Time and Place: 9:30 Sunday morning (I slept in), at my main computer at home.
Reading: This week I finished two books, Michael Pye’s The Edge of the World: A Cultural History of the North Sea and the Transformation of Europe and John David Anderson’s delightful Granted. I’m now at that great moment where I get to choose my next book – but haven’t yet!
Viewing: With the end of FilmStruck in just a few days, I’ve been engaging in a bit of a marathon of film watching, more or less a double-feature every day. I’ve completed watching the early Ingrid Bergman films included in the Eclipse DVD set Ingrid Bergman’s Swedish Years, seen a bunch of Japanese films from the 1950s through 1970s (perhaps my favorite segment of film history), and even made room for classics like last night’s viewing of Leo McCarey’s The Awful Truth, with the unbeatable combination of Cary Grant and Irene Dunne. I’ll miss FilmStruck very much, but also look forward to the new Criterion Channel on its way in a few months.
Listening: Not a lot of music in my life this week, although I’ve been enjoying Recurrence, featuring the Iceland Symphony Orchestra conducted by Daniel Bjarnason playing works by contemporary Icelandic composers.
Blogging: The main accomplishment this week was a look at Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies by Ross King, an excellent book that enhanced my already-considerable appreciation of Monet’s late paintings. All of that Monet has inspired me to do another blog post on the connections between Monet’s work and Japanese art and gardens. Coming soon to a blog near you…
Pondering: I will soon be taking off for a few days in San Francisco, during which I will be taking in several art exhibitions, including two I’ve been looking forward to for quite a while: Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World at SFMOMA, and Gauguin: A Spiritual Journey at the de Young Museum. By the way, I will be Tweeting throughout my trip, so I invite you to follow me on Twitter for all the fun.
And finally: This Tom Gauld cartoon says it all…
Thirty-Two Minutes 