GIrl Calling

The Dinner Horn (Blowing the Horn at Seaside), 1870, oil on canvas

              At a recent visit to the National Gallery of Art I stumbled into viewing this image of a a girl calling on a horn painted by Winslow Homer. I found it wonderfully sweet and strange all at the same time. The subject matter is so dated that I wonder if YOUNG PEOPLE today really know what this is about or do they think it is some quaint summer picnic thing or do they realize that on a farm -- where nearly everyone was living in the 1870s -- everyone who was out harvesting or working the land would be called in for dinner by someone blowing on a horn. These days if everyone wants to get together to eat it's by Email, or an Evite invitation or a call on cell phones or something. Who's got a horn in their house now? Who would think to Get On The Horn and call someone to come and eat together. I do recall living in the old country and hearing people use "the horn" metaphor for making a phone call, as in "get them on the horn" but I think that referred to an early telephone mouthpiece which was shaped like, well, a horn.  Maybe that phone mouthpiece was based on a common everyday farmhouse object like the horn blown to get the farm workers in for dinner. The second name for this image, "blowing the horn at seaside," seems like someone tried to re-label it. The provenance story says the first owner paid $150 for it but you can be sure that the Mellons, who own it now, paid a lot more. Who would think that a somewhat romanticized depiction of a farm girl executing a normal everyday chore would be worth so much a hundred years later? Maybe this delightful little painting reminds us that it is the everyday things that take place that are the valuable things if we could just see them in that light..

Gargoyle or GeeGaw?

Everyone knows I'm on Capitol Hill quite a bit lobbying on disability issues, but it's also an opportunity for me to snap a few photos with the miracle of a cell phone camera. Nope, not an iPhone, just a simple ole LG for $40 that came with the Verizon service plan. This time I looked up from my walk from Rayburn over to the Ford building as I stood in the shade to cool off from the 90 degree weather. Not only was I standing under a wonderful flowering Southern Magnolia but I could see this gargoyle gee-gaw thing on the top of the wall column. It seems to be a cornucopia or horn held by a creature like a squirrel and looks over toward the HHS building, past the ornamental garden that is alongside the Route 395 entrance way. I'd never noticed this before and wondered what was behind the design for this. If you look closely, it turns out to be the head of a little winged horse with a giant horn behind it and it may have waves carved in the base stone, although it's hard to see from below. It does remind me of the wonderful fountain sculpture in front of the old Library of Congress, so I think one day I will conduct some research and find out about this stone creature and when it was put there and what the iconography is all about. It just doesn't seem to fit into our techno modern world of sleek literal easily understood icons. Or at any rate, I've forgotten whatever it is I might have learned in Art History about this type of ornamental sculpture. But what a mystery to bump into, on the way to a policy wonk meeting with committee staff in a drab building! It quite got my mind in a better frame of thought, curious about its meaning. Can I say it influenced what I said at the wonk  meeting or did I say less as a consequence? I don't remember but the image has stuck with me where the conversation has not.