History Discussion Group

Tuesday night I saw the James Baldwin documentary "I Am Not Your Negro" at the Revue.  My favorite Baldwin quote is "Love has never been a popular movement. And no one's ever wanted, really, to be free.  The world is held together, really it is held together, by the love and the passion of a very few people."

Tonight the History Discussion Group talked about the Caravaggio book and our favorite art.  I printed out stuff like Caravaggio's still life fruit:

Joseph Wright's "An Experiment on a Bird in an Air Pump" (looks a bit like Caravaggio, doesn't it?):

John Nash's Western Front painting "Over the Top":

Which I compared to Breughel's "Hunters in the Snow":

Velazquez' "The Triumph of Bacchus":

Gainsborough's portrait of ballerina Giovanna Bacelli, who became the mistress of the Duke of Dorset (famous for his role in developing the sport of cricket and being Britain's last ambassador to France before the Revolution broke out):

Winterhalter's rather rococo portrait of Empress Eugenie with her Ladies in Waiting (she has that faraway Spanish look!):

Renoir's "Le Bal a Bougival" (See how Renoir depicts motion with the whirl of the dress--I wish I was the man there!):

I also discussed a couple of photographs, including Dorothea Lange's famous portrait of a migrant worker mother:

And this photo of V-E Day London:

I finished Good Morning, Midnight this morning, then reread Orwell's The Animal Farm in a single day.  For maybe the first time Father and Moira are ahead of me in watching Six Feet Under!