thirty  things i loved in the national gallery (going to include the first nations show, b/c my notes are a mess)

1. chardin's back  from market (two tiny chardins interspersed with the rest of the french 18th century stuff, got a little lost), but they were both genre scenes with children, the one w/ the market has two brown glass jugs the same shape and colour, as his jugs and plums, hidden in the far left corner. 
2. Blecher's Young Oak Tree,  another tiny painting (maybe 1 foot high) gilded back ground, perfect dutch tree, on a small side wall that had three other tree paintings--oil on gild must be hell to preserve, so badly lit.
3. the competing signs on Eworth's Lady Dacre from the 16th century, with painted text, a small painting w/i the painting, a background of tapestry, and various coded still life references, kind of reminded me of how angry critics got wrt mid peroid johns--the jumble and confusion of competing signs is one of the things artists do. 
4. The titian they have, handsome man, with a dark beard, wearing black against a v. dark blue bckgd, with a slash of red scarf, doubleplushott. 
5. The Sami artist Sontal Kelliker-Cowles makes these sculptures of reindeer and sheep guts, and porcupine quills, that are so tender, fleshy, and translucently grey, that they remind me of the best of hesse
6. christi belcourts large baize green painting, with traditional metis beading motifs painted on it, like large being 10x6 at the least. 
7. a couple of beading and embrodiery projects--Tersea Marguiles comissioning a group of women to overlay embroidery on the blood stained sheet that shourded a murdered activist, 
8. and Nadia Myre comissioning 230 friends to "bead the indiain act" literally, takign the pages of the government agency, and going over it in cimson beads
9. Edward Poirtas Louis Reil Rope--a complicated story, Poitras was part of thisreineactment group in regina, who had a line in one of their newsletters, that said that 2000 lbs of rope where shipped from ottawa to sell as souvineers--poitras bought 2000 lbs of rope to see what that would look like, piled in a corner, in this golden hue, it's so subtle, and such a difficult reminder of growing up on the praries, and reil still being alive. 
10. greg staats dark string, a wampum remake of brakhage style formalism. 
11. marie watt blanket stories, i have seen smaller versions of this, but this one went 50 feet tall, a monolith compiled of blankets carefully folded. 
12. monkman orgy 
13. Kwakwaka'wakw Ritual Object, of a raven riding an orca, in the middle of a room of Emily Carrs
14. An excellent Haida Cedar Box, with a large blue green moon motif, in the same room. 
15. Kurelek's Winter North of Winnipeg. (excellent use of v. little colour variation and white on white)
16. Brian Jungen's Gas Cans, were in the wrong gallery. 
17. Jeffery Gibson's paintings on elk skin--abstract, and in delicate pastels, whites, and greytones--how he chose to highlight or erase the tears in the elk, painting over, or starting a set of rays from one hole, or not reparing it at all, the formal choice and the problem of material. 
18. a violent and dark red, almost maroon stripe painting of newman almost overpowers voices of fire. 
19. a v. good, but textureally complex martin from 85 (the gesso is much bumpier) abuts a halley triptych made of dayglo and stucco--actually places martin in a unique context. 
20. tender diagonal sandback. 
21. how ugly jack bush was when he went fully ugly. 
22. jimmie dunhams encore tranquillity (i dont know if it was v. v. sad or v. v. funny.)
23. several erotic depictions of pan 
24. a white on white, enamel on steel, flavin 
25. another flavin named after oakham which really could mark the place of trinitrian theology. 
26. Peirro Di Cosimo Vulvan and Aleus from 1490 has a panther, two partridges, a camel and a MOTHERFUCKING GIRAFFE.
27. Prudence Howard:  two prudence heward's today at the national gallery, lots of thots about them, haunting, difficult work that they are, but i keep coming back to the one in montreal, with the mirros, and the one in the national gallery, of the girl in the pinafore, and her friendship with isabel mclaughlin, and the mysterious health complaints, and the glam death in LA...she's a dyke, isn't she?
28. Janvier signed some of his work from the 70s with his treaty numbers. 
29. Paranoid from Montainai, from the mid 70s, is too bright, too shiny, and too ugly, just two colours, weirdly the same as kodak. 
30. Vernon Ah Kees Three Channel video installations featuring custom surf boaards, one with barbed wire.