Memorial Day is Open House at the MFA.  Admission is free.  That in itself is something.  But the fact that the "El Greco to Velazquez" exhibition was, too, was the clincher for me.  Since the museum's right around the corner from the garden, I decided to check out the exhibition, have lunch, and spend the rest of the day in the garden. 

I'm so glad I've come to an age when I can be unabashedly boring.  Truth is, when you're younger you can't possibly understand or even imagine how exciting boring really is.

The weather was not to be believed.  Of course, I rode my bike over.  Not to gripe, but there are precisely three little bike racks outside the MFA, with room for precisely six bikes — shame on them!  I had to chain mine to a light post!  Grrr!

Thing is, the MFA is ideal to bike to.  It would be nice to see them encourage that by making more bicycle racks available.  I'm sure they budgeted for a couple more, with the big addition and all.  I had a date a couple of weeks ago with a snooty architect from the firm that was working on the expansion.  I should've asked him about bike racks.  He would have been mortified.

So, anyway.  I picked up my ticket to "El Greco" and dropped off my backpack.  The woman at the coat check had on a sparkly turquoise tiara and matching earrings, bracelets and eye shadow.  When I complimented her on the ensemble she proclaimed she had made them all herself, which was certainly true, I'm sure.

I also noted the mountain of backpacks behind her.  It was strange to see no coats on the racks and the floor covered with backpacks, like all the fruit had fallen from the trees, or something.

She said, "yeah, what's up with that?  This is supposed to be a classy place.  People are supposed to dress up to come here.  And you got people coming in in T-shirts carrying backpacks!"

I was in a tee with a backpack, by the way.  And I was all sweaty from riding in, too.  But I didn't take it personal.  I said, "once a year they let the rabble in.  Whuddya gonna do?"

I had about an hour to kill before my appointment with El Greco, and raced around to all my secret little nooks and crannies looking for animals and art porn.  I headed straight to the classical sculpture galleries in search of my old friends, the priapic dwarves.  But they seem to have been packed away in preparation for the move.  I couldn't find them anywhere.  There were satyrs aplenty, as always, of course, but I do miss my dwarves.

I had to settle for more mundane scenes of everyday obscenity, like this 17th century Twelfth-Night Feast by Jan Steen...


There's always one at every feast.  Some drunken peasant taunting the pilgrims with a makeshift penis. This is why I never get invited home for Thanksgiving anymore. 

Peasants are nice enough, but they don't have boundaries, y'know? 


They'll go picking their nits just whenever they feel a little bite, like this early 18th century Peasant Girl Catching a Flea by Giovanni Battista Piazetta. Babe, get a room!

Can you believe that this painting hangs kitty-corner from Regnault's "juicy porterhouse steak" of a painting, Automedon with the Horse of Achilles? I mean, Mama Mia!


I'd pick his nits any day!  By the way, I think Automedon is a bike courier. Look at those legs!


Talk about a feast.  I am a thigh man, myself, but those calves look like a meal in and of themselves!

If legs aren't your thing, there are plenty of other bits about.  And if bits get you too hot and bothered, there are lots of other distractions in the galleries.  I was about to hyperventilate, myself.  After a worshipful few minutes at Automedon's feet (no, you can't see up his sheet — I've tried — but trust me: he waxes) I was asked to move on by a kindly old docent.  But come on, how was I supposed to know you couldn't lick the paintings. 

He suggested I find a less distracting way to enjoy the galleries:  hunting for woodland animals! And he pointed out a delightful tapestry right around the corner...


The fox is clearly torn...


between the appetizers on his left...


...and the entree to his right...


We've all been in the same boat.  You're just minding your own business, a bit peckish, perhaps, but not exactly famished.  It's maybe that time of day when it's a little too close to dinner time, but too early for dinner.  So what happens?  You can't decide, you pass the exit with the Roy Rogers and Cracker Barrel, and the next sign you see says something like "NO REST STOPS FOR THE NEXT 700 MILES."

Not to worry, indecisive Mr. Fox is not going to starve.  There are plenty of snacks about.  Though I found something about the fruit on the trees in the tapestry a little disturbing. I could not put my finger quite on it...


I was puzzling over all that when I realized that my time had come to see El Greco!

Now, I think we take El Greco for granted a little.  And that's what I liked so much about this show.  When you place him up there on the wall with his contemporaries you see just how truly off the wall he was.  Take Velazquez.  Gotta love those dwarves (though there were none in this show) and his rough-trade models in pictures like The Forge of Vulcan that remind you of no one so much as Caravaggio. 

But Velazquez, whose works when viewed by themselves are bewitching enough, pales next to El Greco, who is such a singular visionary, and among only a handful of artists who have had the skill, perception, and magic to capture the truth of what they depict, not just its likeness.  Truer than they are strictly "accurate," his portraits capture what animates his subjects.  Take his exquisite portrait of the poet Hortensio Félix Paravicino (which is in the MFA's permanent collection, and was acquired at the urging of the great John Singer Sargent)...


It is unlike any of the portraits by his contemporaries in the show in the delicacy of its treatment and the depth of its vision.

But the real difference can be seen in depictions of the mystical, which realism — even of the mystical variety — is rarely capable of depicting, er, realistically.  That is to say, in a way that allows us into the mystical experience, too, which is, by definition, radically subjective.  In other words, a realistic depiction of a mystical experience is anything but realistic.  Abstract art, in its multifarious forms, achieves a realistic depiction of the transcendent more often, but art in El Greco's time was not quite there yet, although El Greco represents a quantum leap in the direction of the Modern.

To understand how radical El Greco's vision could be, and how perfectly suited to the mystical themes of religious ecstasy it was, first take another painting in the show, Vincente Carducho's The Stigmata of St. Francis, which shows St. Francis floating in the heavens opposite a flying flasher in a Macintosh made of pink flamingo feathers...


What St. Francis didn't know is that he was not seeing Christ.  This was actually an encounter with Liberace. (It's a lot more common a mistake than you might think.) Any doubts, the pink thingy Carducha used in his painting is on display in the Liberace Museum in Vegas:


To me, even the pink boa doesn't do it.  The composition is static, and though there is something lovely about it, in a naive way, it doesn't capture the hysteria of religious experience.  I mean, we're talking stigmata here.  Didn't Carducho see Agnes of God?  Religious fervor is not all blue skies and pink flamingos. 

Now have a look at El Greco's Annunciation (1596-1600)...


If there's one reason to see this show (and there are many), this is it.  See it in person.  It'll blow your eyeballs out the back of your head.  I thought I was having a seizure. That, my friends, is a religious experience. And you know when viewing a depiction of a mystical experience is a mystical experience you're doing something right.

In picture after picture, El Greco takes you places you've never been.  His landscapes of Toledo, with their brilliant stormy skies, are as revelatory as his otherworldly altarpieces...


For extra points, see if you can spot El Greco's signature in the odd composition of his brilliant Laocoon (here's a cheat sheet).

Whatever you do, if you have a chance, see this show!  It's a treat on every level, and as for the works on display, no reproduction could possibly do the originals justice.

Then head right downstairs, where you can find another brilliant Latin artist's work on display.  I have long been in awe of Antonio Lopez Garcia, and the exhibition of his Madrid paintings in the Foster gallery are only the tip of the iceberg here.  An absolute embarrassment of riches (check out this short video from the MFA for a sample), the show takes up the Rabb Gallery, too, with sculptures (not my bag, but worth a twirl — the giant baby heads out front with Japanese tourists climbing all over them are his, too) and absolutely astounding graphite works that also have to be seen up close to be believed.

I am as drawn to scenes of everyday squalor as I am to the salacious, and Garcia's studies, with titles like Bathroom, Electric Light, and Toilet and Window, are rendered with such skill and evoke a moment in time so completely they utterly transcend it. 

I honestly can't remember a more exhilarating trip to the MFA.  I could go on (aside from the exhibitions mentioned, there's Rhythms of Modern Life: British Prints 1914-1939, Rockwell and the Shinjin: Celebrating Baseball and the Red Sox, the delightful Sumo: Japan's Big Sport, and The Brilliance of Bird-and-Flower Painting: Gems of Asian Art.)

But be sure to take your AEDs first.
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*Note that all photos except those from the "El Greco to Velazquez" exhibition, where photography was forbidden, were taken with my dandy new S51.  I just love it.  I think Automedon with the Horse of Achilles came out particularly kick ass.