Tuesday, October 19, 2004

Speaking of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum...


El_Jaleo
Originally uploaded by JoBiv!.

I have no idea who this girl is, but she looks like fun. Click away.

My favorite painting has suffered from my neglect. I should go visit. This is El Jaleo by John Singer Sargent. There are, I believe, at least two other Sargents in the museum. One is a portrait of Isabella herself with the backdrop of an oriental rug, its pattern like a halo or crown around her head. The other... well I just think there's another, but I don't recall which. I know the MFA has that one with the four little girls in the big room... forget what it's called but it's amazing.

I bring up this painting because my roommate gave me a kind of compliment last night. I was busy putting leftover chicken on this one wine colored plate we have. I said, "I love this plate," because I often say happy things like that. She said something like, "That plate makes me think of you." That may sound odd to you. It did to me. She qualified the statement: "That COLOR makes me think of you."

As darling as it is that the H-Bomb thinks of me (I hope it's a happy, yay-I-have-a-decent-roomie kind of thought) when she sees that shade of red, I kind of like the fact that she associates me with the color. It's one of my favorite colors, and I didn't think I wore it so much as I must. I guess I chose that color as an identity at some point. I want to be more like it - deep and a little mysterious, with hints of both sensuality and joviality.

I was thinking of how a plate could remind H-Bomb of me, and it led me to this thought: I always think of the color yellow when I think of that Sargent painting. Why? Because you almost say "yellow" when you say "El Jaleo?" Because of it's placement in the museum among Moroccan artifacts and tiles, and Morocco makes me think of sun on sandy walls and they are slighty yellow? I've never been to Morocco, so I could be full of crap about that. It could be the proximity of the painting to the inner courtyard garden - perhaps a yellow lily I saw there... Maybe it's the unnatural light hitting the dancer's arms and face and casting her into such dramatic shadow.

I have no idea.

But I used to wear yellow all the time when I was wee. A series of school portraits from grade two to maybe six show my face in various summer-tanned shades, my shoulders and chest in a bright banana-yellow shirt. I remember each outfit very clearly. I chose each one because it was not pink, foremost, and also because I always thought yellow was the equivalent of softness. Who would make a yellow shirt out of burlap? No one. Yellow is the color of chick feathers and lemon merangue.

At any rate, I'm taking votes from the Peanut Gallery. When did I go red, as it were?

HAHahahahaha... I just thought of the big U! Perhaps I've found the answer. Still taking votes.

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