Our Day at the Museum

Today, I took Vanessa to De Young museum to see the exhibit: Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne, and Beyond: Post-Impressionist Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay. It's a rare opportunity to see these works of art in the same place not to mention this is the last time this collection will be featured outside of France. Normally, babies aren't allowed in this exhibit but I got special permission from an inside connection to take Vanessa in. The weather in San Francisco was 20 degrees colder today than yesterday and the exhibition was a heck of a lot more crowded than I had anticipated but it was absolutely breathtaking. Vanessa handled herself pretty well too. She seemed intrigued by Vincent Van Gogh's famous painting: Starry Night Over the Rhone. The shimmery blue and yellow definitely attracted her attention but soon after she fell asleep in her bjorn. I was fascinated learning about Van Gogh's short-lived one decade career that was filled with so many highs and lows: elations that sparked creativity and times of depression which led to hallucinations and insanity. Had no idea he took his own life, how sad. His creativity was truly genius. Renoir's A Dance in the Country was also one of my favorites. It was so joyful and I loved the brush strokes in this painting. Speaking of brush strokes, my other favorite pieces in this exhibit were actually not Van Gogh, Renoir, Gauguin or Cezanne. They were in fact the intricate collection of pointillist paintings, represented by Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. Pointillism is a neo-impressionist style of painting using thousands of brush stroke dots to create an image. Unless you are standing close to the painting, your eyes can't tell the difference. You can see all details of the image as if it was painted with long brush strokes and only when you are near, you see that the brush strokes are in fact small dots in various colors creating all the amazing details. Absolutely beautiful!