The anxiety and elongation

Saw the El Greco exhibition at the National Gallery last night. It was another evening of walking around thinking, 'I should remember more of this than I do.' For some reason, I could remember unprompted that his name was Domenikos Theotocopolous. Ask me to name the centuries he lived or name a painting and I would have been at a loss, but I remembered his name.



It was a lot of religion. Predictably. But at one point I got the message from one of his crucifixion scenes: Jesus waxed his private bits.



The catalogue, which I thumbed, but didn't read, (is it sad that I wondered if 'thumbed' has a sexual connotation?) said that one art historian thinks he may have had a stigmatism that accounted for the elongated figures. I think he was a drunk who rushed through yet another religious commission. Whole areas of the paintings seemed rushed or unfinished. In some of the Temple paintings, for example, a cage of birds and the architectural detail was very fine, but the faces of the figures, including those being flagellated by Jesus, were big blurry blobs of paint. Wildly uneven. That said, there were some charming portraits.



The exhibition seemed fairly inclusive: St. Martin and the Beggar, St. Louis, View of Toledo, but I found it all very unsatisfying. As I so intelligently summed up to Tim, 'I'm not a fan.' I'm an ass. UCDavis should revoke my degree. Six years of higher education and art history classes and my insightful critique was, 'I'm not a fan.'



I spent yesterday feeling wildly anxious about something I couldn't quite put my finger on. It wasn't money worries, or work, or anything I could name. Tim says it was the full moon --having a tidal pull on my emotions. I was worried I had forgotten something, like, oh my god I forgot to pick up the kids at school, or oh my god I left that gas burner on, or oh my god, I'm 35 and forgot to get a man and a career (which is the one true anxiety of the lot, I guess)



Anyway, afterwards I went home and had an anxiety attack. It was the Mt. Everest of anxiety attacks. I used to have them a while ago, through school and whatnot, and once around Organic closing time, but not since really. So today, I'm left exhausted and feeling a bit winded and wondering what that was about.



I need a preoccupation, a hobby. Clearly it's not going to be art history.