riotheclown

This is the staircase that from a distance looks like it is floating in the sky.  Frank Gehrg is my favourite architect but you really have to walk around the space to get it.

This was taken with Dee's i phone.  I forgot to charge my phone and to bring my camera. Hey, the state I was in I was lucky to arrive dressed and semi coherent.

We also returned to the Henry Moore gallery to listen to "The Forty Part Motet" a sound installation that is transformative. I really need it. I felt so much better afterwards! I have been reading a blog by "the walking woman" over at Wordpress. She wrote a wonderful article about it. Check it out!http://icelandpenny.wordpress.com/2013/07/12/the-moores-the-motet-and-a-riverside-walk/

This is the painting the F.H. liked when I took him to AGO. Is by the same artist as the previous, Paul Peel.  When he saw it he said, "That was me!"

I know her name but her show was EXACTLY the sort of show I can't really be bothered to see.  If I was at someone's house and they showed me their photo albums filled with pictures of graves I would be more interested in why they took them than the photographs themselves which is okay too. This has actually happened because for some reason I have known people who are obsessed with death.  Knowing a lot of artists over the years I have also met a fair number of artists who have made death a study.  Lisa Scarlett-Cruji has a book with the same name as her gallery show of many incarnations "How Did You Die?".  "How Did You Die?" is funny and clever. (Lisa is pure delight.  I am truly fond of her.  I miss her since she moved to Vancouver.) 

It appears that Patti Smith is very open and not "A Star" in her demeanor at all, but she is famous and that is why she got the west wing, cavernous and grimly dark to show her teeny tiny framed polaroid pictures. I start to make the trek around the room looking at one at a time and was so overwhelmed by dread I had to go and sit outside in the well lit gallery.

Dee continued on without me.  I was enjoying watching the three women and two babies who where sharing the leather benches with me. Dee came out.  A woman with rose coloured round, John Lennon glasses and short cropped white hair asked us how we liked the show and Dee said, "Not much!" to which I chimmed in, "I am having a bit too much of that sort of thing these days, I just found it oppressive."

I read the reviews this morning.  I tell you, not many shows of this ilk get reviews on the cover of the entertainment section of the Star. They were all generous. Obviously you have to be a fan, or of the era.  Dee knew better than I who she was and why it mattered.  We ran into the woman volunteer we spoke to earlier.  They spoke briefly about the 60's and having gay men for friends. There was a group forming around the large indoor courtyard. Patti was doing a sound check. 

I had to get going.  G.D. would be back (Y.S. was there to bring in her walker for her).  "Are we cool?" I asked.

"We are cool!"

We went to the Chagall show last year when she really having a hard time.  I think she is doing better now.  There is a process to the whole thing, it is similar to the stages of grief only with lawyers.

I am hoping she enjoys the show.  To be honest, I wish there was more Diego and less Freda.  One of the problems with her work in a show like this is that her paintings tend to be very small which means people crowd around close to them and it is impossible to have any time to just stand and take them in.  There are some spectacular pieces.  I will write more tomorrow.

 This view makes me crazy happy. It is like a surrealist painting.

I have been twice to see the Picasso exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario in the last week and again I fell in love with the building.  The old building in the front is connected to the gallery, it now houses the members' lounge and is one of the oldest buildings in Toronto. It is where you can sip a coffee and watch people do Tai Chi and picnic.  The stair case that juts out from the wall is
is beautiful inside and out.