Get lost

...in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. That was the idea, anyway. Random turns, to the heart's content, stare into massive ship-wrecking waves in the 18th century Atlantic Ocean, for hours with googly eyes, and move on through a bout of phantasmagoria.... That was the idea. But I had one or two things I wanted to see (like the exhibition of Toulouse-Lautrec's prints, which I was a bit underwhelmed by), so I grabbed a map, and then found more things I wanted to see, and eventually the whole idea of getting lost flew out the window. But perhaps that's the way it was meant to be all along...? C'est la vie.

At times I wonder if I'm simply more attracted to words than images. Times in museums and galleries when I'm drawn to the names and descriptions and biographies and histories... before even looking at the pieces themselves. It even extends to my passion for the cinema: I love to read the descriptions in the Shocking Videos catalog, and in Michael J. Weldon's The Psychotronic Video Guide, some times more than the movies themselves. Take this, Weldon's narrative of Flavia the Heretic (which I still haven't seen, and thus can't make a fair synopsis-to-film comparison):

"Flavia is sent to a 13th-century Portuguese nunnery where torture is common and a crazy tarantula cult appears. She wonders why God is a man and runs away with a Jew named Abraham. She's coached by an older rebel nun, then joins her new Muslim lover, who leads an invading army and punishes rapists. She hallucinates a female Christ, a dead nun rising, and women crawling out of a cow's carcass .... It's pretty strong and amazing stuff with some historical basis and feminist themes. The great music helps too. The director was known for making documentaries. The Brazilian-born star claims to have been JFK's last lover. Think about that while you watch this."

That's art to me. Having said that, in the museum, I really enjoyed Van Gogh's portraits, Monet's Mediterranean landscapes, and lots of other stuff.

Luis Melendez is a saint and a martyr. His Still Life with Bread, Ham, Cheese, and Vegetables is a monument to asceticism. I could never draw something like that. I could never sit there, painting for hours, with all that food in front of me... without devouring it. A saint and a martyr.

There are times, often, when I feel that museum-viewing should be a solitary experience. Look, I understand the importance of brush strokes and palettes and all that, but I don't need to hear bourgy old ladies belabor it through lorgnette-goggled eyes.

And having said that, these gold-tinged panels in the Medieval and Early Renaissance rooms - a medium known as tempera (which I just learned) - are the shit.

Bosch's Ecco Homo (Behind the Man), which I also love, reminds me of certain faces in Metalocalypse - those brainless, tortured faces, with deadened eyes and mouths agape.

John Martin's Seventh Plague of Egypt astounds me with its vision, its attention to detail, and the obvious amount of labor that was put into it....

And having said that, it's been a very fine experience, but after two hours in this goddamn museum, I'm ready to leave.