Art

My 'Taste' In Art

Never were scare quotes more appropriate. I issue this warning/disclaimer because if you disagree with any of my thoughts and comments below, you're probably right and I'm wrong. OK?

EU is Full of Art

Not just the Buckethead Cellphone Guy, whom we discovered was an art in a previous blog, but arts made by the acknowledged, such as the painter (and sculptor) Picasso and even the xoodozhnik Nicolas de Stael. Art is everywhere, from the windows and columns of the castles and cathedrals I refused to mention in previous touristy blogs to actual museums and galleries, which are impossible to avoid if you're traveling with people who have a far less casual relationship with art than I do. Certain people feel an empty wall is a sin, and an unencumbered horizontal surface is a failure. If you're traveling with a camera, you take pictures.

Picasso Museum in Antibes

The Man Himself.	Bull sculpture*	A painting - Mother and Children Playing
	<LEFT
	Those are what I call "art words" and the English translation involves torn posters and torn papers. But the interesting thing to me is that it only becomes a "Little Girl" on careful inspection. Otherwise it's ominous indeed.
	RIGHT>
	The Man Himself. Hope he isn't canceled in some future age because he's been caught smoking. An odd thing about his museum is that there's so many non-Picasso arts in the building, which is quite substantial. Possibly he wasn't prolific enough to fill it along with all the other Picasso museums.

St. Paul de Vence

From the internet, this quote from someone or perhaps an AI: "Saint-Paul-de-Vence is a village that is likely to surprise you with its history and traditions. The village abounds in multiple architectural treasures with its decorated chapel in the south Mediterranean, its churches and alleys in the charm of old." We visited, had a nice lunch and then took a walk. The walk involved passing several art galleries and souvenir vendors.

One especially engaging emporium was the Galerie "Le Capricorne" which had some extremely colorful and interesting pieces.

They also had some wall-hangable arts that looked sort-of-3D-ish and were very colorful as well. We almost bought one until, with some difficulty, we determined that an English language on-art-graffitum wasn't entirely suitable either for a family-friendly blog or a family-friendly wall.

I can't begin to blog about all the art that one sees, deliberately or accidentally, in Europe. Just the photos I took on this relatively short trip would exhaust my patience and surely yours as well. For example, one tiny section on one of many enormous stained glass windows we saw in Prague was pointed out to us as depicting King Wenceslas as a child. (He's the one in the right.)

My Own Art

As an aside, I have neither artistic talent nor pretensions, but I have been developing my own palette of a sort, and occasionally photograph an art-in-progress. Absent over- or even underwhelming demand for a demonstration of my technique, I shall spare us all, at least for now. One hint: The medium is peanut butter and the instrument I use to commit the art is a fork.

We Now Leave Europe Behind**

And return to the usual random walk that this blog routinely perpetrates. Coming up, though, is a trip to Los Alamos.

The Ice Cream Sandwich Conundrum

Although I've noticed this many times, it finally achieved the status of an Observation instead of just an unremarkable oddity. Every time I eat an ice cream sandwich, the coating ends up sticking to my fingers by the time I'm done. This is constant across brands, and has been constant across the decades. And I've been eating ice cream sandwiches for a long, long time! Is it that there's only one government-approved coating? Does the brown sticky stuff have some remarkable insulating property that can't be duplicated? Is there a "standard of identity" for an ice cream sandwich that makes a less messy coating commercially unsuitable? Or is it that licking one's fingers is part of the experience? Someone out there must know!

*Found on the internet for $74.99. I strongly suspect it's not the original, but I kind of like it. I'm out of horizontal surfaces, though.
** Perhaps not entirely. Noting that I've been to Prague, you're probably puzzled about where my blog on the notorious and spectacular Astronomical Clock might be. How could I, after having my picture taken at the door to Hell, neglect this Wonder of Prague? Perhaps we'll both live long enough to see it.

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