porkbrgers japonaise

Yesterday the sun came up on pretty heavy rain. I wrote for a few hours down
in the station, and when Gay got up we gathered umbrella and hat and took a
city bus downtown, headed for the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art.

Once there, we strolled through light rain down to a likely-looking café, and
had a good lunch of a "pork hamburger," a nicely-seasoned patty of ground pork
in a brown sauce, along with rice and a salad. Thus fortified, we went on to
the traveling exhibition.

Not exactly oriental, it was "Masterworks from the Collection of the Prince
of Lichtenstein," a collection begun in the early 1600s, which functioned as
an underground hiding place for many works of old European masters during the
Nazi occupation. There were a few feet of grainy old film that seemed to illustrate
that, but the narrative was in scratchy German with Japanese subtitles.

The collection is about 90 pieces of art and craft from the Baroque period.
More than a dozen of the Big R's – Rembrandt, Rubens, and Raphael. A good
size for an exhibit, six or seven rooms, I think. A little more than an hour
of casual browsing.

We both loved Frans Snyders' "Still Life With Fruit, Dead Game, Vegetables,
a Live Monkey, Squirrel, and Cat" -- a truly funny masterful cartoon of all
these animals attacking a still-life set piece.

There was also an exhibit of "Van Gogh in Paris: New Perspective." We chose
the other because we've seen a lot of Vincent lately. Might go to it if we
had another day, though.

Of course going to Japan to see collections of European paintings is kind of
odd. I really should have gone to something Japanese, but the main one, the
Insho-Domito Museum of Fine Art, is closed for renovation.

Went down to the underground shops to scout around for dinner. Got absolutely
wonderful tempura by a grizzled old guy wielding chopsticks over a bubbling
vat of soybean oil. Picked up a sinful piece of cake covered with fruit and
took it back to the room for dessert.

This morning we're getting back on the train to return to Tokyo. Leaving most
of Kyoto unvisited, but I was glad I did have an hour to sit and paint. Maybe
I'll be able to pry myself away from the convention to draw or paint something
of Tokyo.

Joe