine is - a combination of what grows here, how the local people have used those ingredients for centuries and, duh, the Chesapeake Bay - so we're talking oysters, crabs, rockfish, country ham, apple butter, sorghum, lima beans and peanuts.
And corn, of course, since we made full use of what the Native Americans taught us about growing and cooking corn after stealing their land.
Both chefs were wildly enthusiastic about their insistence on only using ingredients from the collection of eco-systems located within 150-200 miles of their restaurants.
Unfortunately, that local sourcing didn't extend to the wine glass and both admitted to a huge carbon footprint when it came to their wine lists.
For shame, gentlemen, although Spike did allow as how Virginia wine has made huge strides since his first 1991 restaurant.
On the food front, he laughed about how "older people love their shad roe" but how few today would embrace terrapin or canvasback duck on a menu.
Talking about the over-abundance of eel and snakefish and trying to find uses for it, he said that even commercial fishermen are reluctant. "They'll say, I don't know why you'd want to eat that!" he laughed before Jeremiah called salmon "the bane of my existence. I hate having to have salmon on my menu!"
It's a sentiment I share.
Both showed their testosterone by rhapsodizing about working with fire - Spike uses a wood-fired oven, Jeremiah a wood-fired grill to cook everything - which inevitably brought us back around to the evening's theme: "It all comes back to pizza."
What man doesn't agree with that?
As for the female vote, my favorite quote of the evening came from Spike and was heavily seconded by Jeremiah. "Chefs learn by failing." Can I get an amen on that?
Since we were already on the Mall, we headed up to Barrack's Row and EatBar for dinner, a place where an entire wall is covered with thousands of cassette tapes in boxes and represent the gamut when it comes to music. As in Oingo Boingo to White Snake, with a list of juke box album offerings on the back of the menu.
Music and food, my kind of place.
Argyle Brut paired perfectly with Trinidadian chicken wings, batter-coated and pulling off spicy and sweet at the same time, while the most obscene award went to ham fries, which combined potatoes, ham, chili paste and balsamic-glazed pearl onions for a rib-sticking indulgence that sent me straight to the tomato, corn and winter savory salad with buttermilk dressing in penance.
A fair amount of my attention went to the juke box (why not, it required no cash outlay?) where I played everything from the Velvet Underground's "All Tomorrow's Parties" to Paul Westerburg's "Dyslexic Heart," with a somewhat protracted tangent about who produced Bowie's "Modern Love" (Nile Rodgers) after I played that song.
And why? Because my food curiosity is matched only by my music curiosity, which is roughly matched by my art curiosity.
Wait, did I mention the Spanish singer/guitarist and drummer/percussionist we randomly caught at Rumba Cafe? It wasn't planned, but there's always time for for some things. I can sleep in Richmond.
Consider that the colloquial version of the story and I'm sticking to it.
Wednesday, December 9, 2015
Mele Kalikimaka in a Tiki Bowl for Two
Today's greatest regret: I missed Vermeer's "Woman in Blue Reading a Letter" by eight days.
Compensation, if not full restitution, came partially courtesy of "Wonder," the Renwick's opening exhibition after a two-year renovation, a show ranging from Leo Villard's "Volume," an LED light installation that was really just a visual representation of binary code (making it more science than art, I thought) to Patrick Dougherty's fantastical willow structures to John Grade's "Middle Fork," a casting of a 150-year old tree that was then reconstructed using tiny blocks of cedar.
Mind blown and a mid-morning geography lesson with Maya Lin's "Folding the Chesapeake," a green glass marble installation that showed the contours of the bay and its tributaries across the floor of the gallery and up the pale green walls.
The Potomac, whoa.
Ogling the insect-patterned deep pink walls of "In the Midnight Garden" by Jennifer Angus, I overhear a woman say, "My brother lived in New Guinea and he always said I should come see the bugs and I never did."
Her loss, but now she and I both were experiencing them in patterns of flowers, skulls and arranged flitting around the room.
New Guinea, Malaysia and Thailand bugs. Bugs the size of mice. BIG bugs.
Leaving to go to the American Art Museum, I catch the strains of the only Bad Company song I truly enjoy and stop to take it in under the silvery sky I had already commented on during the drive up.
Give me silver, blue and gold
The color of the sky I'm told
My rainbow is overdue
Nothing could have pleased me more than seeing a dazzling photograph of Spike Lee as part of "Eye Pop: The Celebrity Gaze" exhibit. Why? Because while buying tickets for Lee's "Chi-Raq" recently with a friend, a discussion ensued with strangers about the notoriously topical director.
To my astonishment, the young black woman behind the counter was clueless. "So who is this Spike Lee? All y'all seem to talk like I should know him." When I insisted that she should indeed know about Spike Lee, a guy tried to make her feel better, saying the director hadn't done anything in a while. Does. Not. Matter.
I'm sorry, young lady, but you should know who Spike Lee is. Period.
Most obscure fact gleaned from "Eye Pop"? Kobe Bryant was named after the Japanese beef. Seriously.
My estrogen got a boost from "Elaine de Kooning: Portraits," from the many images of JFK for his official portrait to her artsy crowd (the Allen Ginsberg portrait was positively poetic) to the 1957 photograph at the Cedar Bar of her, Franz Kline and poet Frank O'Hara, all three of them looking so smart and sophisticated, as only denizens of NYC in the '50s could.
"Crosscurrents: Modern Art from the Sam Rose and Julie Walters Collection" delivered Hopper, O'Keefe, Thiebaud and Picasso, among many others, while the engrossing "Dark Fields of the Republic: Alexander Gardner Photographs 1859-1872" brought home familiar imagery, like the ruins of the Richmond/Petersburg bridge, the pilings of which I see regularly on my river walks.
Plus, of course, lots of photos of dead bodies.
But the war seemed far away in "Walt Whitman and His Party," a sepia-toned photograph showing Walt and his guy friends on the banks of a river during that time he came to Washington to see his brother and stayed to have an affair with a handsome young man. You know the one.
Curious about what Richmond might be offering in a few years come holiday time? A variation on Miracle on Seventh Street, most likely.
When last I visited, it had been a sherry and ham bar, but until Christmas Eve, it's a Christmas extravaganza, lorded over by a door guy in leopard leggings with a bowl of mint Hershey's kisses between his spotted thighs.
Inside, holiday decor and punk rock Christmas music reward patrons who wait in a line that stretches down the block (unless you're as sage as we are and arrive at just the right time) for a shot at drinks like "I Don't Mind You Shooting Me, Frank, But Take It Easy on the Rum" or "Can I Interest You in Hanukkah?"
Thanks, no.
After toasting each other with nog shots of Baltimore egg nog laced with - what else?- sherry (and rum), we took sustenance next door at Eat the Rich, where we each downed a dozen oysters with some perfectly lovely Le Charmel Muscadet and far too many hushpuppies smeared with Old Bay mayo.
My rainbow may be overdue and I still regret missing Vermeer, but not another thing about this perfect silvery day. Also, nog shots are here to stay.
Compensation, if not full restitution, came partially courtesy of "Wonder," the Renwick's opening exhibition after a two-year renovation, a show ranging from Leo Villard's "Volume," an LED light installation that was really just a visual representation of binary code (making it more science than art, I thought) to Patrick Dougherty's fantastical willow structures to John Grade's "Middle Fork," a casting of a 150-year old tree that was then reconstructed using tiny blocks of cedar.
Mind blown and a mid-morning geography lesson with Maya Lin's "Folding the Chesapeake," a green glass marble installation that showed the contours of the bay and its tributaries across the floor of the gallery and up the pale green walls.
The Potomac, whoa.
Ogling the insect-patterned deep pink walls of "In the Midnight Garden" by Jennifer Angus, I overhear a woman say, "My brother lived in New Guinea and he always said I should come see the bugs and I never did."
Her loss, but now she and I both were experiencing them in patterns of flowers, skulls and arranged flitting around the room.
New Guinea, Malaysia and Thailand bugs. Bugs the size of mice. BIG bugs.
Leaving to go to the American Art Museum, I catch the strains of the only Bad Company song I truly enjoy and stop to take it in under the silvery sky I had already commented on during the drive up.
Give me silver, blue and gold
The color of the sky I'm told
My rainbow is overdue
Nothing could have pleased me more than seeing a dazzling photograph of Spike Lee as part of "Eye Pop: The Celebrity Gaze" exhibit. Why? Because while buying tickets for Lee's "Chi-Raq" recently with a friend, a discussion ensued with strangers about the notoriously topical director.
To my astonishment, the young black woman behind the counter was clueless. "So who is this Spike Lee? All y'all seem to talk like I should know him." When I insisted that she should indeed know about Spike Lee, a guy tried to make her feel better, saying the director hadn't done anything in a while. Does. Not. Matter.
I'm sorry, young lady, but you should know who Spike Lee is. Period.
Most obscure fact gleaned from "Eye Pop"? Kobe Bryant was named after the Japanese beef. Seriously.
My estrogen got a boost from "Elaine de Kooning: Portraits," from the many images of JFK for his official portrait to her artsy crowd (the Allen Ginsberg portrait was positively poetic) to the 1957 photograph at the Cedar Bar of her, Franz Kline and poet Frank O'Hara, all three of them looking so smart and sophisticated, as only denizens of NYC in the '50s could.
"Crosscurrents: Modern Art from the Sam Rose and Julie Walters Collection" delivered Hopper, O'Keefe, Thiebaud and Picasso, among many others, while the engrossing "Dark Fields of the Republic: Alexander Gardner Photographs 1859-1872" brought home familiar imagery, like the ruins of the Richmond/Petersburg bridge, the pilings of which I see regularly on my river walks.
Plus, of course, lots of photos of dead bodies.
But the war seemed far away in "Walt Whitman and His Party," a sepia-toned photograph showing Walt and his guy friends on the banks of a river during that time he came to Washington to see his brother and stayed to have an affair with a handsome young man. You know the one.
Curious about what Richmond might be offering in a few years come holiday time? A variation on Miracle on Seventh Street, most likely.
When last I visited, it had been a sherry and ham bar, but until Christmas Eve, it's a Christmas extravaganza, lorded over by a door guy in leopard leggings with a bowl of mint Hershey's kisses between his spotted thighs.
Inside, holiday decor and punk rock Christmas music reward patrons who wait in a line that stretches down the block (unless you're as sage as we are and arrive at just the right time) for a shot at drinks like "I Don't Mind You Shooting Me, Frank, But Take It Easy on the Rum" or "Can I Interest You in Hanukkah?"
Thanks, no.
After toasting each other with nog shots of Baltimore egg nog laced with - what else?- sherry (and rum), we took sustenance next door at Eat the Rich, where we each downed a dozen oysters with some perfectly lovely Le Charmel Muscadet and far too many hushpuppies smeared with Old Bay mayo.
My rainbow may be overdue and I still regret missing Vermeer, but not another thing about this perfect silvery day. Also, nog shots are here to stay.
Saturday, August 16, 2014
Stylish Self Control
I'm not most people's first choice for going to a museum.
You see, I'm that art geek who can spend six hours looking at art with only a half hour for lunch and a couple of bathroom breaks.
Luckily for me, I happen to know someone who can do the same.
Even better, Moira's an artist, so she can fill me in when I see a term I don't recognize, like casein paint, which we saw a surprising amount of today.
Where to start with a day filled with so much fantastic art that my head is still spinning?
"An American in London: Whistler and the Thames" at the Smithsonian's Sackler Gallery set the bar incredibly high right off the bat.
Over 80 works - paintings, drawings and prints - detailed the changes going on along London's Thames river during the period Whistler lived there.
Looking at a print, suddenly there was a little boy in front of us holding up a magnifying glass to more closely examine the highly detailed picture.
Sure enough, the gallery had a whole rack of glasses, the better to see the minute detail of Whistler's work, and two of them were soon in our hands.
At one point, after reading about Whistler's second mistress, Moira turned to me and said, "Okay, we need a really great biography of Whistler now."
Don't I know it.
It was almost too much to take in, from his colorful early works to the later impressionistic ones that had the art critics in a tizzy over their near abstraction. And the man's use of color - blue particularly- was nothing short of breathtaking.
After a walk through the Smithsonian Castle garden, we ate lunch in the cafe, inhaling chicken salad with dried cherries and arugula and double chocolate cupcakes while people watching.
My favorite was the woman who looked like a pack animal, her belt strung with a fanny pack, a seat cushion, a bag from the museum's gift shop and on the back, a small stuffed dog. Heaven only knows what was hanging from that belt by the end of the day.
Next stop: National Gallery of Art where we made a beeline for Titian's "Danae," on short term loan from the Capodimonte Museum in Naples.
The sensual image of Danae awaiting a visit from Jupiter with Cupid at her side was stunning and a reminder that beautiful women have curves.
Walking in to "Andrew Wyeth: Looking Out, Looking In" was like walking into an old beach house; you could practically smell the salty air.
"Wind from the Sea" was the centerpiece of an exhibition where every painting and sketch featured images of windows, spare and elegant and in many cases, open to a gentle breeze causing tattered lace curtains to flutter.
Many paintings showed the bedroom windows of Christina Olsen, the crippled woman who became his model for so many years.
We agreed that the work, sometimes bordering on abstraction, often a study in tonality, proved that while Wyeth was considered old-fashioned in his time because of the emphasis on action painting and abstract expressionism, that was far from the case.
I found it especially fascinating to look at the studies that preceded the paintings to see how he reworked compositions, deleting elements until he'd achieved the most possible with the least number of elements.
Andrew, we hardly knew ye.
Then it was on to our third American of the morning, although this one accompanied by a Frenchman.
"Degas/Cassatt" was a feast for the eyes, covering the period when the older, established French master took the younger American female artist under his wing.
Cassatt's art has such a decidedly female bent - subject, palette, handling - that I couldn't help but respond to it instinctively.
Included was the VMFA Cassatt, "Child Picking Fruit," and we both felt a little local pride at seeing it as part of this landmark show.
If I could have left with one piece, it would have been "Woman Bathing," a color drypoint showing a woman in a striped robe stripped to the waist on a patterned rug surrounded by the bluest of walls.
So feminine, so beautiful.
About "Young Woman Picking Fruit," Degas had written, "No woman has a right to draw like that," a major compliment that only sounds like a sexist remark.
Hands down my favorite Degas was the series "Mary Cassatt at the Louvre," showing Cassatt from behind, dressed stylishly, leaning on a walking stick, the curve of her waist and hip quite provocative.
You can tell from her intent gaze at a painting that this is an educated and intelligent woman who also happens to be very attractive.
And she is, by far, the most feminine of all the women depicted by Degas in the show.
By now our heads were spinning from all the wonderful things we'd seen.
Did we take a break? We did not. Instead, we headed directly to the Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery for more.
"Modern American Realism" covered the period from 1910 to 1980 and contained a lot of artists who are just now getting the recognition they deserve in addition to the expected Edward Hopper, Jacob Lawrence and Paul Cadmus.
And, just so you know, there was a lot of casein paint used during those years.
One of the most whimsical was Philip Evergood's colorful "Dowager in a Wheelchair" showing an aged, fat woman being pushed by a nubile, fresh-faced young thing down a bustling city street circa 1952.
No, she did not have a fanny pack or seat cushion strapped to her wheelchair.
It was a stellar show and strong reminder of how many artists were sticking to realism through the years of abstraction and pop art.
Our final museum was the Portrait Gallery for "American Cool," a photography show that attempted to define coolness, defined as "stylish self control."
Some of the photos were just plain extraordinary: Carlos Santana at 25, all soft eyes and full lips; Jimi Hendrix at 25, shot by Linda McCartney, with a sly grin on his face; an atmospheric Allen Ginsburg photo of William Burroughs from 1953.
Some of the galleries had video of the people in the photographs and early footage of Chrissie Hynde reminded me how gorgeous she was in the '80s with her great haircut and comfortable sexuality.
Paul Newman was gorgeous at 34 and Marvin Gaye was intense at the same age. Willie Nelson was downright handsome.
At the end of the exhibit was a list of people who had been considered for the exhibition and deemed not cool enough.Sort of a wannabe list.
The guard made a joke that his name had been mistakenly left off.
And our final exhibit (drum roll, please) was "Face Value: Portraiture in the Age of Abstraction," an array of mid-century portraits done at a time when portraiture was considered old, dull and very uncool.
These works were anything but.
Here we found a Warhol portrait of Jamie Wyeth, Andrew's son, as well as a Jamie Wyeth portrait of Warhol.
We'd been at this art thing so long today that motifs were starting to repeat themselves.
It was time for happy hour.
Needing to process all that art, we got ourselves to Mockingbird Hill, a sherry and ham bar that welcomed us with sunny stools and a flight of sherries labeled "Dias Baccanalia," a fitting Friday descriptor.
Dias Bacus "Ria Pita" Manzanilla was paired with olives. Grant "La Garrocha" Amontillado, probably my favorite of the three, came with peanuts.
Spanish hand-carved Mangalica was magical ham from a wooly pig, fatty and cured to perfection.
The final sherry - with a hint of cherries and screaming to be an after dinner sipper -was Gonzalez Beass "Christina" Medium Olorosa paired with chunks of walnut brittle.
That's right, Christina sherry. Now art was following us into the bar.
It was time for our art bacchanalia to end and return to Richmond.
Degas knew. No women have a right to take so much pleasure from art.
You see, I'm that art geek who can spend six hours looking at art with only a half hour for lunch and a couple of bathroom breaks.
Luckily for me, I happen to know someone who can do the same.
Even better, Moira's an artist, so she can fill me in when I see a term I don't recognize, like casein paint, which we saw a surprising amount of today.
Where to start with a day filled with so much fantastic art that my head is still spinning?
"An American in London: Whistler and the Thames" at the Smithsonian's Sackler Gallery set the bar incredibly high right off the bat.
Over 80 works - paintings, drawings and prints - detailed the changes going on along London's Thames river during the period Whistler lived there.
Looking at a print, suddenly there was a little boy in front of us holding up a magnifying glass to more closely examine the highly detailed picture.
Sure enough, the gallery had a whole rack of glasses, the better to see the minute detail of Whistler's work, and two of them were soon in our hands.
At one point, after reading about Whistler's second mistress, Moira turned to me and said, "Okay, we need a really great biography of Whistler now."
Don't I know it.
It was almost too much to take in, from his colorful early works to the later impressionistic ones that had the art critics in a tizzy over their near abstraction. And the man's use of color - blue particularly- was nothing short of breathtaking.
After a walk through the Smithsonian Castle garden, we ate lunch in the cafe, inhaling chicken salad with dried cherries and arugula and double chocolate cupcakes while people watching.
My favorite was the woman who looked like a pack animal, her belt strung with a fanny pack, a seat cushion, a bag from the museum's gift shop and on the back, a small stuffed dog. Heaven only knows what was hanging from that belt by the end of the day.
Next stop: National Gallery of Art where we made a beeline for Titian's "Danae," on short term loan from the Capodimonte Museum in Naples.
The sensual image of Danae awaiting a visit from Jupiter with Cupid at her side was stunning and a reminder that beautiful women have curves.
Walking in to "Andrew Wyeth: Looking Out, Looking In" was like walking into an old beach house; you could practically smell the salty air.
"Wind from the Sea" was the centerpiece of an exhibition where every painting and sketch featured images of windows, spare and elegant and in many cases, open to a gentle breeze causing tattered lace curtains to flutter.
Many paintings showed the bedroom windows of Christina Olsen, the crippled woman who became his model for so many years.
We agreed that the work, sometimes bordering on abstraction, often a study in tonality, proved that while Wyeth was considered old-fashioned in his time because of the emphasis on action painting and abstract expressionism, that was far from the case.
I found it especially fascinating to look at the studies that preceded the paintings to see how he reworked compositions, deleting elements until he'd achieved the most possible with the least number of elements.
Andrew, we hardly knew ye.
Then it was on to our third American of the morning, although this one accompanied by a Frenchman.
"Degas/Cassatt" was a feast for the eyes, covering the period when the older, established French master took the younger American female artist under his wing.
Cassatt's art has such a decidedly female bent - subject, palette, handling - that I couldn't help but respond to it instinctively.
Included was the VMFA Cassatt, "Child Picking Fruit," and we both felt a little local pride at seeing it as part of this landmark show.
If I could have left with one piece, it would have been "Woman Bathing," a color drypoint showing a woman in a striped robe stripped to the waist on a patterned rug surrounded by the bluest of walls.
So feminine, so beautiful.
About "Young Woman Picking Fruit," Degas had written, "No woman has a right to draw like that," a major compliment that only sounds like a sexist remark.
Hands down my favorite Degas was the series "Mary Cassatt at the Louvre," showing Cassatt from behind, dressed stylishly, leaning on a walking stick, the curve of her waist and hip quite provocative.
You can tell from her intent gaze at a painting that this is an educated and intelligent woman who also happens to be very attractive.
And she is, by far, the most feminine of all the women depicted by Degas in the show.
By now our heads were spinning from all the wonderful things we'd seen.
Did we take a break? We did not. Instead, we headed directly to the Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery for more.
"Modern American Realism" covered the period from 1910 to 1980 and contained a lot of artists who are just now getting the recognition they deserve in addition to the expected Edward Hopper, Jacob Lawrence and Paul Cadmus.
And, just so you know, there was a lot of casein paint used during those years.
One of the most whimsical was Philip Evergood's colorful "Dowager in a Wheelchair" showing an aged, fat woman being pushed by a nubile, fresh-faced young thing down a bustling city street circa 1952.
No, she did not have a fanny pack or seat cushion strapped to her wheelchair.
It was a stellar show and strong reminder of how many artists were sticking to realism through the years of abstraction and pop art.
Our final museum was the Portrait Gallery for "American Cool," a photography show that attempted to define coolness, defined as "stylish self control."
Some of the photos were just plain extraordinary: Carlos Santana at 25, all soft eyes and full lips; Jimi Hendrix at 25, shot by Linda McCartney, with a sly grin on his face; an atmospheric Allen Ginsburg photo of William Burroughs from 1953.
Some of the galleries had video of the people in the photographs and early footage of Chrissie Hynde reminded me how gorgeous she was in the '80s with her great haircut and comfortable sexuality.
Paul Newman was gorgeous at 34 and Marvin Gaye was intense at the same age. Willie Nelson was downright handsome.
At the end of the exhibit was a list of people who had been considered for the exhibition and deemed not cool enough.Sort of a wannabe list.
The guard made a joke that his name had been mistakenly left off.
And our final exhibit (drum roll, please) was "Face Value: Portraiture in the Age of Abstraction," an array of mid-century portraits done at a time when portraiture was considered old, dull and very uncool.
These works were anything but.
Here we found a Warhol portrait of Jamie Wyeth, Andrew's son, as well as a Jamie Wyeth portrait of Warhol.
We'd been at this art thing so long today that motifs were starting to repeat themselves.
It was time for happy hour.
Needing to process all that art, we got ourselves to Mockingbird Hill, a sherry and ham bar that welcomed us with sunny stools and a flight of sherries labeled "Dias Baccanalia," a fitting Friday descriptor.
Dias Bacus "Ria Pita" Manzanilla was paired with olives. Grant "La Garrocha" Amontillado, probably my favorite of the three, came with peanuts.
Spanish hand-carved Mangalica was magical ham from a wooly pig, fatty and cured to perfection.
The final sherry - with a hint of cherries and screaming to be an after dinner sipper -was Gonzalez Beass "Christina" Medium Olorosa paired with chunks of walnut brittle.
That's right, Christina sherry. Now art was following us into the bar.
It was time for our art bacchanalia to end and return to Richmond.
Degas knew. No women have a right to take so much pleasure from art.
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Pilgrimage to Virtue and Back
"Much virtue in herbs, Little in men."~ kitchen trivet in my childhood home
No camera, no fanny pack, but still playing tourist today.
The afternoon began with our Richmond visitors helping support the educational mission of the Smithsonian Institution.
Translation: we started with lunch in the courtyard cafe of the National Portrait Gallery/Museum of American Art and that's what our receipt said we were doing.
It wasn't about the food; we availed ourselves of an extensive salad bar, loading on every marinated combination we could find (peppers, Mozzarella, tomatoes, artichokes).
It was a little about the tradition; childhood trips to the National Gallery often involved lunch in their museum cafe, unappealing as it was. In the best childhood tradition, we also finished with chocolate pudding today, a museum cafeteria standard if ever there was one.
It was mostly about the Kogod Courtyard that connects the two museums with its soaring elegant glass canopy.
Sitting in that huge courtyard under sunlight filtered through a curved glass roof is a unique pleasure. Nearby less than an inch of water runs over a slate section of the floor, making for a delightful sound and the world's shallowest public fountain.
At least until a nearby diner's phone rang.
"We're in Washington," the very portly and conservative man in the red sweater explained. "We spent the morning at the Spy Museum. Ask me anything."
Okay, how come you think it's polite to have a loud conversation one table from us while we're trying to enjoy our midday meal?
From there we went to see "Annie Leibovitz: Pilgrimage,' a departure from her usual photographs of people.
Instead she had captured the essence of famous dead people through their things.
Things like photos of Freud's couch. Emily Dickinson's herb pressings and stuffed birds (a little distasteful honestly).
Virginia Woolf's stained desk (her husband Leonard having said it was "not merely untidy but squalid"). Thoreau's bed frame. Emerson's books.
Not dead exactly, but positively riveting were photographs of "Spiral Jetty: Great Salt Lake," an earthwork created by Smithson.
The curlicue of earthworks was a thing of beauty and even more notable because shortly after he finished it in 1970, the water rose and covered it for thirty years.
When it re-emerged, Leibovitz took pictures of it but now it's completely submerged again.
The wonder of that has returned to me any number of times since we left that gallery.
Leaving the show, I considered what objects might make good photographic subjects to depict a departed one's life.
"In Vibrant Color: Vintage Celebrity Portraits from the Warnecke Studio" had early color photographs of military, sports, music and Hollywood stars.
Probably the most beautiful was one of Lucille Ball at age 33; she is lovely, colorful and impossibly young.
Orson Welles, Roy Rogers (with his pants pulled up practically to his armpits) and Louis Armstrong all looked to be in their prime.
The overly saturated colors were a testament to the multi-step process before color film was in common use and gave a vintage "Life" Magazine quality to them.
We breezed through the Presidents exhibit, stopping long enough to appreciate some particularly outstanding Presidential portraits.
Abstract expressionist Elaine (not Willem) de Kooning's depiction of JFK is full of chaotic green brushstrokes and a face that couldn't be more handsome (leave it to a woman).
Norman Rockwell's "Nixon" somehow makes him look like a laid-back and congenial Chief of Staff. It was no surprise to read that the artist intentionally flattered the beleaguered President in the work.
Clinton had been done by Chuck Close, so I had last year's VMFA show of Close works as a familiar reference for the many-faceted face of Bill.
I was especially taken by Oliphant's bronze of "George H.W. Bush as a Horseshoe Player." With its attenuated limbs, hapless look and obvious modeling, it could have been a Giacometti.
And who knew the world's biggest political cartoonist was also a sculptor? Not this art geek.
Last but not least was the morbidly fascinating "Memories Arrested in Space, a Centennial tribute to Jackson Pollock."
Gathered together were letters to the artists, a telegrams telling him he'd sold his first painting, a program from his first exhibition and loads of black and white pictures.
Considering the name recognition of Pollock, it's easy to forget his career from first to last exhibition was a mere twelve years.
I'm just not sure it's worth it to burn so brightly for such a short time. I think I'll take less talent over a longer less turbulent period.
To avoid the turbulence of 95-South, we opted for dinner at Alexandria s Virtue Feed & Grain ("A loud fun bar" the menu calls itself) in the old Olsson's Books and Music.
I'd chosen it for its Restaurant Eve connection as well as the menu section devoted to "Weird Stuff."
Naturally weird stuff was the first thing I ordered.
Crubeens, the Irish street food made of boiled down pig's feet with mirepoix, was crispy on the outside and full of gummy pig goodness inside.
Set on top of a house made whole grain creamy mustard, the rich trotter meat benefited from its contrasting condiment.
The Irish-themed menu next delivered Irish pigs in a blanket, meaning bangers in a pastry crust ("About the size of a Hotpocket," our friendly bartender informed us and he looked like he knew Hotpockets well).
One bite of the crust's buttery flakiness and I had to think there was a pastry chef involved.
Don't get me wrong, I love all sausage and that includes bangers, but that crust was a work of art.
Cockels and mussels ("Alive, alive-o!") arrived in a butter sauce so rich it was obscene.
It also required a bread basket to absorb it with once all the fruit de mer disappeared.
Besides, the O'Donnell half of me was reveling in being in a place with Irish-style food of the highest order.
Everyone in my party was thoroughly impressed with the music at Virtue, too; Pinback, Band of Horses, the XX and even a Dr. Dog cover of an Architecture in Helsinki song made for a stellar soundtrack atypical for a restaurant.
The Sweet Fix of the day was a chocolate creme pie with strawberry Chantilly and jam, sort of a an upscale cousin to our lunch's trailer trash chocolate pudding.
The enormous and thick slice of pie contained a creme filling with so much butterfat that it bordered on non-frozen gelato.
The Chantilly's flavored creaminess was the only delicate part of this dense and dark dessert. And we were fine with that.
"Goodness and mercy will follow," the menu said at the bottom and what I think they meant was goodness will be served and mercy on your arteries will follow if you don't eat at Virtue too often.
I think mine are safe; it's a little out of my usual dining territory.
When we finally waddled out, we were feeling highly satisfied if not overly virtuous.
Maybe it's time for a trivet more relevant than my Mom's.
"Much virtue in butter, Irish food and some men. Little in moderation or restraint."
There's the object that can be photographed to represent me when I'm gone.
No camera, no fanny pack, but still playing tourist today.
The afternoon began with our Richmond visitors helping support the educational mission of the Smithsonian Institution.
Translation: we started with lunch in the courtyard cafe of the National Portrait Gallery/Museum of American Art and that's what our receipt said we were doing.
It wasn't about the food; we availed ourselves of an extensive salad bar, loading on every marinated combination we could find (peppers, Mozzarella, tomatoes, artichokes).
It was a little about the tradition; childhood trips to the National Gallery often involved lunch in their museum cafe, unappealing as it was. In the best childhood tradition, we also finished with chocolate pudding today, a museum cafeteria standard if ever there was one.
It was mostly about the Kogod Courtyard that connects the two museums with its soaring elegant glass canopy.
Sitting in that huge courtyard under sunlight filtered through a curved glass roof is a unique pleasure. Nearby less than an inch of water runs over a slate section of the floor, making for a delightful sound and the world's shallowest public fountain.
At least until a nearby diner's phone rang.
"We're in Washington," the very portly and conservative man in the red sweater explained. "We spent the morning at the Spy Museum. Ask me anything."
Okay, how come you think it's polite to have a loud conversation one table from us while we're trying to enjoy our midday meal?
From there we went to see "Annie Leibovitz: Pilgrimage,' a departure from her usual photographs of people.
Instead she had captured the essence of famous dead people through their things.
Things like photos of Freud's couch. Emily Dickinson's herb pressings and stuffed birds (a little distasteful honestly).
Virginia Woolf's stained desk (her husband Leonard having said it was "not merely untidy but squalid"). Thoreau's bed frame. Emerson's books.
Not dead exactly, but positively riveting were photographs of "Spiral Jetty: Great Salt Lake," an earthwork created by Smithson.
The curlicue of earthworks was a thing of beauty and even more notable because shortly after he finished it in 1970, the water rose and covered it for thirty years.
When it re-emerged, Leibovitz took pictures of it but now it's completely submerged again.
The wonder of that has returned to me any number of times since we left that gallery.
Leaving the show, I considered what objects might make good photographic subjects to depict a departed one's life.
"In Vibrant Color: Vintage Celebrity Portraits from the Warnecke Studio" had early color photographs of military, sports, music and Hollywood stars.
Probably the most beautiful was one of Lucille Ball at age 33; she is lovely, colorful and impossibly young.
Orson Welles, Roy Rogers (with his pants pulled up practically to his armpits) and Louis Armstrong all looked to be in their prime.
The overly saturated colors were a testament to the multi-step process before color film was in common use and gave a vintage "Life" Magazine quality to them.
We breezed through the Presidents exhibit, stopping long enough to appreciate some particularly outstanding Presidential portraits.
Abstract expressionist Elaine (not Willem) de Kooning's depiction of JFK is full of chaotic green brushstrokes and a face that couldn't be more handsome (leave it to a woman).
Norman Rockwell's "Nixon" somehow makes him look like a laid-back and congenial Chief of Staff. It was no surprise to read that the artist intentionally flattered the beleaguered President in the work.
Clinton had been done by Chuck Close, so I had last year's VMFA show of Close works as a familiar reference for the many-faceted face of Bill.
I was especially taken by Oliphant's bronze of "George H.W. Bush as a Horseshoe Player." With its attenuated limbs, hapless look and obvious modeling, it could have been a Giacometti.
And who knew the world's biggest political cartoonist was also a sculptor? Not this art geek.
Last but not least was the morbidly fascinating "Memories Arrested in Space, a Centennial tribute to Jackson Pollock."
Gathered together were letters to the artists, a telegrams telling him he'd sold his first painting, a program from his first exhibition and loads of black and white pictures.
Considering the name recognition of Pollock, it's easy to forget his career from first to last exhibition was a mere twelve years.
I'm just not sure it's worth it to burn so brightly for such a short time. I think I'll take less talent over a longer less turbulent period.
To avoid the turbulence of 95-South, we opted for dinner at Alexandria s Virtue Feed & Grain ("A loud fun bar" the menu calls itself) in the old Olsson's Books and Music.
I'd chosen it for its Restaurant Eve connection as well as the menu section devoted to "Weird Stuff."
Naturally weird stuff was the first thing I ordered.
Crubeens, the Irish street food made of boiled down pig's feet with mirepoix, was crispy on the outside and full of gummy pig goodness inside.
Set on top of a house made whole grain creamy mustard, the rich trotter meat benefited from its contrasting condiment.
The Irish-themed menu next delivered Irish pigs in a blanket, meaning bangers in a pastry crust ("About the size of a Hotpocket," our friendly bartender informed us and he looked like he knew Hotpockets well).
One bite of the crust's buttery flakiness and I had to think there was a pastry chef involved.
Don't get me wrong, I love all sausage and that includes bangers, but that crust was a work of art.
Cockels and mussels ("Alive, alive-o!") arrived in a butter sauce so rich it was obscene.
It also required a bread basket to absorb it with once all the fruit de mer disappeared.
Besides, the O'Donnell half of me was reveling in being in a place with Irish-style food of the highest order.
Everyone in my party was thoroughly impressed with the music at Virtue, too; Pinback, Band of Horses, the XX and even a Dr. Dog cover of an Architecture in Helsinki song made for a stellar soundtrack atypical for a restaurant.
The Sweet Fix of the day was a chocolate creme pie with strawberry Chantilly and jam, sort of a an upscale cousin to our lunch's trailer trash chocolate pudding.
The enormous and thick slice of pie contained a creme filling with so much butterfat that it bordered on non-frozen gelato.
The Chantilly's flavored creaminess was the only delicate part of this dense and dark dessert. And we were fine with that.
"Goodness and mercy will follow," the menu said at the bottom and what I think they meant was goodness will be served and mercy on your arteries will follow if you don't eat at Virtue too often.
I think mine are safe; it's a little out of my usual dining territory.
When we finally waddled out, we were feeling highly satisfied if not overly virtuous.
Maybe it's time for a trivet more relevant than my Mom's.
"Much virtue in butter, Irish food and some men. Little in moderation or restraint."
There's the object that can be photographed to represent me when I'm gone.
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Passing the Scrapple Test
Breakfasting in the morning is overrated, at least on Saturdays.
No surprise, I slept through the B & B's breakfast, but it was with no regret because the man who'd walked me to Bar Pilar last night, Tom, had recommended St. Ex (as in Antoine de Saint-Exupery, the French aviator and author of "The Little Prince") for brunch.
And, boy, did I need brunch after last night.
St. Ex was positively bustling when I walked in around 12:30, but, as is often my luck, there was one stool waiting for me at the bar. It was right in front of the taps, so eating space was tight, but it was good enough for me.
My server at Bar Pilar, which is owned by the same people as St. Ex, had told me she preferred BP's brunch menu, but I couldn't very well eat at the same place the very next day, now could I?
It was enough that I was eating on the same block again.
The brunch menu yielded an immediate choice, although it was listed under "lunch stuff"rather than "eggs and such," and this was clearly my first meal of the day.
The Smith Meadow Farm scrapple sandwich (two eggs, American cheese, lettuce, tomato, Texas toast with fries) had my name written all over it.
When I told the bartender my stomach's delight, he raised an eyebrow and asked, "Do you know what scrapple is?"
I laughed out loud. "Yea, I do," I said. "But why are you asking me that?"
He said that they are required to ask because so many people order it without knowing what scrapple is and then are horrified when it arrives and they see it.
Not me.
"They think it's just a cute food term or, like one girl said, it's scrappled eggs or something. I don't know, but we have to ask now."
I assured him I knew what I was getting into, so I passed the test and he left to put my order in, giving me a thumbs up as he went.
The guy on the next stool turned to me and asked, "Scrappled eggs? What the hell does that even mean?"
Not sure myself, I said that along the same lines, there were probably even more people who didn't know what head cheese was and would be just as horrified at its arrival.
In his clipped British accent, he responded, "Of course, scrapple and head cheese are really just code for "nasty bits," aren't they?"
My nasty bits were delicious, although I opted out of the lettuce and tomato.
The thick Texas toast was the perfect vehicle for the squares of scrapple, cheese and eggs that topped it; I left a few fries, but that was about it.
Humanity restored.
My second stop of the day was the Museum of American Art/Portrait Gallery over on 7th Street and I had the good fortune to get a parking space right in front of it.
Literally, I parked by the front steps. Such luck on marathon/Cherry Blossom weekend bode well for me, I thought.
I was there to see "To Make a World: George Ault and 1940s America," a show about manning the home front during WWII, focusing primarily on the little-known painter Ault, with some Rockwell Kents and Hoppers thrown in for good measure.
Much like Gauguin escaping Paris for the wilds of Tahiti, Ault abandoned Manhattan for Woodstock, New York, seeking the isolation of the country with his wife and muse, Louise.
A dark personality, Ault was not the untamed artistic sort.
Every day, he began by tidying his studio before he allowed himself to begin painting. In some cases, he then painted the tidy studio, with or without himself included.
His paintings avoid storytelling, instead stating images and leaving it at that.
Many were of an intersection in Russell's Corners, painted day and night, summer and winter. No figures are ever present, nor any brushstrokes to be seen.
"Old House" showed a field with a haunted-looking house in it, but the structure seems to float on the grass rather than being firmly attached to it.
His masterpiece, "January Full Moon" shows an old barn in moonlight; it is nothing more and yet there is everything to be appreciated in its stoic beauty under a bright moon.
There was only painting in the show from after the war years and in it, Ault seems to demonstrate that a new world order has superseded the old.
His purely representational wartime paintings yield to one of abstractions, perhaps as a metaphor the the promise of the unfolding but unknown future.
The world he knew was coming to an end.
I'd been unaware of George Ault before reading about the opening of the show a few weeks ago, but after an hour with his works, I felt a sense of a man who created secure and enclosed worlds of lonely calm from inside a tidy studio, safe and secure and, like most Americans, not sure of the war's outcome.
It was a lesson in the 1940s.
My final treat to myself was in the same building, but on the Portrait Gallery side.
"One Life: Katherine Graham" was only one gallery, but so full of artifacts and photographs that defined an era, that it felt like more.
Photographs of the Washington Post publisher spanned her colorful life.
She was there as an eager, young reporter at the San Francisco News.
Another showed her radiant in a wedding portrait to her beloved Philip Graham ("He combined the parts of her life that she had always felt were separate. Here was a man who was intellectual, attractive, witty and charming." Excuse me, are there any more like him out there?)
Her stint at the Post began in the pre-women's rights-era, so many photographs showed her as the lone woman at all-male editorial and board meetings.
Her mask from Truman Capote's Black and White Ball was there, as was the wooden wringer Bob Woodward had given her as a reminder of the travails of the Watergate investigation.
The Pulitzer Prize for her autobiography (and favorite read of mine), Personal History, sat next to her mask.
Just as impressive as her prize was the first page from her biography, written in longhand on a yellow legal pad.
As old-school as I can be in a few ways, I can't imagine so daunting a task as to write out one's life on paper.
How much easier it would have been if she'd been able to keep track of her life online with daily posting.
Blogging as autobiography-in-progress, so to speak.
No surprise, I slept through the B & B's breakfast, but it was with no regret because the man who'd walked me to Bar Pilar last night, Tom, had recommended St. Ex (as in Antoine de Saint-Exupery, the French aviator and author of "The Little Prince") for brunch.
And, boy, did I need brunch after last night.
St. Ex was positively bustling when I walked in around 12:30, but, as is often my luck, there was one stool waiting for me at the bar. It was right in front of the taps, so eating space was tight, but it was good enough for me.
My server at Bar Pilar, which is owned by the same people as St. Ex, had told me she preferred BP's brunch menu, but I couldn't very well eat at the same place the very next day, now could I?
It was enough that I was eating on the same block again.
The brunch menu yielded an immediate choice, although it was listed under "lunch stuff"rather than "eggs and such," and this was clearly my first meal of the day.
The Smith Meadow Farm scrapple sandwich (two eggs, American cheese, lettuce, tomato, Texas toast with fries) had my name written all over it.
When I told the bartender my stomach's delight, he raised an eyebrow and asked, "Do you know what scrapple is?"
I laughed out loud. "Yea, I do," I said. "But why are you asking me that?"
He said that they are required to ask because so many people order it without knowing what scrapple is and then are horrified when it arrives and they see it.
Not me.
"They think it's just a cute food term or, like one girl said, it's scrappled eggs or something. I don't know, but we have to ask now."
I assured him I knew what I was getting into, so I passed the test and he left to put my order in, giving me a thumbs up as he went.
The guy on the next stool turned to me and asked, "Scrappled eggs? What the hell does that even mean?"
Not sure myself, I said that along the same lines, there were probably even more people who didn't know what head cheese was and would be just as horrified at its arrival.
In his clipped British accent, he responded, "Of course, scrapple and head cheese are really just code for "nasty bits," aren't they?"
My nasty bits were delicious, although I opted out of the lettuce and tomato.
The thick Texas toast was the perfect vehicle for the squares of scrapple, cheese and eggs that topped it; I left a few fries, but that was about it.
Humanity restored.
My second stop of the day was the Museum of American Art/Portrait Gallery over on 7th Street and I had the good fortune to get a parking space right in front of it.
Literally, I parked by the front steps. Such luck on marathon/Cherry Blossom weekend bode well for me, I thought.
I was there to see "To Make a World: George Ault and 1940s America," a show about manning the home front during WWII, focusing primarily on the little-known painter Ault, with some Rockwell Kents and Hoppers thrown in for good measure.
Much like Gauguin escaping Paris for the wilds of Tahiti, Ault abandoned Manhattan for Woodstock, New York, seeking the isolation of the country with his wife and muse, Louise.
A dark personality, Ault was not the untamed artistic sort.
Every day, he began by tidying his studio before he allowed himself to begin painting. In some cases, he then painted the tidy studio, with or without himself included.
His paintings avoid storytelling, instead stating images and leaving it at that.
Many were of an intersection in Russell's Corners, painted day and night, summer and winter. No figures are ever present, nor any brushstrokes to be seen.
"Old House" showed a field with a haunted-looking house in it, but the structure seems to float on the grass rather than being firmly attached to it.
His masterpiece, "January Full Moon" shows an old barn in moonlight; it is nothing more and yet there is everything to be appreciated in its stoic beauty under a bright moon.
There was only painting in the show from after the war years and in it, Ault seems to demonstrate that a new world order has superseded the old.
His purely representational wartime paintings yield to one of abstractions, perhaps as a metaphor the the promise of the unfolding but unknown future.
The world he knew was coming to an end.
I'd been unaware of George Ault before reading about the opening of the show a few weeks ago, but after an hour with his works, I felt a sense of a man who created secure and enclosed worlds of lonely calm from inside a tidy studio, safe and secure and, like most Americans, not sure of the war's outcome.
It was a lesson in the 1940s.
My final treat to myself was in the same building, but on the Portrait Gallery side.
"One Life: Katherine Graham" was only one gallery, but so full of artifacts and photographs that defined an era, that it felt like more.
Photographs of the Washington Post publisher spanned her colorful life.
She was there as an eager, young reporter at the San Francisco News.
Another showed her radiant in a wedding portrait to her beloved Philip Graham ("He combined the parts of her life that she had always felt were separate. Here was a man who was intellectual, attractive, witty and charming." Excuse me, are there any more like him out there?)
Her stint at the Post began in the pre-women's rights-era, so many photographs showed her as the lone woman at all-male editorial and board meetings.
Her mask from Truman Capote's Black and White Ball was there, as was the wooden wringer Bob Woodward had given her as a reminder of the travails of the Watergate investigation.
The Pulitzer Prize for her autobiography (and favorite read of mine), Personal History, sat next to her mask.
Just as impressive as her prize was the first page from her biography, written in longhand on a yellow legal pad.
As old-school as I can be in a few ways, I can't imagine so daunting a task as to write out one's life on paper.
How much easier it would have been if she'd been able to keep track of her life online with daily posting.
Blogging as autobiography-in-progress, so to speak.
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