walking together

                                        

arty day

Went to some of my fave London haunts yesterday, and included a visit to the National Portrait Gallery (NPG).

I like this quote on the wall at the exhibition, ‘Brilliant Women’:

“Brilliant in diamonds, solid in judgement, critical in talk”

- Hester Thrale on Elisabeth Montague, 1781.

We also looked at the general portraits, including some of the famous Andy Warhol prints of e.g. the Queen, Elisabeth Taylor, and saw a couple of pieces that we just couldn’t believe could make it into a public gallery!

It’s always an interesting (unanswerable?!) question as to what makes something art… and then looking as to what makes it valuable - there are a whole other load of issues there.

I have some corny thoughts - stuff around how thankful I am that God doesn’t judge my worth by how much money he can make from prints and postcards of the image, or how popular I am, or whether I somehow play some crucial part in the development of someone else’s art - to God I (we all) have intrinsic worth.

Probably it takes a lifetime to understand both what that really means, and the gravity of it and how life changing it would be to understand that we’re truly and properly loved: that our gifts and graces are appreciated, but they’re not the reason we’re loved by God. God loves us because… God does.

Stunning stuff.

More stunning even than a walk around my fave galleries!

http://www.npg.org.uk/live/index.asp

(pic. is the navigation bar from the NPG site)

Andy for Advent?

  a perfect Advent message from Andy Warhol’s art works?

I think it’s true… I’m actually more excited about the presents I was given yesterday and will have to wait a couple of weeks to unwrap (yes, I’m squishing them to guess what they are!), than I will be when I get to open things immediately. They’ll be nice too, but the anticipation is part of the fun of it all.

Perhaps that’s part of what Advent is about - learning to enjoy not being ‘there yet’ (’are we there yet?’), but learning to enjoy ‘being here now’…