MFA

I went on an adventure today, to the Museum of Fine Art. I discovered last night that I get in free with my Emerson Student ID (thank you, Jan Marie!) so I decided to go check it out. I've always enjoyed museums, although I haven't really studied art extensively---okay, I haven't studied it at all. It is one medium about which I know very little. Literature and music? Yes. Painting and sculpture? No. Although they did have a lovely room with all sorts of old musical instruments, including a nice display of flutes built with various materials. They were beautiful.

While I was wandering through the European galleries I realized something about myself: I have opinions about art. I have opinions about most everything, so this really shouldn't have been surprising to me, but it was. I didn't think I knew enough about art to have an opinion. Maybe I don't. But I realized two things in particular:

1) I like Impressionism. I like the softer colors, I like the themes, I like the undefined images and the pastel feelings. They look like Debussy sounds. (Apparently Erik Satie is also considered an Impressionist composer, which is great because I love this piece.) I loved Renoir's "Dance at Bougival."

 I also quite liked the Realism painter Jean-Francois Millet. Some of his nature scenes were beautiful. And there were two Dutch artists, Salomon van Rusydael and Jan van Goyen, who I also really liked. Their pieces were hung on the wall together and they complimented each other well.

2) I do not, however, like the Renaissance period. I know it was amazing and everything, and I appreciate it, but it is not as emotional to me as some of the other styles are. Maybe that's just my art ignorance talking.


I also spent some time in the Egypt galleries, and I felt like I was back in Cairo---a cleaner, more empty version anyway. I recognized quite a bit and could identify it as well. I was pleased with myself. They had one room set up where you would go inside (it was a very small room) and it was quite dark and the walls were covered in the stones they had excavated from an important Egyptian tomb. It made me feel a little like I was in the Valley of the Kings again, but even more so like that scene in Sesame Street when Ernie and Bert go to the pyramids in Egypt. Remember that scene?


I started humming the rubber ducky song right there in the museum.


This painting is also incredible to me. I'd never seen it before, but I love it. "Rest on the Flight Into Egypt" by Luc Olivier Merson.