Daturas

Spent the last 2 days in Boston looking at art and listening to music. The MFA has a Degas show that is comprised of just his nudes. The majority of the pieces are monotypes and monotypes with pastel over drawings. Overall, the show has a feeling of works done as exercises in form and composition studies. The figures don't seem to change at all over the decades, same poses, same line, same palette. There are 4 paintings (that I remember), one of which is strong. The others are either unfinished or appear student-like. The other viewing was of Draw/Dance at the ICA. I liked this show with it's experimental and expressive forms of line. The works suggested the use of line to express or illustrate an event or personal experience. The materials were unorthodox from yarn to metal to video. In the evening we attended the Christmas Revels as Sanders Theater in Harvard's Memorial Hall. Sanders Theater was inspired by Christopher Wren's Sheldonian concert hall at Oxford. The space is beautifully covered in rich dark wood. The Revels concert was not so good this year. It used a play format that was in the genre of a children's play. I would have preferred more singing. So...when we got home I used the remaining daylight to paint a bit.