As you might have already noticed without my help, about 18 months ago the world was hit with a pandemic (or giant hoax depending on your political persuasions and level of gullibility) and we were all told to stay inside and not go anywhere or do anything until Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow and Dr. Anthony Fauci came on national TV and shouted, “Olly olly oxen free!”
So I did what I was supposed to do and killed time by re-reading everything Elmore Leonard and John Stanford and John Connolly wrote and I’m currently up to Season 5 of 30 Rock, but now I’m vaccinated for pretty much everything including rabies, distemper and hoof and mouth disease.
And now that I’m chock full of Bill Gates’ microchips, I’ve started re-entering the world and doing things I might not have done before I spent 18 months in solitary confinement and if someone told me there were two dogs fornicating on their lawn, I’d rent a tux and buy a ticket to watch that, because right now I’ll do just about anything that gets me out of the house.
That being the case:
I decided to go see an exhibit of Vincent Van Gogh’s work being held here in Kansas City and because I don’t really pay attention to details (there’s a 50-50 chance I agreed to give away my first-born male child when I signed up for AT&T Direct TV) I thought the exhibit was being held at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art mainly because the ad said The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art was presenting the exhibit (at Starlight Theatre) which is kind of like the New York Yankees saying they’re presenting a baseball game (being held in Albany.)
And to further confuse things, after being Van Gogh-less for years, Kansas City now has two Van Gogh exhibits…sort of; Van Gogh Alive and the Immersive Van Gogh although the Immersive Van Gogh sold tickets and told people it was being held at a “secret” location and the secret seemed to be that they didn’t actually have a location and now that show is postponed until February, so if you want to see a Van Gogh exhibit right now this minute, you want Van Gogh Alive which is not being held at The Nelson-Atkins Museum which is presenting it and if all that strikes you as confusing, now you know why I mistakenly went to the Nelson-Atkins Museum to see a show that wasn’t there.
Barely-related story alert
Can’t remember where I read this, but I did read it and it’s such a good story I don’t want to screw it up with unwarranted fact-checking.
The “Nelson” of “Nelson-Atkins Museum” was William Rockhill Nelson (which may or may not be Willie Nelson’s full name) and he was the publisher of the Kansas City Star and back then the Star newsroom was set up with absolutely everybody in it and the most senior people were against the South wall and that included Willie Rock the Publisher and the Mayor of Kansas City was pissed off about something the Star wrote and came into the newsroom and threatened to “thrash” the less-than-in-tip-top-shape Nelson.
(Back then, people did not belong to gyms; they ate prime rib and smoked cigars and drank brandy and stayed in shape by carrying canes and “thrashing” anyone of an inferior station who displeased them and if you think that sounds bad, the men were even worse.)
So seeing their rotund employer about to get thrashed, some of the Star reporters grabbed the Mayor of Kansas City and threw him down the newsroom steps – which let’s face it, is fucking awesome – and the Mayor pulled out a pistol – which is fucking awesomer – and just then the livestock reporter was coming up the steps and pulled a gun of his own and put it to the Mayor’s head and said:
“Not so fast, Your Honor.”
Which is the most awesome thing of all and one of the coolest lines I’ve ever heard, assuming it actually happened and let’s all hope it did.
Anytime someone starts whining about how public civility is at an all-time low, just remember that people used to carry guns and threaten each other and there’s another story about some newspaper editor in St. Louis shooting a reader who came in with a complaint because the editor thought the reader was about to pull a gun of his own and I gotta think that really screwed up the editor’s Customer Satisfaction Survey which is one of the things we used to get rated on at the Star and maybe demonstrates why it’s a bad idea for everyone to walk around packing heat.
Back to our story…
So the Nelson-Atkins wasn’t actually showing the Van Gogh stuff, but since I was there anyway I walked around to see what they had and wandered through the Block Building which is filled with Modern Art like a Mark Rothko painting which appears to be a black square, which symbolizes man’s inhumanity to man, or someone looking into the abyss of their own soul or Mark’s crying need to get down to the art store and buy more paint.
(I have since talked to one of my sons – a Rothko fan – who insists that if you sit in front of a Rothko painting and give it time, you will experience your own birth or Jimi Hendrix playing the National Anthem or your favorite episode of Happy Days and I’m not saying that isn’t true, but I am saying I don’t have the patience for that and if I want a mind-altering experience involving the color black I’d probably watch the Road Runner cartoon where the Coyote paints a tunnel on a rock and the Road Runner – who was probably sky high on peyote – runs through it.)
Let’s face it: I’m a Fucking Philistine (which I believe is the legal name of the Philadelphia Phillies) and would probably be more likely to put a painting of Dogs Playing Poker on my wall than Rothko’s “Black on Maroon” unless I heard how much “Black on Maroon” is worth, which according to the internet is $25 to $35 million.
After staring at the Rothko painting, I was trying to have an open mind about what “art” is and walked by the Nelson lobby which was filled with purple sheets of fabric hung on frames and a bunch of women were fussing around with the fabric and now that I was an Open-Minded-Art Lover I asked what the exhibit was all about and what I was supposed to get out of it and a woman said:
“We’re about to have a banquet and we’re cleaning the table cloths.”
I asked her to direct me to the exhibit of framed napkins, which reminds me of another story about some smartass giving a monkey paint and canvasses and the results being shown to Bigtime Art Critics who opined on the meaning of what they were seeing and when it was revealed that the paintings were done by a monkey, one of the art critics said:
“Yes, but he’s a monkey with a lot to say.”
That story was told to me by my friend, the late, great political cartoonist, Jeff MacNelly and I miss talking to him any day I think about it. Now here’s a link to the monkey story:
http://hoaxes.org/archive/permalink/pierre_brassau_monkey_artist
The Van Gogh Alive exhibit
So a couple days later I finally get to the Starlight Theatre and the main part of the exhibit is a 42-minute slide show which it turns out I actually enjoy because it forces you to slow down and pay attention (which, as we’ve already seen is not my best thing) and see Van Gogh’s art chronologically and at the pace they want you to see it.
The art is accompanied by things Van Gogh said or wrote and if he were alive today he’d probably have a big career putting quotes on T-shirts and maybe we could have avoided that ear surgery and subsequent suicide.
The above photo is me sitting on a reproduction of Van Gogh’s bed in Van Gogh’s apartment which was reproduced the way he painted it and it turns out his apartment was shaped like a trapezoid which I gotta think didn’t help his mental state because Vincent probably looked at his apartment and said:
“Is the room getting smaller at that end or am I crazy?”
Sitting on the bed reminded me that when I was invited to lecture at Harvard (let’s take a moment while my name-dropping sinks in) they mistakenly thought I was someone important and let me stay in John F. Kennedy’s dorm room and I slept in JFK’s bed, which made me ask the Harvard guy that let me in the room the obvious question:
“Have you guys changed the sheets since he was here?”
The last photo is the Sunflower Room and those are real sunflowers and smell terrific and they’ve extended the show so if you want to smell sunflowers in the middle of winter, I’d highly recommend Van Gogh Alive and I’ll post a link because if nothing else it’s another chance to get out of the house and you’ve already missed your chance to see that fascinating exhibition of table cloths.
Have a good weekend.