The past few days have been fairly quiet and we are realizing that we have finally hit the wall….you can only go SO many days without rest!!!
Anyway, on Monday morning, I decided to walk to the Modern Arts Museum which is about 1.5 miles away. I started out walking down the Via Venito…one of the more expensive streets in town. I knew that I was out of my league when I came across the Versace and Mont Blanc store and passed all of the fancy hotels with the doormen. Also, the street cafes are completely enclosed in glass….no auto fumes with their wine!!!
As I approached the Museum I could see that the doors were closed which is NOT a good sign. Sure enough, it was closed on Monday so my walk had been in vain. Instead I wandered (you cant go anywhere in a straight line) around the Borghese Park, seeing a couple of interesting sculptures on the way…..
I dropped down into the Piazza del Popolo……
which is dominated by the church, Santa Maria del Popolo.
The church was similar to others, but this one had two impressive Carvaggio paintings. The first was “The Crucifixion of St. Peter”…..
and “The Conversion on the Way to Damascus”…..
Both of these were on side walls in a small chapel and were very hard to see.
I left the church and continued to wander, ending up on the other side of the Arno River. This area was mostly government buildings so I saw a LOT of taxis and men in suits, however, I did see a couple of fun things. First of all is this wonderful doorstop…..
and the second was this very exciting bead shop…..
The shop keeper was very disappointed that I didn’t want him to use my beads to make a necklace. I could never get the point across that I was going to use them for embellishments on fiber art projects!!!
I ended the day at Piazza Navona, spending about 30 minutes just sitting and watching people. It was interesting to watch the hawkers selling their products, the people walking around eating gelato, others jockeying for a position to take a photo of the fountain and the potential pick-pockets circling the edge of the plaza looking for targets!!
I like the fountain, but especially this horse…..
On Tuesday morning I did make the trip to the Museum of Modern Art of Rome. As I entered I wondered exactly WHAT constituted modern art and was pleased to find that they had a wide variety of art.
I especially enjoyed the large open rooms with little adornment….I have had TOO much glitz lately!!! My favorite room was one with monochromatic paintings and mixed media projects. In particular there was a cross done by Alberto Burri that I really liked. The entire piece was black metal, with the cross image burnished on the metal…..it was very striking. Another was several layers of thick plastic sheeting with splotches of paint on them. The dimension that was created was amazing.
Many of the sculptures were more modern. My favorite was a black marble man who was sitting on a marble slab and chiseling words on it. The sculptures were of everyday things, one with a Boy holding a sandwich with a dog trying to jump up and get it.
There was one area that was designed for Blind and/or Deaf persons. It had the painting on the wall, but had a relief drawing of the same painting and a video of someone doing sign language telling about the painting. It was a great idea!!
My favorite abstracts were done by Giacomo Balla. The gallery also had 2 VanGogh paintings, both portraits, one Degas and one Cezanne. The one Monet painting looked like an enlargement of one of his lily paintings.
The afternoons of both days were spent relaxing at the apartment and working on my underwater embroidery scene. I have now added a jelly fish and am planning to add a few more…..
I also decided that I needed some small fish and didn’t have any fabric to cut them out of, so I took my “Inktense” water color pencils and drew lines on some PFD fabric. I brushed it with a bit of water and then cut the fish out. I am fairly pleased with the result!!
