The Light in the Temple

From a scene at the farm in Vermont, this old lamp, hanging from a rusty nail, was originally blue. My younger son Sam, surveying the photos from which I was working, noticed the discrepancy and asked why I had chosen red over the pale blue. I explained that it would be a stronger, more expressive image with a red lamp, and reminded him of our visit to the Rubin Museum of Art (specializing in items from the Himalayas and surrounding regions), where we learned that red is the color of power. I think his eyes glazed over when I started talking about how this simple camp lantern could be analogous to one of the lamps in a Tibetan temple, or even a Christian church. Indeed, my initial thoughts on this theme were drawn from the final scene in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, as Charles Ryder returns to the small family chapel at the Brideshead estate:

Something quite remote from anything the builders intended has come out of their work, and out of the fierce little human tragedy in which I played; something none of us thought about at the time: a small red flame - a beaten-copper lamp of deplorable design, relit before the beaten-copper doors of a tabernacle; the flame which the old knights saw from their tombs, which they saw put out; that flame burns again for other soldiers, far from home, farther, in heart, than Acre or Jerusalem. It could not have been lit but for the builders and the tragedians, and there I found it this morning, burning anew among the old stones.

Ok, perhaps I'm investing a little too much meaning in a painting of an old lamp. Simply take it as an example of the convoluted ruminations that keep me company most of the time. 9" x 12", watercolor, drybrush, pen and ink, on Fabriano cold-pressed 140 lb. paper.

Rubin Museum of Art

Father's Day on Sunday started with the usual 8:00 a.m. baseball game for my younger son. Then I had a couple of hours to lie around and do nothing in complete silence. Presented with this rare opportunity, I could have spent many more hours as a layabout, drifting between the Mets game and sleep. But I always feel guilty after wasting that much time, and wanted to use the afternoon to visit one of Manhattan's newest museums - the Rubin Museum of Art, dedicated to art from the Himalayan region. I walk by the museum, located on 17th St. in Chelsea, several times a week but had never visited. Making a spur-of-the-moment visit to any museum, especially an art museum, can be a chore when one has kids. But on Sunday I grabbed Sam, my 7-year old, and walked up to 17th St., determined to spend at least an hour.

It's a fantastic museum, with the collection spread out over six very manageable floors. Although there were objects from as early as the 2nd and 3rd centuries, I think the bulk of the collection falls into the 1400 to 1700 time period. With predominantly Buddhist and Hindu influences, the collection was visually spectacular, from gold figures to complex paintings on fabric in which red, the color of power, was dominant. At $10 for adults and children under 12 free, it's certainly worth a visit. Even my son enjoyed it, primarily because many of the paintings of the myriad Buddhist and Hindu deities resembled the fierce creatures he's apt to paint and draw these days. He carried around a little sketch book making drawings and taking notes. Thankfully the RMA is small, relative to MOMA or the Met, and is thus easy to do with children. (But I can't wait to go back alone so I can take more time and study the objects more closely!)