Musings of a Restless Mind

I took a 3 week trip hobo-ing cross country from mid-June to early July. This is the first of what may be a few posts about that trip that took the train from San Diego to Washington DC via Atlanta and Chattanooga.

One of the first museums I visited in Washington DC was the potentially misnamed Smithsonian American Art Museum where I was surrounded by Gaugin, Rodin, Van Gogh, Monet, and many other artists of great renown. I am completely untutored in art, but I have some oddball observations anyway.

Starting from the bottom up, aside from its beauty, I noticed something odd with the life-sized sculpture called Diana’s Companion. Diana is the Roman goddess of the hunt (Artemis for the Greeks) and was depicted with her faithful and adoring hunting dog. The sculptor rendered Diana’s feet and sandals with meticulous detail—except for the little toe on each foot. Each nicely shaped foot had a big toe and 3 realistic toes, separated by a well formed sandal strap, but there was only a hint of the little toe. A small bump folded up against the 4^th toe, extending less than half the length of the adjacent toe.

After seeing this anomaly on the statue of Diana, I couldn’t stop from noticing it on each sculpture I saw. Did people’s toes grow much longer in the last few hundred years, or did sculptors just all make a secret agreement that it wasn’t worth the bother to sculpt such an inconspicuous piece of everyone’s anatomy?

Speaking of inconspicuous, a certain part of the male anatomy was consistently crafted as if seen through the wrong end of a telescope. And not just on the ubiquitous little flying cupids. Any codpiece would be unnecessary on any of these, otherwise well-proportioned males. I haven’t seen so many limp noodles since my last trip to Olive Garden. Was some Vatican censorship involved? From what I’ve heard, the ancient Greeks and Romans were known to insist on more vigorous depictions, even to the point of absurd exaggeration. Just askin’.

On a less jocular note, the dog (the companion of Diana’s Companion) was amazingly realistic, including 2 canine teeth and a curled tongue, reaching up to lick Diana’s bare thigh. I can only imagine how hard that must have been for the sculptor to accomplish.

Now onto more serious topics since I’m trying to think like an artist in order to be able to create digital illustrations for my written works. I couldn’t help but notice that almost every portrait was depicted with one shoulder forward, likely to assist in the illusion of 3-dimensionality. Almost all had their eyes angled slightly to gaze at the artist (and the viewer). The lone exception I saw was the portrait of George Washington whose eyes remained staring fixedly forward even as the artist painted hm from an angled view.

One other thing I noted was that on scenes depicting men and women commingling with nature, many featured a subtly darkened circular background highlighting the central image, drawing my eye to the part the artist wanted me to focus on via a gentle spotlight. A trick to remember for my own attempts at art for book covers.

As a writer though, I’m compelled to make one final observation. Artists use the least imaginative titles for their works. Flowers? Man? (Actually that one might have been because the depictee threatened to sue after seeing the resulting portrait of a man clearly contemplating evil deeds.) Still, one might have found something more than, “girl in a straw hat” to say about a ten-year-old who’s clearly put out and ready to explode into action.

Addendum:

After I visited the east wing of the museum that featured modern art such as Pollock, Picasso, and Klimt, the artists began to use much more imaginative titles, possibly because their abstract art would otherwise be devoid of meaning.