JayJay, What Am I Doing?

Alright, in order to marginally level out the excessive testosterone of Super Bowl Sunday (GO PATS!), I'm gonna post about art this afternoon. However, first I have to put in a mention for the best Tom Hanks movie ever, Mazes & Monsters. The plot of this 1982 masterpiece revolves around four college friends whose love for the game Mazes & Monsters gets a little out of hand. We watched this last night after finishing our own D&D campaign and, man, it really capped off the night perfectly.

Okay, now for the art. On Wednesday I made a trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art mainly to check out the Indian Art. (My friend Laurence is designing a new tattoo for me based on the bronze Nataraja sculptures of the Chola period.) Of course, my luck being my luck, the Indian and South Asian rooms were closed for Wednesday only. So to make a day of it I wandered through the European rooms to find old medieval stuff about satanism and whatnot (see my previous post on The Damned) and then traipse through the modern art wing. I took a bunch of notes on the stuff I thought was cool, so here's a sample of some things I think are awesome...

This is really the only awesome medieval/satanist thing I found, but it's super rad. That piece of paper at the bottom reads, "The Devil doesn't jest. No, the Devil [does not play games]" How fucking sick is that?! And those claws! And that skull is upside-down and there's smoke coming out of it. Conjur that, impressionists!

Pieter van Laer (Il Bamboccio), Magic Scene with Self-Portrait


Pretty much everything Joan Miró has ever done is awesome. There's some great stuff of his at MoMA, but The Met has got some winners, too...

Constellation: Toward the Rainbow (1941)

This one is older and less "out there", but is still quite striking and you can see glimpses of what his future holds...

Vines & Olive Trees, Tarragona (1919)

Now this guy, Yves Tanguy, apparently was self-taught. I guess Jimi Hendrix was, too, but Tanguy's paintings demolish any song that Hendrix ever wrote. I'll fight you if you disagree. (He's also got more at MoMA, of course, but this one might be the best anyway)

Indefinite Divisibility (1942)

And this, this one, man. I've been to The Met before and don't ever recall being so enthralled with a piece before. Hell, I don't recall ever seeing this one at all! But for Pete's sake, this is not only huge, but you could examine it for hours. It's also made of encaustic, which is a mixture of paint and melted wax, so the texture is actually reminiscent of a cave wall. It's so perfect. Please, for the love of Pete, go just to see this. Stare at it for hours. A dumb picture on my dumb site doesn't do any justice...

Victor Brauner, Prelude to a Civilization (1954)

Now get back to your american football and beer. I can't tell you how nervous I am about this Pats possible perfect season right now.