The Courtauld Insitute of Art, an Art Guy update

Well this art guy in jeans is sitting here at the Courtauld Insitute of Art, still persisting in wearing jeans to class.

The scholars around me are truly amazing. Let's do a person-by-person account, I will go for the style of James Bond MI6 files. Their names have been idealized for the sake of personal protection and privacy.

Foxy Byzwiz Irish: This early medieval expert can drink 23 pints of the heavy stuff, construct an interpretation of its taste using Biblical hermeneutics, ramble her way into an animated recital and reenactment of Revelation, and then rattle off the saints depicted in San Marco without a single hicup.

Printgirl McDrinks-a-ton: Can frankly drink Ms. Irish under the table and wears prints instead of pants. She once chopped a self portrait of Durer in half and then successfully argued that the code in the painting instructed her to do so. She is Scottish.

Hates Italy dude: I don't know what his problem is, but he's brilliant nonetheless. Knows more languages than Hepburn in Roman Holiday and has a better tea set.

Victoria 2.0, demolitions expert: Let me explain. She started the London fire of the 1660's and now seeks to take the world of Victorian and pre-Victorian replacement churches by storm. What a rockstar.

Fiddlin' Ginevre: Don't be fooled by her resemblance to Ginevre de Benci, she's not actually an oil painting from c. 1500! She's a fiddle expert, a fearless book explorer, and a savage medievalist. As such, she's best friends with fierce crusader and Cictercian abbot, Bernard of Clairvaux. They went on crusade together.

Maid of Manhattan: Faster than a speeding London motorbike and can make giant leaps from the Etruscan period to the 12th century in a single bound. By day, stylish art historian with an eye for perfect form. By night, stylish art historian with an eye for perfect form.

Loose-cannon-likes-to-steal-people's-stuff: The name kind of says it all. She won't let you say a word about your appreciation of art without condemning you as a filthy fetishist. Then she grins and cackles, explains that art history has been a social investigation since 1970, then lights a pipe with a Bic lighter that you swear belongs to you.

Hardcore art girl and assassin: It's told that an artist once tried to stifle eroticism in the contemporary art scene. He was on his way back from Tate Modern one day, crossing Waterloo bridge, when a figure dressed entirely in black, and I believe wearing comfortable, low heels and a bow in her hair, assassinated him. Hardcore art girl and assassin had been hiding under the bridge before she evoked Giulio Romano's "Modi" by driving a long sharp object into the hollow depths of his conservative mind. Then she strung him up so that he would catch on a passing barge and anyone on the Thames would see the conquest of sexuality in art. She also kept one of his ears.

The Conclusion to Death of General Wolfe and New Rants

Well if you're still scratching your head about why the NGA and the Met and National Gallery of Canada had all replaced their permanent collections with the Death of General Wolfe by Benjamin West, I will now explain to you how this happened.

Just kidding. There can be no explanation. But perhaps the question is, would we want this to have transpired? What if, just for a month, all the galleries in the world displayed Benjamin West's Death of General Wolfe and touted it as the greatest painting of all time?

What's your favorite painting? Would you want replicas of it hung in every museum in the world? Come on, sure you would.

This is why I now present to you my favorite works of art ever:

Lamasu
Head of Christ, Mt. Sinai
Muirdeach's Cross, Monasterboice
Coppo di Marcovaldo - Madonna del Bordone
Giovanni Pisano - Pistoia Pulpit
Duccio - Maesta
Orcagna - Strozzi Altarpiece
Francesco Traini (?) - Triumph of Death
Diego Velasquez - Las Meninas
Dante Gabriel Rossetti - Annunciation