Culture Weekend

Above is one of the two post cards I bought that the originals were at the High Museum. Look at the picture. Does it look like the person is flipping their lip and humming making a “bluh-bluh-bluh-bluh” sound?

Sometimes I think I an’t got no culture. But, if so, then over this past weekend I just about caught up with myself, as far as culture goes.

Friday we went to the High Museum to see the latest installment of what the High had borrowed from the Louvre Museum in Paris and also another exhibit of impressionism.

We carried with us a friend who is an ex-co-worker of Anna’s. We knew she appreciates fine art from the oldies – her birthday is around the corner, so this was a birthday gift, sort of.




Both sides of the brain, the right and left, have to conserve water or it will show on the meter.

When we first walk into the Museum the first order of business was to get our tickets and a camera permit.

When you walk up to the man in charge of camera permits he first gives you a three or four page thing you have to read of the rules and regulations of photographing. I asked him has the rules changed in the past couple of months and he said no. I said I knew what it said, where do I sign. I signed a statement saying I was aware of the rules and would obey them.

As I was putting the camera permit on my upper torso our guest walked up and said she had better get a permit also. Without giving her the thing to read or the form to sign, he handed her a permit sticker. That didn’t seem right.

The rules, I remember, more or less said that with a permit you are allowed to photograph permanent art, such as the Howard Finster exhibit, but not stuff on loan, such as the art on loan from the Louvre. And if you are unsure ask a representative, always standing near by.

Two see the latest Louvre latest loan you cross the walk over to another building. Here they assigned you a tape player-guide and tell you to take the elevator up to the next floor. In the center of the floor is a huge statue of a god of something or another that had something to do with the Tiber and Nile River and servants, trade, exporting wheat, and maybe more… it told it all.

I wanted to take a picture of the huge statue but wasn’t sure if it was part of a loaned exhibit or not. I asked the guy handing out tape-player-guides. He flatly said “No.”




Our guest took a picture. She took another picture. Nothing was said. Well, she didn’t know the rules anyway, and on top of that, she signed nothing that she would obey the rules anyway.

We got our little electronic guides and took the elevator up. The Louvre latest exhibit was mostly was Napoleon and Josephine collected during their rein as Emperor and First Emporess. The art stuff were mostly antiquities and much of it was thousands of year old from Egypt that Napoleon pillaged while invading that country.


Our guest took a picture of a vase or a jug. A lady guard politely told she couldn’t take pictures in that room.

The electronic audio guide was partly spoken by Diana Haag. The neighbor that lived behind us was named Diana Haag. I do not know if it is the same Diana Haag or not. The one that lived behind us, not long after we moved there, her husband left her with two teenagers, a boy and a girl. In time she sold the house and moved.

One time I ran into her and she was a hostess for a restaurant and another time she was back in law school and also working part time as a clerk in a lawyer’s office. Does she now give guides at the High Art Museum… if so, I wonder how she ended up doing that? Maybe, just one thing led to another.

Many years after they moved at different events and shopping her son would come up to us and speak. I always thought she raised him to be polite.

I learned more about the Rosetta Stone. I remember seeing a video article on it on an educational channel. Neopoleon’s men found it and somehow it wasn’t long before they knew it held the key to all the carvings and drawings, whatever, to understand it you should be able to read all the carvings in Pyramids and so on. They had a very detailed illustration of the symbols and so on.

Here is my second post card, which the original was hanging in this room.





While there, we visited the touring art of the impressionists – which some was good. Some was “ho-hum”.

Afterwards, when we were leaving, just outside of the building where I the man told me I could not take the picture of the giant God of the Tiber and Rhine Rivers I saw the statue. I was outside not inside. If I took a picture outside looking in - he could not chase me down. He who laughs first get laughed out secondly? Something like that. Anyway, here it is:

Then on Saturday we did some art anticipation. We painted the vanity, the wood work, and me white. Now, I look something like a mime…. I need a derby and a walking stick to do my act in public places.

Sunday we continued our “An’t we got Culture weekend” by going to Oglethorpe College in Dunwoody to the Rodin exhibit. I was impressed with the glorious fine college looking campus with the castle-like and fortress-like buildings. I was also impressed with Rodin’s work and the docent’s knowledge she shared. What I wasn’t impressed with was Rodin’s ego. I guess it takes that, or other wise he would have been making wine or cheese or something in Paris.

Here is an interesting fact, the original The Thinker Rodin made was something like 8” or 9” high. But with the aid of a Collas machine, which in a way traces the original, with a series of extended arms, you can make the statue much bigger. Some The Thinkers are 5 foot high, others are six foot, and they are all considered original, if they were born from the original mold, even so after Rodin died in 1917…. With the mode, melted copper or whatever, and the Collas machine they can still turn out original sculptors by Rodin.

Or they could until fairly recently. In something like 1989 the French government declared it would allow 7 more originals from each mode be originals, then after that no more… after that, there would be no more reproductions that would be considered original work of Rodin.






Interesting, Rodin’s The Gates of Hell was probably his biggest and most time consuming work – but yet, it wasn’t completed and made full size until 1981, which was long after Rodin’s death. Here is a detailed view of it. Notice the figures above the frame? The figure on the left is also has an original but human size at the High Museum in Atlanta. It was a gift of France when some 40 plus members of the Atlanta Art Society’s plane crashed in Paris and everybody was killed.


And here is another detailed view, which shows The Thinker as one of the details, smaller than we are used to. And I thought it was meant to be in the park in the Dobie Gillis sitcom.

Also, I noticed at the exhibit most of the likeness of humans sculptured were all butt naked. And most had good bodies. You could use their ribs as a keyboard to play a tune.