A drizzly day of getting things sorted out. Emily took the laundry to a place that will give it back tomorrow. We went to the nearest post office for stamps and to mail a card, and upon leaving found ourselves in Covent Garden. We walked under a flower arch – my ideal photo op.
The Jubilee Market featured rows of tables selling vintage bits and bobs; silverware, beaded reticules, costume jewelry, and, befitting season 2 of Bridgerton, an ivory dance card. It had a high-end Estate Sale vibe. I bought a commemorative coin for a friend and Em found a ring she liked.
Picked up a baguette from le Pain Quotidian. We got takeout Thai coconut soup and I popped what I thought was a baby carrot in my mouth. Wrong. A hotter than the surface of the sun pepper. I spit it out but not before a few vigorous chews ignited the inside of my mouth and burned like holy hellfire. Yikes.
After a restorative nap, I trotted over to the National and stopped in front of this painting of Venus at her toilet.
I noticed not only the luscious pearl earring held aloft in Cupid’s fingers, but precisely how it corresponds to Venus’s anatomy.
Was it intended as a pictorial guide for the fumbling males of the aristocracy? I know it was not placed there by accident. I could argue it’s the intentional focus of the entire work. Welcome to the Devil’s doorbell, gentlemen. I’ll leave it there.
This man has a stern expression, but it’s completely at odds with the small dog gazing up at him worshipfully, wearing a jaunty red bow. And are those bells on his collar?
Just before I left for the day. I watched the media installation by Kehinde Wiley, Prelude, 2021: a six-channel digital film shot in Norway of black men and women in snowy fjords. They traipsed through a frigid glacial landscape pelted with snowflakes – a compelling metaphor for living as a black person in a world controlled mainly by whites. “What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it.”
I’m still thinking about it.
Thank you for the Kehinde Wiley quote. Very worth pondering. And for the fabulous photographs.
MRJ
To be clear, the quote is by Emerson, chosen by Wiley for inclusion in his film.