I went with two friends yesterday to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA),, specifically to see its newly installed Modern Art collection. It took us at least two hours to gaze at the art, listen to the commentary, and soak in the works by mostly familiar artists from the 1900 to the 1960s. There were concentrations of work by Pablo Picasso, Alberto Giacometti, Kathe Kollwitz and other not so well known women artists, Diego Rivera, amongst wonderful examples of paintings, sculptures, assemblages, wood cuts, lithographs, and drawings. I urge you to go – even if you’re not in the neighborhood. It’s well worth the trip. And it’s well worth your aching feet and back when you leave the scene. I, for sure, am going back. There is so much there to revisit - over and over. Maybe someone out there wants to join me. … [Read more...]
I love The Handmaid’s Tale
I'm reading Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, and I can't even wait to finish it to praise it. Atwood's imagination and writing are enthralling. She makes me want to study with her to learn how she does it. This is a book about an imagined time, yet the story is so believable how a woman who once had a job, money, a husband, and a child now is no longer even allowed to read. Her ovaries are her only redeeming feature. She now must lie with the Commander and his wife once a month, hopefully to give them the baby she conceives. Atwood writes: But isn't this everyone's wet dream, two women at once? They used to say that. Exciting, they used to say. The Handmaid is the narrator. In a particularly beautiful passage she discusses time: There's time to spare. This is one of the things I wasn't prepared for the amount of unfilled time, the long parentheses of nothing. Time as white sound. If only I could embroider. Weave, knit, something to do with my hands. I want a … [Read more...]
