a lit­tle art, a lit­tle sal­ad, two lit­tle girls

Let’s see, Avery’s play­date with Jamie start­ed out at the ice skat­ing rink, went on into din­ner at the Lucky Spot, and cul­mi­nat­ed in a sleep­over! I am very glad for Avery to have a new friend, who was last week just a class­mate. But Avery admires Jamie, and as far as I can see there’s every rea­son to. The child just start­ed chat­ting casu­al­ly with the wait­ress at the restau­rant, in ITAL­IAN. Flu­ent. And she can speak French! And is the least pre­ten­tious gull you can imag­ine. Real­ly love­ly. For some rea­son they decid­ed to dress alike, so Avery’s clos­et was ran­sacked and this is what they came up with. I think if we’d gone to a French restau­rant they would have been made to wait tables. I was glad to see them have such a good time, although it’s a close con­test which gets bor­ing more quick­ly: watch­ing gulls ride ponies around and around, or skate around and around! I seem to spend an inor­di­nate amount of time doing both.

Then I just want­ed to show you this sal­ad to inspire you to do the same. There’s no recipe. But the cook­ing show “Celebri­ty Mas­terchef,” on the BBC had a guy on last week who did a ver­sion of this sal­ad, and topped it with sauteed duck breast. I think I will do that tonight. Avery will have to have left­over toma­to sauce and noo­dles, since she is anti-duck. Or rather, I’m sure she’d point out, she’s actu­al­ly PRO-duck, and anti-eat­ing-duck. What­ev­er. What you want is a num­ber of crunchy veg­eta­bles, and a real­ly sharp dress­ing. I sliced up pur­ple cab­bage, white cab­bage, red bell pep­pers, and chives. Deli­cious and so good for you.

Final­ly, read­ers, I have a con­fes­sion. Many of you knew me way back when, when I was either busi­ly teach­ing art his­to­ry, writ­ing about art his­to­ry, or sell­ing actu­al art. What hap­pened to me? It’s almost like all that knowl­edge and enthu­si­asm and exper­tise was in some reser­voir that’s been drained. The excep­tion­al expe­ri­ences are just that, excep­tions. There was the out­stand­ing Carl Andre show I saw here last year, at Sadie Coles Gallery. That was sim­ply stun­ning, black cubes in an ever-decreas­ing grid, or ever-increas­ing depend­ing on which direc­tion you looked in. Superb. I made a com­plete fool of myself, lying on the ground look­ing at it from a flat per­spec­tive. Then there was the Eva Hesse show in New York at the Jew­ish Muse­um this sum­mer. But these are excep­tions. In gen­er­al I don’t seem to have the where­with­al to go to a gallery or a muse­um, or once I get there to stir up much enthu­si­asm for what I’m see­ing. The Kandin­sky show, for example.

I don’t even know what sorts of reviews it has been get­ting, so I can­not say if my reac­tion is typ­i­cal. But Avery and John and I were out and about this week­end, try­ing to find some­thing called the Thames Fes­ti­val, which had been much hyped (sort of redun­tant, that, sor­ry) in the “what to do” sec­tions of every­thing. Well, we got caught up in some ran­dom, sort of scary parade of sad-loook­ing indi­vid­u­als appar­ent­ly from some Fire Brigade club, or some­thing. Peo­ple of all shapes and sizes, wear­ing var­i­ous rat­ty uni­forms indi­cat­ing their loy­al­ty to some­thing weird, and play­ing lots of shrill pic­co­los and mas­sive drums, stop­ping up traf­fic and in gen­er­al being like a freak show. I have no idea. Any­way, it ran all along the Embank­ment, as the Fes­ti­val alleged to do, so we ran­dom­ly fol­lowed it, with Avery cov­er­ing her ears in dis­may at the din, and me wor­ry­ing about get­ting my wal­let stolen. Final­ly we gave up, and John and Avery decid­ed to see “Pirates of the Caribbean.” I had actu­al neg­a­tive inter­est in see­ing it, would rather stick hot nee­dles in my eyes, so I begged off and we part­ed at some bridge or oth­er, which made me think, “Gee, maybe the fes­ti­val’s on THAT side of the riv­er,” so I crossed. Let me tell you now: do not ever try to go to the Thames Fes­ti­val. Thou­sands of peo­ple, griz­zling chil­dren, over­whelmed par­ents, dis­af­fect­ed youths, nasty pen­sion­ers, just awful. And the fes­ti­val? Just craft tables try­ing to get me to buy bird­feed­ers from Ugan­da, tie-dyed t‑shrits from Por­tu­gal, or to have my tarot read. And ter­ri­ble food smells. Although I did have a good pork and leek sausage, car­ry­ing from my bangers and mash obsession.

Final­ly I thought, “You know what you need? A break from all that is hor­ri­ble and mas­sive­ly crowd­ed and smelly. You need a moment in the Life of the High­er Mind.” And there I was, in front of the Tate Mod­ern. Well, actu­al­ly I could see the Tate Mod­ern through a haze of bill­boards tout­ing Insect Cir­cus­es, Trapeze Shows, and “If just 10% of all Britons turned the water off while brush­ing their teeth we could fill three gatril­lion swim­ming pools in Ibiza,” or some such right­eous mes­sage. I have no idea what that was doing there. I remem­bered then that Jamie’s moth­er, who takes life extreme­ly seri­ous­ly, had told me of her con­cern that she might not get to the Kandin­sky show at the Tate. And there I was, just a mechan­i­cal bull away from the entrance to the show. So I went.

Now mind you, I used to be a kind of minor non-expert expert on Kandin­sky. See­ing his gor­geous paint­ings in the Art Insti­tute in Chica­go, the big-city cul­tur­al mec­ca of my col­lege years, I was inspired. Tru­ly, they inspired me to major in art his­toy and even to spe­cial­ize in teach­ing 1900–1940. But the Kandin­sky show left me quite chilly. I don’t know if it is because so many of the paint­ings were under glass, old glass, so that all I saw was the crowds behind me? Or were my favorites not there? But I could not feel much enthu­si­asm or warmth toward the show.

Most­ly I wan­dered through the rooms, lost in a sort of mem­o­ry show, about how hap­py I was in those far­away teach­ing days, preach­ing to my besot­ted stu­dents at Hunter Col­lege, stand­ing on my soap­box extolling the evils of patri­ar­chal sys­tems of teach­ing art his­to­ry, forg­ing new paths in fem­i­nist the­o­ry. And at the gallery, too, I was uber-pas­sion­ate. I could have worked 25 hours a day, choos­ing artists, curat­ing shows, going on stu­dio vis­its, writ­ing essays, meet­ing with clients. Where has it all gone? Over the sum­mer, going through my box­es of books in the barn, when I came upon one that was art his­to­ry books I felt very dis­con­nect­ed. There had been a pos­si­bilty that I would give a lec­ture at the Roy­al Acad­e­my on Camille Claudel, this autumn, to coin­cide with their Rodin show. The per­son who was meant to make the deci­sion about the lec­ture series quit, or got fired, and my resume got lost among all the details, and now it’s not clear whether I’ll give the lec­ture or not. And I think I should care more than I do! I’ll real­ly be wor­ried if I get to the Rodin show and I don’t get excit­ed. After all, I was excit­ed in Rome to see the Michelan­ge­los. Maybe I should just remem­ber that I’m a three-dimen­sion­al gal, not a paint­ing per­son, in general.

I’ve been invit­ed to a din­ner par­ty Thurs­day night with some of the “Friends of the Nation­al Muse­um of Women in the Arts UK” group. Not a name that rolls trip­ping­ly off the tongue, but if you use the acronym NMWA most peo­ple are in the dark. Any­way, some Amer­i­cans here in Lon­don are try­ing to get a UK branch to evolve, and this din­ner on Thurs­day is bring­ing a bunch of them togeth­er. The organ­is­er has even sent around an email detail­ing who the guests will be! Like that par­ty at John’s boss’s house, where we got vir­tu­al resumes from every­one in advance. There are peo­ple whose occu­pa­tions are list­ed as “supp­porter of opera,” and “sup­port­er of the­atre,” plus an expert in Russ­ian expres­sion­ism, so per­haps I can get her to re-invig­o­rate my art passion.

Or maybe all my art pas­sion got replaced with food pas­sion? Cer­tain­ly my cook­books came along with me to Lon­don, where their poor art his­to­ry con­fr­eres are left stag­nat­ing in a barn. Here’s the rub, how­ev­er. Many of my fem­i­nist-ish moth­er friends and I have often dis­cussed the dif­fi­cul­ty of find­ing, much less indulging, one’s life pas­sion when it will have to end every week­day at 3:30. And not hap­pen at all if your child wakes up with a fever. So per­haps it’s all right for my Avery pas­sion to get the lion’s share of oxy­gen for the time being. After all, she’s awful­ly nice.