#NewMayDays Days 19-21: Cezanne and the Modern

Another couple of days of failed trying new things - my first ever yoga class fell through and a new dish I was trying out turned into an unparalleled disaster - so here's a selection of very boring first-times that I happened upon organically:

• I ate three bananas in one day - pretty crazy am I right?
• I went out of my way to buy sports clothing.
• I wrote a song on my ukulele - not a feat to be sniffed at I feel, but I refuse to share it with the internet so it can't really count as having happened.

One thing I did manage was to finally go to the Cezanne exhibition at the Ashmolean. My last visit was for a coin-handling session with my Viking World class last term, and at the time I told myself that I really should hang around the Ashmolean more often seeing as I can access everything for free and it's got such a gr8 spread of arts and artefacts. And two gr8 cafes. The exhibit was made up of deceased American intellectual Henry Pearlman's private collection, and although Cezanne was billed as the headliner he was mainly limited to one watercolour-heavy room. I can't say that I swooned over anything of his in the collection, as my favourites ended up being the above Pisarro (look at that delicate wallpaper!) and Modigliani's portrait of Jean Cocteau (that the subject hilariously HATED - you can see why, it's very Modigliani-ey). I also very much enjoyed Lipchitz's big ole brass sculpture of Pearlman's head, which was comically enormous.

I always find myself slightly underwhelmed by Ashmolean exhibits, although they do get big names in there. I wasn't very impressed by the curation of the last Bacon/Moore selection either, which I resented myself for as Moore is a personal favourite. Never fear though, as clearly I am the exception because everyone else raves about them. Definitely worth a poke around.