After Cezanne

Yesterday my sis and I went to the Monet exhibition at the National Gallery. It's been here for months on end, but of course we leave it to the second last day to go, and on a long weekend no less, when the crowds were ridiculous. I also threw caution to the wind and drove there. We ended up spending more time circling the building for a park than we did looking at the paintings. When I finally scored one, right near the entrance, I got out and danced around my car screaming "WOOHOO! I've got a park and YOU HAVEN'T!" to passing traffic.

I hate crowds. I always go grocery shopping or to the gym late at night just to avoid people. They annoy me. They smell bad, they're annoying and they talk too loud. So the hoardes of Monet lovers made me feel so claustrophobic and irritable. We had to barge in front of goateed wankers and dumpy old ducks to get a glimpse of anything. I can't remember much. There were some water lillies. Some bridges over water. Some irises. Hmm.

Crikey, I felt like such an ignorant schmuck. I so desperately wanted to be dazzled by the paintings but my lazy old brain just couldn't focus clearly, I was so distracted by the crowds.

(My reaction was better than my mothers, I guess. Mum tries so desperately to sound cultured when we all know she has a stack of Phil Collins CDs at home. She called me up after she went, shrieking like a born-again Christian, "You have to see Monet! The way he uses the light! The light! Oh, Shauna, the light!". And so on with her frightfully obvious commentary. She may as well have said, "The paint! The paint! The way he puts it on the canvas!")

We also saw the gallery's latest accquisition, Lucian Freud's After Cezanne. We started at it silently for a long time, waiting for one of us to come up with something intelligent about it. Finally Rhiannon said, "I've seen less exposure on an episode of Big Brother Uncut"

Fine art conisseurs we ain't.