I was slow at art at school and appreciate those who can draw, so Mr Cairney here are my brush strokes across Slow Art Day.
I’ve been slow too, like many, to Slow Art Day today and was only alerted to it by our pals at Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum.
Which is, of course, a great place to start.
Because to this untrained eye there is nobody who masses quite as much paint on a canvas as Vinnie.
So that you really have to get up close and study the encrustations on the canvas.
Which means more than the 30 seconds on average that is normally spent looking at a painting.
Monkeys and their Mickeys
Now unless you’ve studied art or tailgated a guided group you might not know what to look for.
But trust yourself, and besides you’re always likely to be found out if you hang on to a tour as the Son and Heir and myself were in the Capuchin Crypt in Rome.
Handily all galleries have audio guides and plaques to direct us to the messages in the art without cheating our way on to tours.
Of course, no piece of art is the same as another unless you’re a very good counterfeiter.
But some feel easier to decipher than others.
Such as one of our favourites, Jan Breughel’s Allegory on Tulipmania at the Frans Hals’ Museum in 1640.
And not just because Breughel anthropomorphises and satirises monkeys.
And there’s one in the corner with his mickey out peeing on a tulip… but it helps.
The Bayeux Tapestry ‘swords’
It’s also come to our attention, and other puerile folks that there are 93 penises in the Bayeux Tapestry.
And you thought they were swords.
Well, that’ll take you more than 30 seconds to count them all.
Now there was probably a very good reason why Mr Cairney never took our class to the Glasgow Art Gallery.
Because we would have guffawed at the half-dressed women so beloved of the Old Masters.
Rather than wonder at the surrealist wonder that is Salvador Dali’s Christ of St John of the Cross.
Venus without her blue jeans
Now Sandro Boticelli could never have imagined that his The Birth of Venus would become the plaything of Monty Python and pop up on students’ walls.
But we dare say that Sandro had fun putting the last touches to the body of the goddess who is displayed in the Uffizi Gallery in Firenze.
And it just shows that the allure of what you can’t see is often more erotic than what you can.
Although Michelangelo’s The Boy David has to be seen in all his nubile openness.
Now, of course, fans of Venus, and who isn’t, who live up in this northern tip of the British island don’t have to go to Fireze for their fill.
With Titian capturing Venus Anadyomene drying her hair at the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh.
And that only goes to show that goddesses aren’t really all that different from the rest of us.
Now whether you like your art pared back, saucy, religious, irreligious or a pile of bricks or unmade bed, then we’re all for it.
And spend as little or as long as you want, or can.
