...except tell you to run, not walk to the Hopper exhibit at the National Gallery. Really something else to see the paintings you have seen thousands of times up close and in the flesh. His women, they're not quite right, they're too muscular on top with no hips, almost like men, but they work splendidly, they reminded me of the the Cumaean and Delphic Sybils from the Sistine Chapel, which I spent an hour staring up at a bit ago -- and they're so feminine, Hopper's lonely women, despite those traits, it's quite incredible. Although the Delphic Sybil as Michealangelo depicted her in my view is the ultimate female, the arms, the touch of red curls under the headscarf that calls to mind Boticelli's Venus rising from the foam, the draped robes in their vivid oranges and blues. So to me, Hopper's solitary women are beautiful the way the Sybils are beautiful.
Anyway, go run and see it in the East Wing, and if you have time, stop at the JMW Turner exhibit in the West wing of the Gallery, a really sweeping exhibit of Turner's paintings, it was an education. Such beautiful scenes and such a use of light and color. Enough for the evening.
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interesting how the delphic sybil and the statue David have similar right wrists. Never noticed David was left-handed until now. Given that the origin of the word "sinister" implied "left-handed," does that mean Michelangelo, in his read of David v. Goliath, was trying to say might makes right, so to speak?
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