Calm B4 • Storm: 3 dz/3 ctys/6 mseum pt1

Yuck!

For the third year in a row, traveling up to NYC, a series of interesting events comes into play. Last year it was the snow storm before Halloween. This year a hurricane, Sandy. With all the aplomb of bronzed rats the likes of Chris Christie and Bloomberg forewarning all citizens THE storm is coming and we will tolerate nothing less. Bloomberg, garbed in a light blue cashmere sweater, recent as the destroyer of the 32 oz. Big Gulp, was prepared to take on Sandy single-handedly. Ugh, and godspeed.

Even James Bond couldn’t save us from the onslaught of paranoia instilled by Christie and Bloomberg.

After scaring the bejeebers out of me, and dozens of New Yorkers, it would be wonderful to go back and listen to political campaign ads. New York and Jersey folk don’t know which is worse, the upcoming Sandy or the hot air from windbag politicians in their states.

I got an early bird look at a pastel version of The Scream at MoMA and ran back to metro DC, as fast as the car could take us. Bad enough New Yorkers must go through the angst of facing a hurricane, but the onslaught of officials who are talking to you like your father would talk to an idiot, is paralyzing.

NY 1011: Beauty where u find it

What was supposed to be a plain old Halloween turned out to be a trick or treat. The snow was the trick as it fell all day Saturday turning into a globby slush. The treat was a brilliant following day down going from the BQE eventually to I-95 with touches of fall.

Most people think of NYC as Manhattan, and only from the street. I watched this bridge go up as a kid. I travelled over it on bus in high school and car in college. When I worked I drove over it often. There is a beauty to the proportion, very different than the Brooklyn Bridge, which I also shot that day for another blog.

Snow literally fell off cars as we traveled.

I-95 has a different look in the North and mid-Atlantic states.

Sometimes it’s industrial and tapestry all at once.

Postcards/NYC: Streets

Vendor half block from MoMA.

The fun of NYC is the streets. It always has been. No show is better, with an endless procession in movement. The funny, the pitiful, the unique sit side by side, or collide in an endless cavalcade. You don’t need money to enjoy the city, but being cognizant helps!

Penny posed herself dreaming by the street Liberty in front of tourist shop. Latest unclothed poster male along Fifth, not exactly a six pack.

Can you imagine wearing this? I could just imagine giving this Cartier as a gift, right?

Restaurants are always a trip, but in the mid-50s on Fifth, you got to figure the real beauty are some of the window displays and a lot of the architecture.

Interestingly enough, I had not been in St. Patrick’s in years, as I do not like to gawk in American churches. What is odd is how austere and cold, it is. It reminded me of those Anglican churches I had been to when I took a course at Cambridge years ago. They had eliminated the saints, but the niches were all still intact!

Everything is orderly and superclean, but a wedding was going on and it seemed without much sentiment. I thought, how sad, this is such an important moment in this couple’s life and here we are just gawking around. I didn’t even see much family or friends, although you could have had half the city and it still wouldn’t fill the hall! It is the reverse of the subway.

There is something awful for people who come to any city and don’t get caught up with it’s rhythm, NYC has so many of them, and some even more wonderful than others.

Check out the gallery: SUBWAY

Postcards/NYC: No bull at the Modern

Crowded? Well, you don’t exactly not hit the museum scene in NYC, without a visit to the MoMa. The new structures gives me the creeps sometimes, it just seems too vertical and too overlarge. Tons of space but often with a question mark over your head.

Kara Walker’s, Gone: An Historical Romance. . .might have seemed more intimate in less than this stadium size space! The reverse for Walker is the very nice display in a glass case of Walker’s work at the Brooklyn Museum. For example the quietude (below) of this couple almost makes them merge into the Kline frame.

Of all the museums that weekend, MoMA had the biggest crowds! There were people everywhere in every room. I really wanted a picture of the red Barnett Newman, Vir Hiroicus Sublimus, alone, it is quite a striking piece, finally I just had to be artsy and live with it.

The kids loved this, but this shot does not do it justice. The artist projected a red theater curtain, but you had to stay a few feet away from wall to be in the white spotlight. Interesting installation idea.

You had to love the the fact they had doubles. One was, of course Abstract Expressionist, New York with another lousy shot here  (below). What, did my eyes go on that day?

Except for the Phillips in DC, where am I going to find a roomful of Rothkos? A beautiful Hoffman, Cathedral (right) is also housed, as is the interesting Rothko No. 5/No. 22 (left).

It was a great time to resee this movement and how different the work actually was. You can see wonderful examples of this here.

Klines abound, lots of the pre-splatter Pollacks, but also the wonderful Baziotes’ Dwarf (montage, middle right) and Pousette-Dark’s Fugue #2 (above). Penny wanted me to photograph both as her favorites. A few wonderful Krasner’s including Gaea (below).

Joan Mitchell‘s Ladybug is also included in the show (below).

There is a touching tribute to Robert Goodnough when you get off the elevator, as he is not part from the show, but gives a wonderful sense of spirit. (below).

A few years ago, when people were selling typical crackerboxes for what seemed like the millions, MoMA ran a show about prefabricated housing (how gauche for the NYC condo set, right?), which looked like it took a page out of Dwell magazine. The most wonderful part of the show was the actual reconstruction of one of the units. It was wonderful to go inside and figure the bathroom, get an idea of the kitchen and diningroom spaces, then walk around on the outside. I think it was unfortunately one of those “no photo” deals.

This year, I was extremely happy to get to see Counter Space: Design and the Modern Kitchen exhibit and see the full display of a “modern” German kitchen, and a little 50s Americana, extension of the hausfrau.

Where’s Harry? Did someone catch some humor by example of this poster (above). A sort of reminiscing for the Attack of the Fifty Foot Housewife? Look at the beautiful example of this small, yet compacted modern 1930s kitchen (below). The woman actually has almost everything at seat level. Some women were discussing how much simpler rolling dough is at seating level. I thought of what a drag dishes are at the end of the night, and how you won’t get splattered up doing dishes. The scale of this kitchen is not unlike the one designed in the  Frank Lloyd Wright’s Pope-Leighey House (no photo here, not allowed!). The only thing missing from the divine triangle, is the refrigerator. There was no refrigerator!We were lucky someone had the old footage, so you saw the occupant working in her own kitchen, aside from seeing the actual model.

Looking at shots from  the Gaudi’s Casa Milà apartment (above) and the  the Ringling house (below), there are differences in scale and color. I distinctly remember a refrigerator in the Ringling house. I think there is a ten year difference to the Ringling. The Swan house in Atlanta, also had an interesting ktichen, but smaller than Ringling (again NO photos). These are the first kitchens to come back inside the house in the United States.

Too much for one blog, so just think between that first shot and this last all that happened inside the museum. A lot that is not even here, and that’s what makes the MoMA such a tough act to follow.

Postcards/NYC: No Fooling around at PS1

It’s not L.A., but L.I.C., two blocks from the Courthouse and across from PS1.

If Margie didn’t live within a stone’s throw of PS1, and I wasn’t a MoMA member, I don’t know if I would even bother. Some of the shows have been provoking, some goofy, some like whatever were they thinking? PS1 is really a gallery of ideas. There is no photography allowed in the museum, they are that dead serious. Even a lot of the guards are dead serious, they just don’t have the kind of sense of humor you find in the  MoMA, or Philly or any DC museum.

PS1, by it’s number was the first elementary school in Queens, and figuring the location, Long Island City. When my cousin, Mary moved there over 30 years ago, it was factory town gone down. There was still Swingline Stapler, Chicklets and the old Busilla building. Eventually these closed or became something else. But there were real people, living the Queens life, as did I up in Astoria. PS1 was a relic of the past, closed and condemned. That old red brick schoolhouse even older than the PS11, I went to on Staten Island. It had that brick and terra cotta ornament that people drool over  in turn of the 20th century buildings in England. It was sad to see its empty schoolyard, with that handball wall now fenced in and forgotten. Old buildings always make me want to go in them.

Little did I think somewhere, when MoMA came to be housed temporarily in Sunnyside, did we get the thing that PS1 was becoming a museum. It is a cool structure for anyone brought up in New York City public schools of the age before concrete and aluminum clad glass structures. Walking into PS1 with its original 50s asphalt floors, the two tone (medium green on the bottom, a more minty green on top (in my day the bottom was enamel, the top flat paint). It is a good study in school design. Unlike my PS11, there were the separate entrances often in the old structures marked “boys” and “girls.” There is also a creepy boiler room, which they used one year with a dummy chained up and some eerie lighting and sound. I remember ours, it was kind of dark and crappy, but this one really gives you the chills.

You might not like PS1, but I will take my hat off to a museum which doesn’t charge, when it can only show a little bit. I wish the Orlando Museum of Art did that, when they took five bucks from my high school students about 10 years ago, while they had set up for an auction, and the full collection WAS NOT available to see. Or the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which charged full admission for about half a collection two years ago, while their curator appears in ARTnews telling about how swell the museum will be. Museums ought to be like supermarkets and other businesses. How would you like to pay for a double feature/bogo, and them have only 1 and charge full price. That even happened in Italy, where they informed you part of a collection is closed after a certain time. I got run out of the Cairo Museum a half hour early by armed guards, because they had rented the space for $$$ that evening!!! Museums ought to be as ethical as PS1: no ticket-no shirt.

Anyway, they are getting ready to put an installation in, and really except for some stuff on the 1st floor, there were more guards than pieces. In the meantime, PS1 guards might want to do a better job, sans humor or not, ’cause I’ve shot twice inside the pool installation. Which by the way, is the coolest thing in PS1, ever!

So much for the amateur hour video stuff they pawn off for art, and MoMA and the National Gallery have been duped, as well. Get with the program, tons of that stuff is available on You tube and for free!!!

Postcards/NYC: Stopover at the Met

Tres chic chic pumpkin and foliage in the lobby.

Margie asked me what was my favorite museum. I go to museums, like some people go to theme or amusement parks. It is that engrained, it has become a passion. There are many museums I love and would suggest to anyone. The Accademia in Venice would make anyone drool. It has been many years, but the collection among not the most beautiful setting, has a collection of Tiziano (Titian) and Veronese which will knock your socks off. I will never forget the Ufizzi. It has been over 30 years, but my afternoon trips to the Louvre as a young man, were pure rap-ture. England has wonderful museums and one of my favorite is the Fitzwilliam in Cambridge. If I am in DC, I always think the Hirshhorn is the safest bet, always progressive and fun. The National Portrait Gallery you could take anyone and enjoy.

Sentimentally, the first “real” museum I went by myself  (Staten Island had a little museum where I first saw Sebastiano del Piombo’s,  Christopher Columbus) would be the Met in NYC. I have spent many wonderful hours in this no hassle, always interesting museum. It is never annoying like the Guggenheim, which is all Wright, but the housing dwarfs even Brancusi or Rothko. It is never pretentious, like the MoMA can be. The Met is the grand old dame, who is constantly getting a facelift, but holds a collection to die for. The early Renaissance collection alone keeps educating you. Who else could do a summer collection on Chanel or Cartier, and still have room for two more special exhibits? Your safest bet is the Met. Even the contemporary collection is intriguing and will never disappoint, although its own outlook. An hour in the Met will make other U.S. museums, even the fine National Gallery, seem puny.

Van Gogh’s painting of the postman’s daughter and a beautiful Van Dongen.

You go through room after room. They had a wonderful show of Jan Gossart and his contemporaries. A different world from that of the classicism of Michelangelo and Dürer, things precious and precise. The portraits are a different world, and we see Holbein and Clouet already.

Like the National Gallery, the Met went through an expansion and its architecture is just as nice to look at. I love when you see the facing of the original structure (left) and the simplicity of the new structure, clean and modern.

My cousin, Mary and I had gone downtown to Pearl Paint and we made the afternoon stopover at the Met. Mary likes most of the Met, since she likes traditional. She hates stuff like at PS1, which she considers creepy. She is standing next to a Giacometti, and the whole setting for Giacometti is pretty nice. The pieces are arranged beautifully with his 2D work,  and you really can look at the sculptures. In fact the Met, and even the Modern these days, allow you to get closeup. The Modern used to give me conniptions how they used to shove sculptures next to the wall. I used to want to bop them over the head what they did to Brancusi’s. It was as if the curators never had time to take a course in Sculpture 101!

Not enough time to catch the early Renaissance work, nor even much time for the Impressionists work, we traveled the 20th century, with a little time for the newer work. Boccioni’s Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (below left) looks great in its setting and it is kind of odd how he finds himself from the earlier self portrait (below right). The kid looking at a piece in the center shot, stood not far from the Boccioni self portrait, and I thought it was kind of ironic.

One also takes their hat off to the Met for their work at the Cloisters, which is an excellent housing for work and incorporates the Upper Harlem landscape with the visuals indoors. The pieces through a room we passed reminded me of this. We always think of medieval as so reverent!

We stopped at the Oceania collection on the way out. The use of the full lighting from outside and the beautiful layout, makes the interaction between viewers and pieces just as much an image, as the pieces themselves. These totems, have figures atop which look a little like surf’s up with the pieces they are holding. Overall, if you have the time, spend a day in the Met, you will never be sorry.

Postcards/NYC: Fun at the Brooklyn Museum

Now what kind of museum actually hangs out a welcome sign with no artsy fanfare. I am back in Brooklyn, and what could be better?

Mickalene Thomas A Little Taste Outside of Love and bystander sitting.

Having spent both high school and college here, and doing a little house painting in what was to become yup/hipster capital just known as Park Slope in those days. Round the corner from lovely Prospect Park, the cosmopolitan Grand Army Plaza, at the end of a rainbow of sorts, Washington Avenue, lies this wonderful gem. A little dated around the edges, this wonderful museum is still delightful 40 years later. Part of it is still traditional, but parts have moved from the 19th to the 21st century. I noticed Ringling had to borrow it’s mummy cases about a year ago, and there are always pieces in books which identify themselves as properties of this museum.

A wonderful little Sisley, as well as two first rate Boudins.

There are so many wonderful things to say about this unpretentious museum. There are lots of good tastes of everything. The is a thoughtful Islamic collection which includes larger painting from Iran, one includes a nude, which I thought was a no-no. The wonderful Sumerian collection, with perfect lighting makes the Met look tra-la-la!

Someone got the idea to do a “women’s art” section in the museum and so there were several wonderful rooms of contemporary women’s art, including the one dedicated to Pop, one of which was Majorie Strider’s, “Woman with a Radish,” which appeared on ArtNews cover recently. I don’t know if it is such a good thing to have a “women’s” section, as if being a woman artist would be out of the ordinary. There are just women, who are really good artists. Judy Chicago’s dishware, also on display, needs another blog for comment.

I am definitely in favor of taking out some questionable Pollacks and putting in the more really interesting Krasden’s, that goes for a ton of male artists whose oeuvres may rate them to heaven, but individual work remain suspect. Personally, this thing of segregating any group, especially women, leads to a sort of sentimentality–the last thing women individually need! I leave this to stakeholders like the Guerrilla Girls to figure out.

A couple in a hallway lying around making echo sounds, no guards, no hastles.

There are wonderful models of both the Sneck from Brooklyn and the Milligan house interiors from Saratoga Springs, NY (right) nearby the Vader Turner’s Reception installation (left). Even more provoking the Kehinde Wiley pieces which is part of a ceiling mural (below).  It all works well, no hodgepodge for these curators.

Marlene Fein was a wonderful boss about 100 years ago. I don’t know if she is still alive, but she came from Eastern Parkway, and the Brooklyn Museum definitely shaped her. She was dismayed how the neighborhood had gone from a middle class Jewish enclave to more working class African American. But the museum remained, and the neighborhood becomes something else again. She would be interested how the Brooklyn Museum kept its individuality, kept an inexpensive admission ($10 a bargain by NYC standards), remained accessible both with a small parking lot and subway on the corner, and how its collection is still relevant.

There may be idiots like this who think it is funny to mimic Boldini’s Whistler while sitting on a Rodin statue, but a lot of us, love what a wonderful collection and what a good job the curators have done. She would also get a kick out of the Statue of Liberty in the back lot. Please go see the Brooklyn Museum if you get a chance. All museums need your patronage!