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syncategorematic Jul. 8th, 2010 01:05 pm)
syncategorematic Jul. 8th, 2010 01:05 pm)Besides our logistics, my brother and I are actually doing cultural-type things.
On Wednesday, we went to the museum at the Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid. Unfortunately, I admit I could not find my camera in my handbag and thought that I forgot it, so I did not take any pictures. But there was a fascinating exhibition showing the process of restoring various sculptures and drawings --- each work of art will be shown with a poster about its restoration process right beside it. You definitely look with new eyes at the more traditional art in the rest of the gallery once you have some idea (some, because the posters were all in Spanish) of the backbreaking work that goes into turning back the clock and making it look like it was only recently done.
Of the paintings in the rest of the exhibition, my favourites were that of the Marquesa de Llano, of the great soprano castrato Farinelli, which actual painting I cannot find online at the moment, and the Knight's Dream; the latter strongly reminded me of the Flanders Panel book that Ms_danson gave me; it is just asking to have a novel written about it. My brother, too, found the Knight's Dream quite impressive.
So learning about the restoration techniques made me far more impressed when we saw El Greco's masterpiece The Burial of Count Orgaz today in Toledo, and learned that it has never been restored; it looks just like that. I carefully refrained from illicitly taking photos, aware of how much damage a painting can suffer. Four by three metres, that painting really is impressive in the flesh, even though I had seen reproductions many times before.
On the tour, we also watched a documentary about Toledo, with an English soundtrack available into a one-ear headset --- the music was the same as for the Spanish, but the Spanish was delayed because of the longer dialogue, so at the final credits especially, there was an interesting, not unpleasant round of incidental music going, one in each ear. At one point in the documentary, talking about the role of Jewish culture in Toledan history, they flashed up a Torah scroll. At the end of the documentary, I lean over to my brother, and mutter, "That Hebrew lettering..."
"...it was upside down, yeah, I saw that."
We went to the factory of Toledan steel and gold inlay at the end of the tour, and among the pendants available for sale in gold inlay were Jewish stars, and they had Hebrew writing on them.
And it is upside down.
Serious-lutely --- I mean, no one bothered to CHECK???
My brother and I bought some small kitchen knives at that factory's souvenir shop, so now i have an excellent kitchen knife of Toledan steel. There were also large and small fake swords and daggers and katanas, which my old iaido training made me remember how to draw properly, even if they had intentionally dull edges.
The other tourists' handling of them made me gasp and wince. They were holding them out of balance, with stiff arms; one man was gripping a broadsword by the blade.
I know they were dull, but this is a heavy mass of steel if it is nothing else --- it is a sword, people. It is a lethal weapon. It can kill you; even without an edge, you have the sensitive spots and it has the mass to kill you. Such lack of respect for swords, even if they are meant to be decorative and cool things for your living room, made me disgusted almost to nausea --- I guess aikido indoctrinated me far too well. Our knives bought, my brother and I left the souvenir shop.
Other than that, I loved Toledo.
As many of you may know, I have known myself to have a crush on Spain the country for twelve years now. And now that I am back again, walking though Madrid, of course I found myself questioning --- do I love it still? What was that for? Why am I no longer the thirteen-year-old girl with a crush, and where did she go, and why did she exist?
I was not quite feeling it in Madrid.
But then I did not feel it so much in Vancouver at first, as you may remember; I fell in love with that city slowly.
On the tour bus ride to Toledo, I realized --- I love the Spanish countryside. I love that Mediterranean ecosystem, the rows of olive trees and the gold-sienna grass, and the pines that branch out in crowns like mushroom caps, and the palm trees, and the azalea bushes that are now in bloom of white and pink and fuchsia and crimson. I love the sight of the mountains and the sight of the air, and the red-roofed tiles and the ochre brick that Bujold described so well in her Curse of Chalion. I loved this about northern Italy too. Maybe it is a legacy of my early and formative year in Israel that this Mediterranean I love.
I loved the narrow cobblestoned labyrinthine streets of those European cities, of Lviv and Cambridge and Tallinn and now Toledo. I love battlements and balconies and plunging moss-covered cliffs into the river Tagus. I love this.
But what, exactly, do I love living in?
On Wednesday, we went to the museum at the Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid. Unfortunately, I admit I could not find my camera in my handbag and thought that I forgot it, so I did not take any pictures. But there was a fascinating exhibition showing the process of restoring various sculptures and drawings --- each work of art will be shown with a poster about its restoration process right beside it. You definitely look with new eyes at the more traditional art in the rest of the gallery once you have some idea (some, because the posters were all in Spanish) of the backbreaking work that goes into turning back the clock and making it look like it was only recently done.
Of the paintings in the rest of the exhibition, my favourites were that of the Marquesa de Llano, of the great soprano castrato Farinelli, which actual painting I cannot find online at the moment, and the Knight's Dream; the latter strongly reminded me of the Flanders Panel book that Ms_danson gave me; it is just asking to have a novel written about it. My brother, too, found the Knight's Dream quite impressive.
So learning about the restoration techniques made me far more impressed when we saw El Greco's masterpiece The Burial of Count Orgaz today in Toledo, and learned that it has never been restored; it looks just like that. I carefully refrained from illicitly taking photos, aware of how much damage a painting can suffer. Four by three metres, that painting really is impressive in the flesh, even though I had seen reproductions many times before.
On the tour, we also watched a documentary about Toledo, with an English soundtrack available into a one-ear headset --- the music was the same as for the Spanish, but the Spanish was delayed because of the longer dialogue, so at the final credits especially, there was an interesting, not unpleasant round of incidental music going, one in each ear. At one point in the documentary, talking about the role of Jewish culture in Toledan history, they flashed up a Torah scroll. At the end of the documentary, I lean over to my brother, and mutter, "That Hebrew lettering..."
"...it was upside down, yeah, I saw that."
We went to the factory of Toledan steel and gold inlay at the end of the tour, and among the pendants available for sale in gold inlay were Jewish stars, and they had Hebrew writing on them.
And it is upside down.
Serious-lutely --- I mean, no one bothered to CHECK???
My brother and I bought some small kitchen knives at that factory's souvenir shop, so now i have an excellent kitchen knife of Toledan steel. There were also large and small fake swords and daggers and katanas, which my old iaido training made me remember how to draw properly, even if they had intentionally dull edges.
The other tourists' handling of them made me gasp and wince. They were holding them out of balance, with stiff arms; one man was gripping a broadsword by the blade.
I know they were dull, but this is a heavy mass of steel if it is nothing else --- it is a sword, people. It is a lethal weapon. It can kill you; even without an edge, you have the sensitive spots and it has the mass to kill you. Such lack of respect for swords, even if they are meant to be decorative and cool things for your living room, made me disgusted almost to nausea --- I guess aikido indoctrinated me far too well. Our knives bought, my brother and I left the souvenir shop.
Other than that, I loved Toledo.
As many of you may know, I have known myself to have a crush on Spain the country for twelve years now. And now that I am back again, walking though Madrid, of course I found myself questioning --- do I love it still? What was that for? Why am I no longer the thirteen-year-old girl with a crush, and where did she go, and why did she exist?
I was not quite feeling it in Madrid.
But then I did not feel it so much in Vancouver at first, as you may remember; I fell in love with that city slowly.
On the tour bus ride to Toledo, I realized --- I love the Spanish countryside. I love that Mediterranean ecosystem, the rows of olive trees and the gold-sienna grass, and the pines that branch out in crowns like mushroom caps, and the palm trees, and the azalea bushes that are now in bloom of white and pink and fuchsia and crimson. I love the sight of the mountains and the sight of the air, and the red-roofed tiles and the ochre brick that Bujold described so well in her Curse of Chalion. I loved this about northern Italy too. Maybe it is a legacy of my early and formative year in Israel that this Mediterranean I love.
I loved the narrow cobblestoned labyrinthine streets of those European cities, of Lviv and Cambridge and Tallinn and now Toledo. I love battlements and balconies and plunging moss-covered cliffs into the river Tagus. I love this.
But what, exactly, do I love living in?
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