The Mystery Tourist
A riddle has presented itself.
How come that within every gaggle of tourists, especially on a guided tour or large lift ascent or descent, there is always one tourist who looks like this: male of sallow to dark complexion, between 50 and 70 years old, shorter than average, with glasses and wearing a beret? He is European and probably Spanish or Italian but occasionally French. There is a somewhat academic or even artistic aura to him. He is sometimes accompanied by a female version dressed in black with silver jewelery and hair. We have spotted two already since being in Venice only three days.
Yesterday we visited the Peggy Guggenheim collection on the Grand Canal. She certainly lived in one of the most beautiful spots on earth, well at least in a city. Her one storey home is now a shrine to her collection of modernist art. In no particular order we were excited by "The Secret Garden" by Paul Klee, a superb cubist piece by Jean Arp, a sculpture in rusting iron, two columns about 15 feet high, by Giuseppe Spagnuli, a very early Morandi and a great collection of Italian futurist work starring Balla, Severini, and above all Boccioni.
WALKING is the great pleasure of a visit to Venice, we feel as if in a film set lit by the greatest lighting camera man. The famous plaster crumble is ubiquitous in every variant of sienna, umber and degraded pink. The November light is sharp and the temperature is brisk to firm. The canals are suitably murky green or as Camille Souter once described a colour "piss left in a milkbottle overnight".
Last evening we attended a choral concert near San Marks square of Venetian music played by a local string quartet with piano and a soprano and tenor. The tenor boasted a volume that would sink a battleship, initiate tinnitus and drown out a string quartet with piano. He also exhibited all the neccessary ham acting as did the slightly more constrained soprano, but only slightly. I found it hard to look at her because of the intense eyebrow work and coy come ons that she directed at the tenor who was 20 years her junior. He responded by kissing her hand and manhandling her bare shoulders as he towered above her. Musically it was rather wonderful and certainly highly skilled but the genre is so demonstrabbly fatuous that it is hard to keep a straight face. Straight faces have been on thin side anyway.
We float on a bubble of all the good wishes we received at the Leslie wedding event and Thank our Lucky Stars and ye, our dear family and friends.
How come that within every gaggle of tourists, especially on a guided tour or large lift ascent or descent, there is always one tourist who looks like this: male of sallow to dark complexion, between 50 and 70 years old, shorter than average, with glasses and wearing a beret? He is European and probably Spanish or Italian but occasionally French. There is a somewhat academic or even artistic aura to him. He is sometimes accompanied by a female version dressed in black with silver jewelery and hair. We have spotted two already since being in Venice only three days.
Yesterday we visited the Peggy Guggenheim collection on the Grand Canal. She certainly lived in one of the most beautiful spots on earth, well at least in a city. Her one storey home is now a shrine to her collection of modernist art. In no particular order we were excited by "The Secret Garden" by Paul Klee, a superb cubist piece by Jean Arp, a sculpture in rusting iron, two columns about 15 feet high, by Giuseppe Spagnuli, a very early Morandi and a great collection of Italian futurist work starring Balla, Severini, and above all Boccioni.
WALKING is the great pleasure of a visit to Venice, we feel as if in a film set lit by the greatest lighting camera man. The famous plaster crumble is ubiquitous in every variant of sienna, umber and degraded pink. The November light is sharp and the temperature is brisk to firm. The canals are suitably murky green or as Camille Souter once described a colour "piss left in a milkbottle overnight".
Last evening we attended a choral concert near San Marks square of Venetian music played by a local string quartet with piano and a soprano and tenor. The tenor boasted a volume that would sink a battleship, initiate tinnitus and drown out a string quartet with piano. He also exhibited all the neccessary ham acting as did the slightly more constrained soprano, but only slightly. I found it hard to look at her because of the intense eyebrow work and coy come ons that she directed at the tenor who was 20 years her junior. He responded by kissing her hand and manhandling her bare shoulders as he towered above her. Musically it was rather wonderful and certainly highly skilled but the genre is so demonstrabbly fatuous that it is hard to keep a straight face. Straight faces have been on thin side anyway.
We float on a bubble of all the good wishes we received at the Leslie wedding event and Thank our Lucky Stars and ye, our dear family and friends.
posted by Tim Goulding at Saturday, November 19, 2005
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