Sea Day, Art Lesson

Sea day, Art lessons                    F 68 (20C)

It must be that time on board is getting to me or the ports we visit just don’t seem to fit what I am looking for while travelling. Not that I feel bored, it’s just not that easy to constantly do nothing. I smile while I write this. Here I am complaining it’s not good to do ‘nothing’. Ah, life is good, right?

One Of the Paintings Outside the Art Store

I spent the day forcing myself to do something ‘new’. I went to the ‘art’ shop they have on board. There was a lecture on Impressionists. This art shop is selling ‘fine art’ pictures of more or less ‘famous’ artists. No, not a Picasso, nor a Van Gogh, but people like Peter Max

Yaakov Agam

Or Romero Britto;

Commercial art so to speak. But the lecture was on the older artist, the Impressionists I know of like Renoir, Degas, Calder, et al. I liked the talks. I could go on and on here about what I learned but I leave it up to you to look up Damien Hirst,

Nano Lopez

or even wacky Ai Weiwei.

What I did not know before was that all of the impressionistic paintings really started with the picture by M.J. Turner. He named his picture "Snow Storm: Steam Boat off a Harbour's Mouth" and that was way back in 1842. Who knew that?

Snow Storm: Steam Boat off a Harbour's Mouth

I wonder if there is a café in NYC where today’s artists meet to talk about how they see the world. Paris, way back was such a place where certain places were meeting spots for artists. Do they have those today?  Send me a note if you know of a bar, restaurant or meeting hall like this.

The old school of painters might have an equivalent in today’s world. But where is that?

I tried playing Trivia, something I had not done before. Yes, I even tried Bingo, but I cannot say I liked it. What is this world coming to, me playing Bingo?

I’d rather talk to the art dealer than talk to any Bingo leader.

I guess the cruise is starting to get to me.

We tried to have crew people for dinner and it was ok with John, the Maitre d’, but then when it came down to it, those crew folks were busy almost every night.

The night's entertainment was Fabio Zini, who played the ‘Flight of the Bumble Bee’, all 1000 notes in 1 minutes 20 seconds. Amazing.

Am I losing it?