Monkey Art - Japanese Edition

I've been on vacation this week.

It did not look like this:

I've actually been to the Cayman Islands. But shit's changed since then.

No, this week I've been on the famed "staycation." But you know what? It's been awesome.

Precocious Daughter got contact lenses.

We crawled around Dallas, seeing the sights.

And today, we visited two world-class art museums in Fort Worth - the Kimbell and the Modern Art Museum.

Wonderful, awe-inspiring places, both of them. We saw Warhols and Rembrandts, Pollocks and (my favorite) Caravaggios, Picassos and Monets and Manets and Munches.

And I found a new Favorite Thing Ever.

This is Shibata Zeshin's "Waterfall and Monkeys" (1872):

And this photo totally doesn't do it justice, I'm afraid.

It's amazing.

See this little guy?

He's got a crab!

And these dudes?

Their facial expressions are hilarious when you see them in person.

And this toothy grin?

So exquisitely rendered.

I want to send each of you a plane ticket to DFW so you can hoof it to the Kimbell and see this fantastic Japanese scroll. I wanted to kidnap it and take it home with me. Which would have been a terrible idea, what with the alarms and the security guards and the felony charges and whatnot, so I'm kind of glad I didn't.

Just rest assured that Shibata Zeshin's "Waterfall and Monkeys" is a completely wonderful work of art, and even though none of the monkeys are wearing clothes, it's now one of my favorite monkey paintings ever.

The capper to a really great week.

Next time any of you find yourself in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and visiting the Kimbell Art Museum, drop me a line. I'm there.