Художественый Музей

After riding past the big, pretty, yellow city art musuem every day on the way to and from downtown, I finally went today, with Ivan and Alana. Overall, I had never heard of any of the artists, so it was sort of interesting looking at art with no feeling that I ought to like it, since the artists were famous. So, it was pretty, or unusual, or thought-provoking, or evocative, and stuff, in the proportion paintings often are... funny to think how much work went into it all, and how someone probably thought of that bowl of fruit as representing much of his worth as a creative human being, and to someone all those portraits of of chubby blond men in medal-covered uniforms were not only distinguishable but personally significant. I liked the Siberian interiors and landscapes and the pictures of boats of Baikal; I guess it's more interesting to see other people's impressions of things you are also seeing, than of far-off places, however picturesque. But then there was a Surikov exibition, on loan from Krasnoyarsk or Novosibirsk or somewhere, and it was wonderful, though I would be interested to know how wonderful I would have thought it was if I had never heard of Surikov. Actually Surikov paintings always seemed a little overly dramatic and almost cheesy when they formed such a large part of our Russian History powerpoints, and in reproductions in books, but on canvas rather than glossy paper then are just dramatic, rather than overly so. The best thing was this big painting of the Annunciation, with Gabriel's arms at the most annunciative of angles- I guess if I could describe how it was Surikov wouldn't have had to paint it, so you'll just have to take my word for it. Also, Mary's dress was almost the color red of the sunset over Germany when I was flying here. Surikov always seems to like the people in his paintings so much, even in portraits of rather ordinary-looking middle-aged women, or the Tatar soliers standing around in the backgroud of historical scenes.

I had kasha for dinner today. I feel like it's another Thing One Must do in Russia that I can check off the list.