We went to the National Gallery today and I felt a little overwhelmed; there were SO many people and it got a little difficult to move around and look at each individual work... and breathe... but we made it a point to find The Ambassadors by Holbein. For some reason I had assumed it was bigger than it actually is, but it's still pretty massive. I'm glad I got to see it at an angle so I could see the skull unskewed because I had only seen it in class from the projector, but I was still a little too short to see it perfectly. Another painting I got to see at the gallery that I had seen in class was Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump by Wright. Seeing it in person and up close was pretty amazing until I remembered what my professor said about paintings done during the Enlightenment: females are depicted as extremely emotional and scared whereas the males are depicted as the ones actually being enlightened.
Another painting that I found amazing was Guercino's The Angel appearing to Hagar and Ishmael. I loved how he was able to capture the sorrow on Hagar's face and how the emotion being depicted pulled me into the painting due to the fact that sorrow is a very relatable emotion.
In contrast, I felt very underwhelmed at the ICA. The only thing that really caught my eye was the blaring video in the first room of the gallery: Cut by Kristian de la Riva... Although I liked it for a completely infantile reason: I thought it was funny. I'm not sure exactly why, since masochism is always something I adamantly oppose, but... I can't quite place it, but I was delighted by that video. Maybe it was delirium.
As for the Fourth Plinth and how I feel about the more recent winners for next year and the following year's display: I kind of like the idea of the "giant cock." I think the concept is very clever, supposedly symbolising a mix of male posturing, regeneration, awakening, and strength. Aesthetically, however, I think I prefer the child on the rocking horse.
I'm not exactly sure what else I'd put up there. Perhaps a sculpture depicting the horrors of war. Maybe make it really sappy and overly romantic, depicting a soldier dying in his loved one's arms. Maybe I'd put an Alexander Hoda sculpture on display-- his sculptures are able to merge the grotesque and macabre with the sensual and mesmerising, like war. I'm not saying that war is sensual or mesmerising to me, but it does seem to infatuate a lot of people [like my little brother].
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