taken for a fool

We planned to go museum hopping today. With the amount of time we spent at the first one, it ended up just being a museum hop.

Bright, but not that early, we went to the Musees Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique. A line greeted us at the entrance but once we got in, it was a fairly uninhabited museum. No crowds of headphoned people or tour groups. There were a couple bands of school children but they were quiet and didn't hog the whole place.

The museum was not designed to follow how people think and navigate unfamiliar places. It took a while to locate the way to the main exhibit. There were open doors leading to unutilized rooms and exhibits devoted to the World Expo that was held in Brussels in 1958.

Once we finally found the main exhibit, it was a long slow journey through centuries of art. Van Der Weyden was there. They had an extensive collection of Brueghel pieces(several by various each member of the family). I love the pre-surrealist surrealist work. Brueghel’s weird scene of animals falling from the sky was followed up a few rooms later by some Hieronymus Bosch (The Temptation of St. Anthony specifically, and a sane looking piece). The museum boasted, along with its Brueghel’s, a magnificent collection of Rubens. And grandiose they were. Huge. A gigantic room filled with paintings of unimaginable size. No one paints like this anymore. The room they were stored in was absurdly cold and thus I could not stay and look at them for as long as I would have liked to. The museum had a very extensive amount of 16th through 18th century paintings. The styles flowed together and made for a good timeline of the revolutions in art. That museum is a textbook in itself with very few gaps.

Further mishaps occurred when we tried to find the modern section of the museum. The wing was closed till 2pm for whatever reason and when we got in, it was still roped off. We had to talk to someone to have it opened. The modern floors had a beautiful variety. They seemed to show more choice and selection in the examples shown. Each was clearly a definition of one movement. While Bosch's triptych was upstairs, Dali's version of the same scene was its singular self down here. With Dali were Magritte, Matisse, Picasso(his piece has a spit shield), Seurat, Rodin, and others. They had a Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones painting and that thrilled me to see it in person. Great collection, and some iffy conceptual contemporary art as well.

Of all the new artists that I saw, Gustaf(or Gustave) Wappers' work was some of my favorite. Couldn't find a book of his work though. Bummer. He is a Belgian Romantic.

For lunch we ate at the museum cafe. Shared a sandwich and a chocolate mousse.

The disappointment, then joy, then confusion, then supreme disappoint was my quest to see Jacques-Louis David's Marat Assassine/Death of Marat. At first it wasn't where my guide book said it should be (lower level four). The lady tended the floor told me that it was upstairs. I figured I must have missed it by accident (even though I combed all the rooms to make sure I didn't miss a masterpiece). I asked again and it turned out it was upstairs, just behind a locked door and not open for the public to view that day. It might be open tomorrow, maybe. I don't think I'll come back for a maybe. That is one of the most notable pieces they have in their collection and they don't have it out in grand display? The Night Watch had its own room!

We got to the museum at around 10am. We left for the Cartoon Museum at 3:30ish. Inside was a huge shop and a group of American kids sitting about drawing. They seemed nice. I made eye contact with one and he gave me a weird look. After the exhaustive walk in the previous museum, I didn't have the energy to behold all the work contained in this one. I focused heavily on Herge and other artists who caught my eye immediately. I took notes on who I liked and I hope I can look them up again later based upon my writing. They had sculptures and sets from various comics, original pages, biographies of the more notable artists, a summary of how comics are made, and just image after image from what had to be ever Belgian and French comic artist from the forties to sixties. I'm sure there were other decades but that gave me that generation was presented stronger than others. The more I learn, the more I can separate styles. I used to think that Tintin and Blake & Mortimer were both done by Herge! How foolish I was.

The book shop had a lot of comics but no where to really start from. Didn't know how to find anything that I had just seen. There was a guide book to Belgian comic artists but it didn't have English and the pictures were not big enough to justify its purchase.

We relaxed and then went to La Bottega for dinner again. I had four cheese penne. It was delicious and I finished it off. Dad and I shared a tiramisu and the waiter convinced me to eat the berry that was on it. I think it was a rosehip. I don't think I was supposed to eat it and the waiter was just fooling me. They are a silly bunch, those boys at Bottega.