Ah, winter. Darkness, warm clothes and cuddly blanket, hot chocolate. All things that make me feel cozy, and physically lazy (especially after a few hours of cross country skiing or walks in the snow). Ironically, it is the time I feel most intellectually stimulated, and I seek out non-fiction as much as 'deep' fiction.
However, when life deems that reading time is allotted but in small chunks, non-fiction, full of dates, facts and figures, is not the optimum choice. What's a reader to do?
Turn on the TV!
I don't do it often, but now and then I rise early in the morning, taking my cuddly paraphernalia in the basement where my TV is, and indulge in some great documentaries. I just finished discs 1-4 of the BBC's The Private Life of a Masterpiece. They contain thirteen 'biographies' of some of history's most celebrated works of art. Starting with magnificent La Primavera by Sandro Botticelli, the series examines works from Italian Renaissance, Dutch and Spanish Baroque, and early Romanticism, a classic Japanese print, and ending with the birth of modern art.
Despite having studied art history pretty much all my adult life, I have yet to see most of these works, so it adds some dimension to seeing the works' settings, rather than just the image head on. There is a greater impact seeing Leonardo's Last Supper as it is meant to be, as part of a monastery's refectory, and imagine the impact of sitting and dining under this powerful painting! Also, some of the musings from the interviewees makes me stop and realise "hey, I never thought about it that way." My particular favorite episodes thus far are Edvard Munch's The Scream and James McNeill Whistler's Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1 - Portrait of the Artist's Mother, oddly enough, since I've never been much of a modernist. Perhaps now I'm ready to learn about that which used to turn me off.
Ah, the power of television.
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