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Drowzees and Masterpieces: Thoughts from London

2016-10-04 · documentary visit · John · 3:24 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Pop culture (also: Personal life) · mode: Personal essay · tags: on location, recurring series

Touring London's galleries, John finds a Lygia Pape thread installation that cannot be photographed and argues that documenting experiences can crowd out having them; looking is not the same as looking through a lens.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Greeting; jet-lagged morning walk through the East End, the Tube, Trafalgar Square

  • ★★ John wakes up jet-lagged in London, walks through the sleepy East End past graffiti and takes the Tube to Trafalgar Square. — 00:00:01 · London

00:00:27 — Mark filming for The Art Assignment; an 'Art Trip: London' video coming soon

  • ★★ John says Mark was filming the day for The Art Assignment, so an 'Art Trip: London' video like this one, but much better, is coming soon. — 00:00:27 · The Art Assignment, London

00:00:34 — Gallery day: National Portrait Gallery, the clock game, Royal Academy, Somerset House masterpieces, Drowzees

  • ★★ At the National Portrait Gallery John reflects that portraits are artworks but also historical artifacts: the pictures we keep show who and what mattered to us. (hedged) — 00:00:41
  • ★★ John sees a brilliant but crowded abstract expressionist show at the Royal Academy and an astonishing number of masterpieces at Somerset House. — 00:01:03
  • ★ John says in a Cézanne landscape at Somerset House you can start to see painting move toward abstraction. — 00:01:19
  • ★ John says a famous Degas painting there was made around the Prussian siege of Paris in 1871, and, per the wall label, Degas paid the model with a hunk of meat she devoured raw. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ After leaving Somerset House John catches some Drowzees and declares London lousy with Drowzees and masterpieces, the video's title line. (playful) — 00:01:51 · London

00:01:56 — Lygia Pape's thread installation: unphotographable art, 'pics or it didn't happen', looking versus looking through a lens

  • ★★★ John says the lines of Lygia Pape's silver-thread installation appear and disappear as you walk around them, beautiful in a way the camera can't capture. — 00:01:56
  • ★★ John says he felt about the room what Ad Reinhardt said of his paintings, unmarketable, unphotographable, unreproducible: he can neither explain nor show it. — 00:02:14
  • ★★★ John argues experiences now barely feel real unless photographed; documenting a meaningful experience can seem more important than having it, as if 'pics or it didn't happen' became true. (hedged) — 00:02:27 · pics or it didn't happen
  • ★★★ John suspects we sometimes do things for the picture, choosing by how our lives will photograph rather than how they make us feel. (hedged) — 00:02:40
  • ★★ John says he cannot tell whether he loves a famous Van Gogh self-portrait or is just excited to see in real life something he has seen in so many reproductions. (unsure) — 00:02:50
  • ★★★ John concludes that looking at something is not quite the same thing as looking at it through a lens. (hedged) — 00:03:01
  • ★★ John notes these are not new questions: the installation was first made in 1977. — 00:03:06
  • ★★ John says what he loves about the installation is that you couldn't look at it through a lens: you had to be there. (hedged) — 00:03:11
  • ★★ After a while in the room John put down his camera and was just there. — 00:03:17

00:03:22 — Sign-off

Humor (significant)

  • Listing the portraits of Queen Elizabeth, Cardinal Wolsey and Thomas Cranmer at the National Portrait Gallery. — 00:00:38

    “many other people who didn’t want you to know they had necks.”

  • John starts playing a game he calls 'Fancy Clock Has The Time Wrong' and reads off London clocks. — 00:00:58

    “Not even close.”

  • Among the Somerset House masterpieces John points to a painting by Goya. — 00:01:45

    “featuring the first recorded incidence of man-spreading.”

  • After the masterpieces John catches some Drowzees. — 00:01:51

    “London is lousy with Drowzees and masterpieces.”

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: London · Lygia Pape · silver-thread installation by Lygia Pape

Also: People: Ad Reinhardt · Camille Pissarro · Edgar Degas · Elizabeth I · Francisco Goya · Georges Seurat · Pablo Picasso · Paul Cézanne · Pierre-Auguste Renoir · Thomas Cranmer · Thomas Wolsey · Vincent van Gogh · Édouard Manet

Projects: The Art Assignment

Works: famous Van Gogh self-portrait seen in London

Organizations: London Underground · National Portrait Gallery, London · Royal Academy of Arts

Places: East End of London · Somerset House · Trafalgar Square

Characters: Drowzee

Memes: pics or it didn't happen

Only in the description or credits: Mark · Thoughts from Places

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