Blogging today with sharp, nasty, and annoying upper back pain.

This matters because I spent yesterday afternoon at the Sackler and Hirshhorn galleries, pledging that I would get culture even if it kills me.

So, if you find me in a bloody heap outside of the National Gallery of Art one day, don't be totally surprised.

The idea started based on the fact that the Hirshhorn had another art after hours event (see my previous experience on it here). Of course, that event didn't start until 8, so I had two hours to kill. Fortunately, I found out that the Hokusai exhibit at the Sackler, three buildings over, was also going to be open until 9.

So. Hokusai first. Big Japanese artist from the 19th century, who worked in a variety of media, but who switched to painting pretty much full-time at around forty. He died at 89, and thus spent seventy years as an artist (apparently he also had trouble paying the bills, so, if he had talked to Chuck, he might have retired to the Japanese equivalent of Miami when he turned 60 and started playing the Japanese equivalent of shuffleboard, and the exhibit would have been much shorter. Even better, he, like me, was a year of the Dragon.

I hadn't seen this exhibit yet, and so mentioned to Cheese Boy that I was planning on seeing it at lunch yesterday, after which I was told, in no uncertain terms, that I had to see it. That, and the fact that as a Georgetown student, my experience with culture was limited to the Wave House and falling and skinning my knee really badly right before meeting the rest of my French class at the National Gallery of Art for a French-only tour - a critical mistake in terms of finding female companionship, since all of my other classes were focused on people of both sexes who wanted to be the next director of the CIA, and didn't care who they had to kill to do it.

Those of you who didn't go there think I'm kidding. Those of you who did are nodding your heads and laughing.

Oh, the Wave House - a rowhouse in Georgetown with a knockoff of "Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji: Beneath the Wave off the Coast of Kanagawa", aka The Great Wave, on an exposed exterior wall. Usually owned by lacrosse or soccer players, each of whom apparently threw great bacchanalian get-togethers that I unfortunately missed because I was surfing the internet in the computer lab.

Not that I regret anything, of course.

Anyway. The exhibit was big and varied - Hokusai (he actually went by other names, but is popularly known as Hokusai) ran the gamut, depicting men, women, children, peasants, warriors, priests, flowers, demons, water, lightning, landscapes, and ten or fifteen things that I'm forgetting. Perfect date (except, of course, for it closing tomorrow) - she can look at the adorable cat, and he can look at the warrior stringing his bow. My obvious favorite was the more fantastical stuff - things like an octopus god, demons, or warriors whose depictions are so clearly the inspiration for what Westerners think of when they think of "Asian myth" - but others were checking out the flowers or geisha paintings with similar focus. My favorite image was from a painting of a few images that some suggest may have been an advertisement for his school - it includes a dragon with a bizarre, very human expression that I can't describe. Very cool.

So. Hokusai ranks third in terms of all-time Sackler exhibits that I've seen. Arts of the Indian Subcontinent and the Himalayas ranks second, with The Adventures of Hamza continuing to keep the trophy (Fourth and fifth, respectively, are Caravan Kingdoms: Yemen and the Ancient Incense Trade and Asian Games: The Art of Contest (Caravan Kingdoms had a lot of ancient undeciphered writing - I so have to go back to the British museum.

Since I still had some time to kill, I also joined a tour of the exhibit, which was given by a very nice old lady who had an interesting sense of humor, notably in her remarking that she saw "The Great Wave" coming out of a washing machine and thinking that was the funniest thing ever (I had to help her find one of the paintings - it was an interesting tour). Regrettably, one of the other attendees in the group was a guy who had on an Under Armour shirt and bike spandex.

Now let's all say this together - there's a time for spandex and there's a time for no spandex. Being aerodynamic won't move you through the exhibit any further.

After that, it was time for the Hirshhorn event. The specific focus of the "After hours" was twofold - first, the Suggimoto work that I saw the opening of last time was closing, and, second, this was opening.

Ok. Let's describe this. You remember the end of the Simpsons episode where Homer develops outsider art? How do you describe what Homer did? You don't - it's just there, and it's just cool. So it doesn't really do it justice to say that an artist covered the main floor of the Hirshhorn in multicolored tape. You have to see it - and you're either going to like it or not.

I liked it. Notably fun was going down the escalator to see the entire floor. Like I said, it's tough to describe.

I also had some fun earlier in the evening exploring the Sugimoto exhibit again, which was much better when it wasn't crowded - there was one set of paintings that had both light and dark portions that were designed to evoke looking out over the horizon at either night or right before dawn. Walking around early in the night, with minimal light, was amazing - later on, when it became crowded and noisy, you couldn't look at the painting and imagine what it was trying to do.

The other point of note for the night were the attendees. Two words - "meet market". As opposed to the previous art night, when most people dressed in the popular style of very hoity toity wannabe hipster art critic (and I stuck out like a sore thumb in a suit), last night's wardrobe was "Well, if this sucks, we can still head over to Georgetown for a few hours".

I, of course, didn't find anyone who did a happy dance at Zobop, but, at least I can take some consolation.