TV at the Galleria
ADB-160122#099
Life doesn’t imitate art, it imitates bad television.
—Woody Allen
Human beings are a beautiful mess. Inspiring and infuriating, gracious and atrocious, poetic and idiotic.
We are contradiction manifested.
At the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence, in March of twenty-thirteen, I saw the real Statue of David. It is difficult to describe because it is an impossible piece of work—a veritable Goliath of massive proportion, yet casual and serene. It is at once cold, hard marble, yet warm living flesh.
While I was standing in awe with the collected masses, iPhone reflexively drawn, marveling at this angel that Michelangelo found in a rock, a demon approached me bellowing, “NO PHOTO! NO PHOTO!”
She appeared with bearded chins and sloping forehead, her eyebrows like writhing synchronized caterpillars, her wet lips flecked with angry spit. At five feet and three hundred pounds, draped in the dull khaki costume of bitter infantry, she shook with incongruous outrage. “NO PHOTO! NO PHOTO!”
I would have laughed at this contrast in construction if I wasn’t so taken aback by her violent lumbering and surreal gesticulations. Instead, I lowered my weapon/camera and slipped silently back into the crowd.
As I skulked about the rest of the Galleria, taking clandestine snapshots of old famous things, I couldn’t help but wonder: had I been witness to museum humour, a staged installation to accentuate the variation of the human form? To this day, I have spent more time thinking about that guard than any other piece in the gallery.
ERRATUM: A kind friend who is knowledgeable about these things pointed out that in my original post I had called this the Uffizi Gallery (which just sounds way cooler but is technically incorrect). Since my own brain is unpracticed at fact-checking memories, this error slipped through, but has now been corrected.
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