Selfie Autobiography -- Abstract Portraiture at the MAG

Well, let's begin with a simply humorous caricature -- May 5th of 2019, Bob Jordan (my husband) and I, on the Massachusetts Turnpike, on our way home from a visit with my daughter and her family.  

Left:  Bob Jordan and Lisa.
Right:  Lisa in the NYS Thruway restroom, surprised and pleased with the fresh flowers on the sink.

We weren't even trying to look funny, well, maybe Bob was (because he is really funny), but I doctored the photo, overwhelming it with some color and contrast.  

And there we are -- two happy, goofy old people.  

Why shouldn't we all have a hearty laugh at ourselves? 

Laugh at us; laugh with us; it's all good.

    But now for a little science fiction, in the form of modernism.  At the end of April, I went to the Memorial Art Gallery with my good friend, Paula Marchese.  And a trip to the MAG always means a selfie in the blue glass (Josiah McElheny's "Blue Prism Painting I," 2014).      

                               

     Gazing at this selfie, for the purposes of this blog, has been a treat because I noticed what I hadn't noticed before, that the mirrors within this art cause pieces of me to appear here and there.  

     On the left, there are my hands around the camera, inverted from the way they are at center.  And in the center, there I am, like an angel (or Iago perhaps), hovering over Paula's shoulder, still clinging to my camera, the instrument of vision.  And there I am at far right, with my glasses, another instrument of vision, peeking out from the top of my head.  And look above in the center lines, and also at the corners -- my hands, always cradling the camera, dot the blue landscape.  

            

      Cubism, anyone?  What began as a simple selfie, turns into abstract portraiture, and I, lucky girl, become the subject of a cubist interpretation, in an art piece reminding us of a blue period, and reflecting art's past with the stained glass (on the right above) reflected from the opposite wall (I think).  

      How thrilling.   I imagine that I've been a subject for a Picasso painting, without ever having known Picasso.  (And not having known Picasso is not such a bad thing, for those who knew him did not always fare well in the aftermath.)  

     The places I have been, the things I have seen.  You too -- go to the Memorial Art Gallery.  Slow down and gaze.  To gaze is to see.  

      I'll leave you with some earlier visits to the MAG, with the ubiquitous selfies in the blue glass mirror art:  

Left:  in August of 2018, with my cousin Barbara
Right: in January of 2016, the Carl Peters Exhibition on display behind me