Nice day in Hilton Head yesterday with Gabriel and Julia. Pointless visit to a "liquidation sale" at a furniture store this morning in Statesboro. The coldest day so far in Georgia for us - 45 degrees! Burr!
This week's American work of art is Henry Ossawa Turner's The Banjo Lesson, an 1894 work by one of the first African-American painters to achieve fame in both the U.S. and Europe. Turner, a realist who studied for six years in Pennsylvania under his friend Thomas Eakins, is now known for his religious works, but the above work was created during a period when he was bringing nobility, clarity, and empathy to African American portraiture. The painting (which can be seen at the Hampton University Museum in Hampton, Virginia) was done in Paris, Turner's home for the rest of his life after he had moved there in the late nineteenth century. Turner, arguably the most famous black artist of his century, refused to succumb to the stereotypes of black painting, meaning he didn't portray African Americans as caricatures or sentimental, impoverished saints. The banjo, often degraded as an image of black expression, is front and center here, unadorned, an instrument that allows the man to play the part of sage and mentor, teacher, to the curious, attentive boy. It is a work about wisdom, the passing of knowledge. (On a side note, Turner taught middle-class African American students at Atlanta's Clark College for a few years before he moved to Paris.) When he moved abroad, Turner began to focus on religious paintings instead of genre scenes, paintings which were often inspired by his repeated trips to the Holy Land.
Fun fact. I'm watching an American Masters episode devoted to John Muir, the famous naturalist who, among other accomplishments, created the National Park Service, and I find that Muir, after he had left home at the age of twenty-nine for his "1000 mile walk to the coast," stopped during his walk for six nights in Savannah's Bonaventure Cemetery. He almost died of starvation there! He was in love with the live oaks, the Spanish moss, the eagles nesting high in the trees, walking him up with their screams each morning.
There are currently 58 National Parks in America. The closest one to Statesboro, Georgia is Congaree National Park in South Carolina, east of Columbia, about three hours from here. http://www.nps.gov/cong/index.htm. Cool place to maybe visit, no? The largest tract of remaining old-growth floodplain forests on the continent. Floodwater forests are jut what they sound like. When rivers and tributaries overflow, they inundate valleys, farm fields, and forests. In these forests, plants begin to develop that can tolerate the sometimes long barrage of flooding. These forests are always located near rivers and streams (seldom twenty feet above the nearest body of water), containing deciduous and deciduous-conifer trees. The flood waters in these forests recycle sediments and nutrients for the trees and plants.
Julia and I have been on a DVD-buying kick lately. Yesterday, we picked up, among other titles, Derailed, that fun 2005 title with her and Clive Owen. Aniston gets a bad wrap from critics. I can't knock her too much, because I was looking at her resume on IMDB and I found that there were eight movies of Aniston that I out-and-out liked and four I more or less enjoyed modestly.
Movies I liked: Horrible Bosses, The Switch, He's Just Not That Into You, Friends With Money, Derailed, The Good Girl, Office Space, The Object of My Affection.
Moves I enjoyed: Bruce Almighty, Picture Perfect, The Break-Up, Just Go With It.
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