Tonight after our respective appointments ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch and I ventured out into the bone-aching wind chill because otherwise Ancient Nubia Now was going to leave the MFA before I had a chance to see it. It closes on Monday, but if you are local and have not made a visit, I strongly recommend you do so. It's a monumental and meticulously beautiful exhibition and it confronts the historical distortions of the civilization that flourished for more than three thousand years in the Sudanese Nile Valley as much as it celebrates the civilization itself. I have seen some of its objects before in the museum's collections; they are better in context, a complex history of conflict and coexistence and just plain existence memorialized in gold and faience and rock crystal and carnelian and fragile wood and polished granodiorite and intricately netted gazelle-skin. Photographs of pyramids. Reproductions of funeral beds. A shrine of weathered sandstone from which the god has been scooped, leaving only the adoring carven kings to either side. I am not normally into video interviews, but the four here are well-chosen, especially the photographer for whom time is just the other side of a border and the student who speaks of finally seeing herself and her young sisters as queens. The illuminated display of shwabtis is a beautiful installation in its own right. Also I really want to read Pauline Hopkins' Of One Blood (1902) now.
1. Before my appointment, I bought a pistachio-and-cherry tart from the Tatte on Main Street and walked down to the water-split roadway of Edwin H. Land Boulevard to check out the ex-drawbridge I had noticed last week. There were clouds piled so low on the horizon they looked like a second, snow-capped skyline. I had brought a coffee cup of hot water against the very bright and icy afternoon, but then I forgot that I would have to take my gloves off in order to take pictures on my phone and in any case I was standing around watching the water of the canal ruffle under the wind like cormorant feathers, feeling the metal decking of the disused bridge leaves vibrate with every passing car. I reproduce below the captions with which I sent the photos to Rob. ( Is like drifting in fog. )
2. I found this rather nice set of screenshots from Casting the Runes (1979), including a much finer-grained look at the "fearful fiend" than you get in the panic-jolt real time of the film. I want to do something myself with that smoked-glass winter landscape.ashlyme gave me a title a few days ago; maybe it belongs.
3. Courtesy ofhandful_ofdust: I have never heard great things about The Return of Doctor X (1939), but apparently I don't care so long as it contains hot mad science Humphrey Bogart. On a similar theme: mad scientists and their assistants.
I must sleep before Arisia.
spatch and I ventured out into the bone-aching wind chill because otherwise Ancient Nubia Now was going to leave the MFA before I had a chance to see it. It closes on Monday, but if you are local and have not made a visit, I strongly recommend you do so. It's a monumental and meticulously beautiful exhibition and it confronts the historical distortions of the civilization that flourished for more than three thousand years in the Sudanese Nile Valley as much as it celebrates the civilization itself. I have seen some of its objects before in the museum's collections; they are better in context, a complex history of conflict and coexistence and just plain existence memorialized in gold and faience and rock crystal and carnelian and fragile wood and polished granodiorite and intricately netted gazelle-skin. Photographs of pyramids. Reproductions of funeral beds. A shrine of weathered sandstone from which the god has been scooped, leaving only the adoring carven kings to either side. I am not normally into video interviews, but the four here are well-chosen, especially the photographer for whom time is just the other side of a border and the student who speaks of finally seeing herself and her young sisters as queens. The illuminated display of shwabtis is a beautiful installation in its own right. Also I really want to read Pauline Hopkins' Of One Blood (1902) now.1. Before my appointment, I bought a pistachio-and-cherry tart from the Tatte on Main Street and walked down to the water-split roadway of Edwin H. Land Boulevard to check out the ex-drawbridge I had noticed last week. There were clouds piled so low on the horizon they looked like a second, snow-capped skyline. I had brought a coffee cup of hot water against the very bright and icy afternoon, but then I forgot that I would have to take my gloves off in order to take pictures on my phone and in any case I was standing around watching the water of the canal ruffle under the wind like cormorant feathers, feeling the metal decking of the disused bridge leaves vibrate with every passing car. I reproduce below the captions with which I sent the photos to Rob. ( Is like drifting in fog. )
2. I found this rather nice set of screenshots from Casting the Runes (1979), including a much finer-grained look at the "fearful fiend" than you get in the panic-jolt real time of the film. I want to do something myself with that smoked-glass winter landscape.
ashlyme gave me a title a few days ago; maybe it belongs.3. Courtesy of
handful_ofdust: I have never heard great things about The Return of Doctor X (1939), but apparently I don't care so long as it contains hot mad science Humphrey Bogart. On a similar theme: mad scientists and their assistants.I must sleep before Arisia.
