Film | Dernier Amour, 2019

Dernier Amour, 2019

Giacomo Girolamo Casanova is a remarcable character. Recognized by his contemporaries as a man of far-ranging intellect and curiosity, he was a writer and adventure who associated with kings and popes. Voltaire, Goethe, Mozart, all were counted among his acquaintances. He was a devout catholic who believed as much in prayer as he did in free will and reason. He was, by vocation and avocation, a lawyer, clergyman, military officer, violinist, con man, pimp, gourmand, dancer, businessman, diplomat, spy, politician, medic, mathematician, social philosopher, cabalist, playwright, and writer. He wrote over twenty works, including plays and essays, and many letters. He had a passion for theatre His novel Icosameron is an early work of science fiction. It sounds like a man I would have liked to call a friend. Prince Charles de Ligne deemed Casanova one of the most interesting man he had ever met. Sensitive, generous, vindictive when displeased, full of wit and philosophy. A well of knowledge. There’s always something new, piquant, profound with him.

 “There is nothing in the world of which he is not capable.”

My first thought when I read that was... A man after my own heart.

He is most often remembered however, as a womanizer. His name is synonymous with “promiscuous and unscrupulous lover”. Casanova, Last Love, however, paints a kinder, much more interesting – and, I dare say, closer to the truth – portrayal of the man.

Early in the movie he is sitting across the table from a young woman, a pupil of his. She asks her teacher about his reputation as a man of many, many lovers. And Casanova, who is, at this point, an old man, utters a reply that makes you understand exactly why he is a man that could enchant so many women: "it’s not as bad as they say. Each was the first and the last woman for me. I was a friend to them all, except for one." The film is the story of that one. 

  The story happens 30 years before he was ever at that house with his pupil, in London. He is a foreigner, shocked by the British ways, and there he meets La Charpillon. Four times they cross paths and four times she crosses his eyes. She teases him, and he fall for her, the only way anyone ever falls for another person in any way that matters: fast and hard. And it does not matter that she is not exactly a respectable woman. It does not even matter that she plays with him, telling him to pretend to be her fiancé for 15 days before he could earn the privilege of consummating their affair. He plays along. She gives and takes away, gets closer and distant again and it’s never clear whether she loves him, or whether it’s all just a game.

They are not entirely strangers at first. La Charpillon shows him a red ribbon on her shoe and asks him if he remembers it. He has seen it before, she insists and when he doesn’t remember, she reminds him of a day in Paris, many years before when he gave a red ribbon to an 11-year-old girl. "Were you that little girl?", he asks, he couldn’t possibly remember it. That day, that kindness meant everything to her. “It made me believe that everything was possible,” she said. “I had nothing, then,” he whispered. “But you gave everything to me.”

The movie is an enticing as the two characters find each other. And for all the games they play, for all the heartbreak and desire and disappointment, Casanova is never low, never a lesser man. It’s wonderful to watch. And the historical setting, the 18th century atmosphere, the clothes, the music, the dancing, it makes the whole experience that much better for me. I like the main character so much that I am considering going to watch En guerre at the theatre this weekend, solely so I can watch to Vincent Lindon once more. This good review at cineuropa points out that the movie establishes a dialogue with Aristotle’s Nicomanchean Ethics (the book older Casanova and narrator of the story is teaching to his student). Never having read the book I couldn’t have picked up on that. But I have added it to the list of books I plan on getting at the University book fair in a few weeks… I want to do the best I can to mend the holes and imperfections in my classic education. But I can’t help mourning not having such a good professor to discuss the book with… Or to hear such intriguing tales of times gone by. 

I went into the theatre after 10 PM (and the room was blissfully empty), with a desire to forget myself and my present for a couple of hours, and that’s exactly what I got then. It’s what I got now when I revisited my memories of the story to write this piece. I look forward to the time I get to watching again. 

Dernier Amour, 2019 /  Benoit Jacquot / Vincent Lindon, Stacy Martin, Valeria Golino / France

Film | The Suicide Tourist, 2019

The suicide tourist, 2019

I wanted to watch to the suicide tourist because it stared Nicolaj-Costau Waldau. Jamie Lannister was my favourite character in game of thrones, and I haven’t been able to watch to the show again since that disappointing finale earlier this year (to say nothing of Jamie’s disappointing ending). I had never seen the actor playing a different role, so I thought it might be cool. I was not disappointed. 

Coster-Waldau is Max, an insurance detective who is diagnosed with a rapidly progressive Brain cancer. He is given a few months to live, a depressively robotic app that helps him keep track of his cortical functions and a deep existential crisis that leads him to contemplate suicide as a way out. Eventually he decides to seek the services of the Aurora hotel, a place he came in contact with when he was investigating the disappearance of one of his clients. The Aurora is a secluded facility that provides a very exclusive service: it helps people realize their suicide fantasies…

I have to admit I don’t usually enjoy movies about death and dying, but this one takes such a different approach! It’s not one of those movies that tries too hard to mimic the most horrifying aspects of life and death, rather, it embraces its metaphors and dives deep into a fictional story that is almost absurd at times. Kind of like the best of soft sci fi stories… It feels a lot like “The Lobster” in that regard. 

The Aurora offers a range of options for customers to meet their end: bullets, drugs, poison, you name it… There are also a wide variety of options for ways to dispose of the body afterwards. Circle of life seems to be a popular one, in which the remains are used to feed a plant of one’s choosing. There are stand in actresses to act as loved ones or enacted fantasies, and although they can – in theory – play anything, they act most often as mothers or prostitutes. It’s disheartening how unimaginative an entire gender can be, one of them says. 

Max's look reminded me a bit of Theo's mustache in Her...

Not all of the people in the Aurora are already dying, as is hinted by Ari’s presence, a young man who seems to have borderline personality disorder. The only requirement for admittance to the hotel seems to be that the client wishes to commit suicide. The reason why they want to kill themselves doesn’t matter much. And of course, there’s a catch. The Aurora is a bit like the Hotel California: “you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.” 

The one thing I didn’t quite like about the movie is that it felt… unfinished… It was a difficult script to finish to begin with, and I suppose some might interpret the ending as deliberately open ended, as to leave a lot to the imagination… There is nothing wrong with open-ended endings, of course, but there’s a way to do it right… Inception is an excellent example. The ending leaves a lot for the imagination, and can keep you talking after the movie for a long, long time, but it does not feel unfinished. Not at all… I don’t think this one managed that. 

Suicide tourism, as it turns out, is an actual thing, that is, the practice of having people travel to places where they can legally end their lives. It’s a bit of a problem in Switzerland, and there has been at least one documentary about it. Be that as it may, I like this better, this fictional approach to the topic. 

The whole weirdness of the movie makes for a compelling story, Max is a wonderful character, and none of it takes anything from the discussions that might be sparked by the story. Not to mention I really appreciate the opportunity to listen to other European languages, and I loved the way the movie keeps switching back and forth between Danish and English. All things considered, it’s a fine way to finish the first weekend of cinema fun. 

Selvmordsturisten, 2019   | Directed by Jonas Alexander Arnby / Written by Rasmus Birch / Nikolaj Coster-Waudal, Kate Ashfield, Tuva Novotny / Denmark 

Film | Mr jones, 2019

Mr Jones, 2019

There is so much to learn about the Second World War that I sometimes think I will live an entire lifetime and die and it won’t be enough time to learn about everything that happened to the world during those few years in the middle of the XXth century. I felt that way when I first read the tales in Svetlana Alexievich’s The Unwomanly Face of War. And again when I read We were young and at war. And again and again and again with so many other books and movies and photographs and TV shows that I can hardly even keep count of anymore. Well, this weekend I had a chance to learn yet something else about the War when I watched Mr. Jones. 

Mr. Jones is a 2019 film selected to compete at he 69th Berlin International Film Festival. It’s a British/Polish/Russian production, and it was one of the films in an exhibition at the Sao Paulo International Film Festival this year. It’s based on the real story of Gareth Jones, a young Welsh journalist who gained some notoriety in the 1930s when he managed to interview Adolph Hitler in an airplane.

When the movie begins, Gareth is making a case to the cabinet of Lloyd George that they should be doing some investigation into the Soviet Union. For all their claims of prosperity, Gareth argues, he does not understand where the USSR money comes from. The whole world is going through a recession and the Soviets are on a spending spree? It doesn’t add up! Unfortunately however, the Russians are allies and no one is too inclined to investigate them and risk losing their support in the near future. No one, that is, except for Gareth. 

Mr Jones uses his connections in the government to arrange a trip to Moscow even though he is not backed by Lloyd George at all (actually, the minister doesn’t even know about his plans). The young journalist has personal ties to Russia. His mother taught English there for a bit, and he studied Russian language at uni. He still remembers the stories his mum told him about that country. As soon as he gets there however, he realizes things are not what they seem… He expected to rent a room in a small hotel by the train station but the Soviet government placed him in the most  luxurious (and intensely surveyed) hotel in Moscow. Furthermore, alth

ough his Visa had been approved for a whole week, he discovers he can only stay at the hotel Metropol for a couple of days and he is not cleared to stay anywhere else in the country, which means he is expected to leave after a mere couple of days. His friend Paul – also a journalist - is missing and the community of international journalists in the city is surrounded in a veil of mystery. 

It does not take long for Gareth to take charge of the situation and arrange a trip to the countryside to see how people live under the Soviet regime with his own eyes. This is how he becomes an eye witness to the Holodomor. 

The Holodomor which translates as “death by starvation” (морити голодом, holod means hunger and mor means plague) was a man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine in 1932 and 1933. It’s also known as the Great Famine or the Ukranian Genocide.

In the early 1930s, there were policies in place all over the Soviet Union that demanded peasants to transfer land and livestock to state-owned farms on which they would work as laborers only. Those farms had to send a percentage of their production to Moscow to increase the Soviet’s grain exportation rates. For the 1932 harvest, Soviet authorities could only procure 4.3 million tons as oppose to the 7.2 million tons of 1931, and as a result, town rations were cut back drastically. 

Peasants had no choice but to starve if they were to fulfil their requisitioning quotas, and the penalty for food theft was death. In time, urban workers were also affected by the famine.  Major cities like Kiev, Odessa, Dnipropetrovsk, Vinnytsia, Donestsk and Kharkiv Oblast were affected. There were reports of mass malnutrition and deatj, mass “difficulties”with food as well as epidemics of typhus and malaria.

There is no way to know with certainty how many people died as a consequence of the famine. The estimates vary from 7.5 to 10 million people. There was evidence of widespread cannibalism:

“Survival was a moral as well as a physical struggle. A woman doctor wrote to a friend in June 1933 that she had not yet become a cannibal, but was "not sure that I shall not be one by the time my letter reaches you." The good people died first. Those who refused to steal or to prostitute themselves died. Those who gave food to others died. Those who refused to eat corpses died. Those who refused to kill their fellow man died. Parents who resisted cannibalism died before their children did.”

There were even posters printed by the Soviet regime at the time that addressed this issue. One of those stated: “To eat your own children is a barbarian act.”.

"People who eat one other because of the famine are not cannibals. Cannibals are those who don't want to redistribute the church's gold to the starving."

More than 2500 people were convicted of cannibalism during that time. Euthanasia followed by butchery, murder and black-market trade in human  flesh was not unheard of.  Quantities of nondescript meat appeared in markets in Russian towns and cities, some of it undoubtedly human. An aid worker wrote of the situation in late 1921:

“Families were killing and devouring fathers, grandfathers and children. Ghastly rumours about sausages prepared with human corpses (the technical expression was ‘ground to sausages’) though officially contradicted, were common. In the market, among rough huckstresses swearing at each other, one heard threats to make sausages of a person.”

Most historians believe that this famine was man-made. There were natural conditions that contributed to it (most noticeably a draught), but there is evidence to suggest that the famine was a way of Stalin to eliminate the Ukranian Independence movement. Rejection of outside aid, confiscation of household foodstuffs and restriction of population movement seem to indicate intent, which is why some regard Holodomor as a genocide. 

But at the time, most of the world knew nothing about it. The image the Soviet Union projected was one of strength and prosperity, a credit to the socialist regime. And this is the situation Gareth Jones encounters when he arrives in Moscow. Journalists from the most important news outlets in the world living a life of luxury and scrutiny under the eyes of Stalin, relaying misinformation to every corner of the globe. Walter Duranty was Moscow Bureau chief of the New York Times for fourteen years after the Russian Revolution, and he was awarded a Pulitzer for a series of reports on the Soviet Union in 1931 and 1932. Not once in those reports did he mention the famine, and in fact, in 1932 he denied a famine exhisted at all in what the New York times itself stated constituted “some of the worst reporting to appear in this newspaper”. He published reports stating "there is no famine or actual starvation nor is there likely to be" and "any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda". His Pulitzer was never revoked. 

Mr Jones does a really good job of putting this story out in the open. The movie is a little slow at first, but once Gareth gets in the train to Ukraine, everything he sees is so inconceivable it can barely be described in words. He peels a fruit and the people around him grab the skin off the floor to have something to eat. A man trades a heavy winter coat for a piece of bread. There are corpses everywhere. At some point he eats tree bark because there is absolutely nothing else.

The movie stands largely on the weigth of the story it’s trying to tell. The script is not one of very memorable lines or anything like that. But the story is so horrifying (and interesting), that one forgets about that for a while.

Another thing the movie does is to insert George Orwell in the story. There is a theory that Orwell named his character “Mr Jones” in Animal Farm after Gareth Jones, who may have been a crucial influence in his work. Whether or not mr Orwell (or Blair, actually) ever met Gareth Jones, his insertion in the movie lends it one of it’s most brilliant moments, when even after he learns that there is a famine and the extent of how bad things are he still clings on to hope and asks: “what about free schools? And free hospitals?”, as if the famine was a small hiccup, a fixable mistake on the way of this new regime that was still adjusting it’s gears. The scene is wonderful… It shows how poisonous an idea can communism really be, that even when confronted with its failure, people still hang on to it, desperate for it to succeed – much like the farm animals in George Orwell’s novel.

This festival has started slow, but Mr Jones was definitely the best movie I watched to on the first Saturday… I can’t wait to see what else is coming.

Mr Jones, 2019 | Directed by Agnieszka Holland | Written by Andrea Chalupa | Jaames Norton, Vanessa Kirby, Peter Sarsgaard | Poland, Ukraine, UK

Art | Top 4 paintings

This is my top 5 of the paintings I've seen at the Women's stories exhibition. I had trouble deciding between making this a top 3 instead, because there were so many paintings that waught my eye and they were all pretty much tied with one another for the 4th and 5th spots on this list... I suppose the first three paintings caused a deeper impression on me... Which probably means I should visit the exhibition again...  

4) A box at the theatre des Italiens, by Eva Gonzales

Eva Gonzales was a student of Manet. She was born in Paris, the daughter of a Spanish writer and she took lessons on painting and drawing from a young age. She was a student and a friend of Edouard Manet and her paintings reflect his influence. She was his only formal pupil and she often modelled for other impressionists. This painting in particular looks a lot like Manet. It was striking from across the room.

Film | Joker, 2019

Joker, 2019

I was not at all prepared for the type of movie that the Joker turned out to be. 

I mean, I thought it would be great… I don’t know much about acting but in my opinion Joaquin Phoenix is a great actor… His performance in “Her” was… out of this world… I mean… It’s one of my favourite movies. There’s this thing he does with his voice, it get’s really soft and quiet at times… I think it’s wonderful… And there’s a bit of that in the Joker as well…

The physical preparation for the part really caught my eye… He looks so thin and.. well… odd I guess, at times… And his dance moves… They are… original… I don’t know… I really liked it…

There were more reasons for me to love this movie thought… The script for one thing… It wasn’t the kind of script that has a lot of “writer lines”. I mean… not a lot of deeply poetic quotes and things like that.. But I liked the flow of the story, specially the way it mixed what was happening in the world with what was happening in his mind. And the path to his becoming the Joker had just the right rhythm… It’s a proper origin movie, only it’s not the origin of a superhero.

The story starts way before he was Batman’s archenemy. Well before there was even Batman… In the beginning, he is Arthur Fleck, a young man who’s trying to make it as comedian, while juggling seven different types of medication and trying to support his mother. She calls him “Happy”… I don’t know enough about Batman Lore to know just how much of his backstory was altered, but I really liked the way the whole thing was presented in the movie… The clown gigs, the violence that was done to him, the paroxysmal laughter attacks… The details kept me interested, they totally transported me to the story… And there was a great job of portraying the Joker as a tridimensional character… He is a villain but there are several layers of complexities that make him seem very, very real. 

One  thing that’s a little boring in comic book adaptations or Disney movies sometimes is that because the characters are well known, it doesn’t feel like the studio really puts any effort into making a great movie… It’s all about side effects and following a certain formula to make sure there’s a certain number of people who will go to the movie theatre to watch… Not this time though… This is a proper movie, one that just happens to be about a character from a comic book… 

A lot of that has to do with how Joaquin Phoenix, I guess… But there are other lthings… I am prone to enjoy most movies in which Fred Astaire makes an appearance. Chaplin was there too, and there was a lot of good music… 

The movie touches on several different discussions, from the treatment of mental illnesses in society, to the uncontrollable nature of a crowd, to the tone-deafness of political figures when it comes to the people they represent. But the movie is never too didactic, it never oversimplifies things, it doesn’t underestimates the audience… That’s like a breath of fresh air… There are a couple of things I would have done differently (I probably would not have shown the attack on Thomas and Martha Wayne, for instance), but that’s just because my “cinematographic vision” is different, it’s not that there’s anything wrong with the way it was done.

It was interesting to see how the movie depicts the kind of ignorance that underlines the behaviour of an angry crowd. The some mass of people that embraced the calling for “killing the rich” is the mass of people that glorified the Joker, failing to recognize the extremism of his insanity. The mass doesn’t think, it’s just impulse and reaction… That’s interesting because often times people behave as if some types of hatred are justified… As if some types of moral corruption are okay… And the consequences of that are severe… The consequence is an angry mob cheering on a murderer with a clown face.

I understand this movie is getting a lot of heat already. I have seen reviews claiming it to be a “dangerous movie that supports ‘white terrorism’” – because apparently everything must be graded on a colour spectrum now. There’s concern that the Joker might “provoke terrorism” and that it’s a story that “offers white men a sort of understanding for their violence.” In my opinion, that is absurd. 

Claiming the movie makes the audience “empathize” with a homicidal clown is underestimating the audience, to say the least.  I enjoy movies that make me think about things not movies that try and tell me what exactly I should think. Joker is the first type, but the criticism it has received suggests it should be the second. I might write more about this topic later, I think… I just hope it doesn’t get in the way of Joaquin Phoenix being nominated for best actor at the Oscars. He really deserves it.

When the credits started to slide up the big screen, Sinatra was playing in the background and I couldn’t bring myself to stand up and leave. His voice, echoing through the darkened room of a movie theatre is one of those experiences that can never quite be translated into words… I don’t think it’s something most people would get. I mean… most of the ones who were in the movie theatre stood up to leave. When I finally made my way to the street outside, I had his voice echoing in my mind still…

Joker, 2019 /Directed by Todd Phillips / Written by Todd Phillips, Scott Silver / Joaquin Phoenix

Things | Autumn Reading Challenge

I think I’ve been ready for October since last October… In the spirit of autumn – and of winning a certain reading competition I got myself into, I decided to read six books this month… I have created an Autumn reading challenge, in which each category is inspired by one of my favourite things about this time of year:

1 - The Colours

 “Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower” Albert Camus

In October, the trees are full of colours… Browns, yellows, reds and orange (most of all, orange) are everywhere, from the dry leaves piling on the ground to the pumpkins on the kitchen table, waiting to be carved… Read a book with an orange cover

The book I chose for this category is Gone with the wind, by Margaret Mitchell.  I have watched to the film a few weeks ago and learned about the fuss everyone made about the adaptation when it was anounced. This book was a best seller and the "hunt" for the actress that would play Scarlett kept the interest of everyone in Holywood. To her last day Bette Davies couldn't believe she had not been chosen for the part. Anyway... I really want to read the book and find out what the fuss was all about. 

2 - The weather

 “There is a harmony in autumn, and a luster in its sky, which through the summer is not heard or seen, as if it could not be, as if it had not been.” Percy Bysshe Shelley

When autumn arrives, it puts the summer to sleep, and the weather begins to get cold again… There is wind and rain and it’s time for jumpers and scarfs again. Read a book that takes place in a cold environment.

I think the perfect book for this category is North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell. I have been meaning to read this one for a while, ever since I first watched to the adaptation by BBC a long, long time ago. It's the story of Margareth Hale, a young woman whose family must move from their home in the agricultural south of England to one of the industrial towns in the North. The North is colder and harsher and is where her future is... The TV series is amazing, I expect the book will be even better than that. 

3 - The flavours 

"Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the Earth seeking the successive autumns." George Eliot

Autumn is a season of flavours. Cinamon, pumpkin, chocolate, apples… And most of those flavours leave a sweet taste in one’s lips… Read a sweet romantic story.

This is a difficult one... I am not a fan of Tolkien's style and I have started this book in the past and failed to finish it... Be that as it may, Beren and  Luthien was first brought to my attention when I read "The Gift of Friendship", a book about the relationship between Tolkien and C S Lewis... The book touched briefly on how Tolkien and his wife used to call each other Beren and Luthien... That's an impossibly romantic notion. That's what makes this book perfect for this category. 

4 - The rain 

“Notice that autumn is more the season of the soul than of nature” Nietzche 

… And there’s nothing quite like putting on a comfy jumper, making a cup of hot chocolate, grabbing a book and watching the rain outside…. It is a season to be cozy and warm, in every possible way… In that spirit, Read a book that makes you feel warm inside

Mind meld is a Star Trek book... I read this one before, but I guess there's no way to fill this category except with a book you have already read otherwise you have no idea what it does to you. Anyway... In order to lend credibility to the efforts of reunification between Vulcans and Romulans, both sides (representatives of both sides) agree to unite a Romulan boy to a Vulcan girl in marriage. If they undergo Pon Farr in the seventh year of their adult lives, if will prove that the two species are not so dissimilar after all... The girl is Teska, who happens to be Spock's niece and a the book follows their mission to escourt the girl to her destiny. It's a lovely book and I look forward to reviewing it here... 

5 - The sounds

"Wild is the music of the autumnal winds amongst the faded woods." William Wordsworth 

Autumn sounds like leaves crackling in the ground, like wind and rain and a fire in the fireplace... There is music everyore, if you stop long enough to listen. Read a book that has to do with music.  

Admitedly this book has little to do with music other than the title, but it counts... It's actually about the history of genetics, and I have been meaning to read it for a long long time... 

6 - The holiday: 

"Have you come to sing pumpkin carols?"— Linus, It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

And finally, of course, October is the month of Halloween. Vampires, werewolves, witches and various undead creatures wander out and about. Read a book about one of the creatures of Halloween.

I found this book in a book fair in Porto Alegre when I was there a few months ago... I was very drawn to it and today, when I started reading it, after finishing the photos for this post, I understood why... I love the style of the writing. It's the story of the Last Werewolf alive in the world. I am generally more of a vampire girl, but I guess I can try thsi new flavour for a while... 

Well this is my autumn reading challenge for 2019... Wish me luck ;) 

Art | Women's stories

There’s an exhibition of painting painted by women at the Museum of Art… I didn’t quite know what to expect of it…

One of the coollest things about the exhibit is that they managed to get a lot of cool paintings. I became acquainted with the work of Solfenisba anguisola and Artemisia Gentileschi earlier this year, and I was hoping I might find their paintings there. Indeed, there were three of them… The one by Artemisia was this huge portrayal of  Cleopatra…  It was impressive… I learnt a long time ago that when it comes to paintings, size matters…

I do have some criticism though… For once, there were many textiles mixed with the paintings, and none of those really spoke to me… I wish they didn’t occupy such a large portion of the exhibit.

Another thing I really didn’t like were the texts placed next to the paintings… Rather than adding to the experience of the exhibition and providing information about the life of the artists or the context in which those paintings were made, most of them ended with some variation of “see, women also produced art back then” or “she’s clearly making art about how difficult society was for women”… That got boring quickly… I mean, there I was, admiring art produced by women before the 20th century, and a lot of those women were really impressive at their time. They were the first women at prestigious Art Academies, they painted for kings and queens, and yet, the exhibition try to tell me the same old story of disenfranchisement again and again and again.

Don’t get me wrong, I am aware that women faced a lot of difficulties in the past. I am aware there are still difficulties today. But stating that things were unequal for women repeatedly doesn’t add anything… It’s like striking the same note on the keyboard again and again, instead of playing a song. I was enjoying the exhibition, learning from those women, even feeling a little bit a part of their tradition of excellence, and it felt like the exhibition was trying to dictate what I should think, by drilling it into my mind. In a way it diminished those women. They were artists, but the texts next to the paintings brought them down to the level of simple social commentators.

Be that as it may, I still enjoyed the chance to get know a lot of artists that I had never heard of before… And some of the paintings really made me stop to appreciate what I was looking at. I’ll post a top 5 of my favourite paintings in the exhibit soon…