Number One Hundred and Thirty:
Banditos Burrito Lounge, Lunch, The "El Dorado" Burrito
Lisa and I had 10am viewing tickets to the Picasso Exhibit @ VMFA. We were nearly first in line, and they kept the pace great as we went to the basement of the new building. I have to say, they have done a fine job with that new space. The "basement" or ground floor for special exhibits is terrifically well thought out, being able to move the space according to whatever exhibit is there at the time. The last one we saw not too long ago was for the Tiffany Display and it was completely unique and specific to that exhibit. Same thing with Picasso. VMFA redeux is well done.
Picasso was moving. Going in, I had in the back of my mind, of all things, an old facebook status update from my friend Anna who had just been to the exhibit:
"First I started mumbling; "dammit, dammit all", the I got the urge to yell really bad words, then cry, then scream and lay on the floor kicking my feet, then went back to mumbling and shaking my head like a bum on the corner. Humbled by the power of Picasso."
Walking thorough each period of Picasso's artistic life with that intense kind of statement I started noticing the faces on his paintings and sculptures; they are all so distant to me. Distant in the way Industrialized societies may have left people with an emptiness, or void of meaning; the empty and crooked feeling in eyes and facial expressions in his work was very sad to me. Brilliantly melancholy in that whole early 20th century sense of Modernism and what is the modern world. T.S. Eliot had his Wasteland, Joseph Conrad had his Heart of Darkness; the literary idea of a new sense of things coming apart then being re-realized, Picasso has his place in this in his art. Some of the most reflective pieces that I stared at wondering and feeling affected by were The Kiss (1925), Portrait of Olga in an Armchair (1918), Man with a Guitar (1911), Massacre in Korea (1951), one of some cute woman reading curled up on a couch that I can't seem to locate the title, and countless others. I understand Anna's quote, the exhibit --rather Picasso, his art, moved me in a way that great art should. Plus, that dude, did a LOT of stuff. A master.
Afterward we walked to Banditos where Basketball was what hung on the walls in television sets as churchgoers were being let out from various denominations hungry for lunch and hangovers were being dragged to their first meals of the day. Lisa saw the bull in the background for this napstache, appropriate for our morning we think!
Picassostache!
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