Donal Logue

Donal Logue Instagram – I love the @metmuseum. It’s humanizing to stand among ancient artifacts and sculptures and imagine what life was like in the Golden Age of Athens, or Rome, or Byzantium, or Mesopotamia, or Egypt. And not in some overly precious/high-falutin sense, but in a “what would it have been like here on a Tuesday afternoon?” kind of way. I love the new Chroma exhibit where they use infrared spectrometry to discover what the original color of the pieces were to recreate them. I’m so used to seeing antiquities with the wear and tear of the ages, my mind falls asleep to the concept that what is now old was once new. And used. Like helmets worn in battle, by some Spartan, Athenian, Roman, or Carthaginian who lost their head after possibly watching their friends die in battle. Or maybe they lived and kept their helmet hidden behind a terra cotta water jug in some corner of a house with a fresco floor as a memento of some PTSD-inducing event on a hot and dusty plain that they don’t want to stare at but can’t bear to throw away. They lived with beautiful objects that had utility. Art was essential to their lives and all around them. Life was brutish, nasty, short, but full of beauty. They burned brightly. Their quest for knowledge and understanding is astounding. How the Greeks of the Fifth Century B.C.E. knew the earth’s circumference (with stunning precision) armed only with the knowledge a sphere has 360 degrees and the angle of shadows cast by sticks positioned up and down the Nile, and that a tiny particle they called an atom made up the sand, the sea, trees, us, everything in the visible universe, blows my mind. I made friends on this jaunt, discussed the Chicago 7 as photographed by Avedon, met a new friend who is writing a book on Cambridge, Mass in the 1960s, and had two docents show me their favorite pieces (no Caravaggio, though, that wing was under reconstruction). I took in the European collection, but was chomping at the bit to get to the the Medieval art- a personal fave. | Posted on 04/Mar/2023 04:14:24