At SAM

Had a lovely coffee hour with a good friend this morning… then H and I took the granddaughters to the Seattle Art Museum to see the Kehinde Wiley show (see description when we took the grandsons a while back HERE.)   I’m working on some photos inspired by these paintings  (the extra in this blip) and wanted the girls to have an appreciation for that source.   They looked at everything.  Patiently.  We got to the end with the women all dressed up in fancy gowns and I asked them for their opinion.   Fiona said she liked those but her FAVORITE painting was…… and she dragged me back though most of the exhibit til we came to “Judith and the Head of Holofernes”… she liked that detached head and the drop of blood on the sword (which she later drew) .It is  based on Mantegna and Titian's 's versions of the biblical story.   (there is a great app that shows you the referenced pieces and give lots  of interesting tidbits about the painting.,  even H was scanning with his iphone!  ) Later I asked her what she thought that was all about and she answered without any hesitation, “well, the black woman"  (in the givenchy gown) "could have been a slave and cut off the head of her master" (it was a white woman’s head) .  Later she told H that it’s not right for a person to own another person.   They liked the street clothes on many of the figures, and of course we missed a lot of the references and symbols,  but all in all a worthwhile trip I’d say.
Except that the photos are crappy.   Lots of people on a saturday afternoon when the exhibition is closing soon and  the light on this painting was hard to get in 5 nanoseconds, but it had to be the recorded one anyway.   One more in the extra of the Haitian series…and a sit down time extra in a sunny corner of SAM where Fi leisurely drew on a Wiley card....


and now we’re getting ready for the island tomorrow……yea!!     Hoping life will slow down....and I'll catch up a little....