Dammit, I'm sleeping in tomorrow...
Had to be up early so the cubs and I could catch a lift into the city with their father. It was fun though, we went to the Gallery. : )
We were there as it opened so there weren't many visitors, in fact there were more security personnel than anyone else! Kinda weird, that, especially when I noticed the cubs and I were being discreetly shadowed everywhere we went. What? What damage could they possibly think 2 eight-year old boys could cause? <bg>
Wasn't able to linger long anywhere (the trick to keeping the cubs interested was to keep moving, alas) but got some glimpses of some magical stuff. One painting (by Hillier, I think, early 20th century) really gave me the impression of clear, bright, harsh sunlight, the sort of light you get in places where there's a lot of sky. He'd achieved it, as far as I could tell, by making the edges and outlines of the building razor sharp, without using a dark colour to outline them.
And in another painting (French, 1880's) the artist had captured that luminous, 3D quality of an overcast sky - amazing.
The Gallery has a reasonable collection of Egyptian artifacts, and Greek, but not a lot of Roman which was a bit disappointing. However, one day I will get in there on my own for a proper browse.
Jackson Pollock's 'Blue Poles No.11' is in Melbourne at the moment, on loan from the Canberra Gallery. My family and I lined up for ages to see it when it was first exhibited in the 1970's (at the time it was the most expensive piece of art the National gallery had ever bought - very controversial) and I don't remember being that impressed. This time, however... There was a very soothing quality to it, I would've like to spend a long time just looking at the canvas and absorbing. Heh, next time, maybe. (Watched a documentary on Pollock a while ago where some computer geeks had discovered he'd apparently, instinctively, used fractals in his work. Very interesting.)
It was quite a surprise seeing how big some of these paintings actually were after mostly looking at copies in artbooks. Gives you a completely different take on some of them. I have to say though I generally don't like the Romantic school of art - far too melodramatic. I mean, come on, a mother sheep defiantly standing guard over her dead lamb against wolves in a howling blizzard? <rolls eyes> Puh-lease...
The gift-shop was lots of fun too, probly just as well I didn't have any money. I will be going back for a print of Blue Poles ($35 Aus) and possibly a print of that Japanese woodcut of the wave with Mt. Fuji in the background ($15 Aus). And then there was the hundreds of art books... <happy sigh>

The cubs and I went for a walk to fill in the time between them having had enough of Art and their father picking us up. I bumped into one of my high-school teachers, Ms Varrasso! Actually, she wasn't my teacher, she was senior school maths/science and I was very definitely fuzzy subjects, but I've always liked her. We chatted for a while and I've promised to send her a copy of 'Dancing' when it's published... <g>

I think the cubs enjoyed themselves but most likely wont want to go back there for a while. Heh, and there's still the Gallery of Australia to visit. : )