Russ&Suzie

Trip Log
2008-04-10 14:41:13 (UTC)

MoMA, SoHo, Seagull

Wednesday April 9 meant that we first walked to the Museum
of Modern Art with our route along Fifth Avenue where we
did a reprise of the Rockefeller Center interior and from
that side of the street heard a bagpipe accompaniment of
schoolkids entering St. Patrick's. Since we were standing
there, a number of other people asked us what was going
on. The consensus held that it sounded too cheerful for a
funeral.

At MoMA, I marveled at the hugeness of the place compared
to my early experiences of it and through the years
(enjoyed a review of the various buildings). We had
learned from the previous day's tour how the Rockefellers
had provided the benefit from the Standard Oil fortunes.

The first show involved the multiplex directions that art
took from the 1970s on forward. The efforts came from the
collection in the three divisions of formal/conceptual
approaches, mutability involving change and memory, and
provoking art (Ofili's use of elephant dung in an African
focused work,for instance). One that interested me as a
member of our Arts Immersion group and the focus of some
of us on music involved a person who had on the interior
of an entire room music sheets. The music got generated
from a system she'd worked out. Drawings occupied some of
the sheets as well as pensmanship loops. She had
collaborated with a composer and music stemming from the
music-scores played in the air of the room's interior.
Can't remember the artist's name. But that constituted the
sole mention of collaboration, which I feel to be
our "next big thing" -- what we in the Arts Immersion
group might work out in a formal way that we write about.

The other big show involved the use of color from color
charts to paint samples from commmercial paint
manufacturers, to a video of a man videotaped from above
painting a room in six different colors over six different
days. You see him painting himself into a corner (with
bated breath) and then a door opens, he paints over where
he had stood, and the door closes. Since the action's
speeded up, he looks like the old silent movies but in
single-minded color. Another very pleasant show redolent
with ideas.

In between we enjoyed the demonstrations of new products.
Putting on display modern furniture and house fixtures
goes with the MoMA experiences I've had. We ended with a
luncheon visit to the sculpture garden sitting in the sun
(getting our vitamin D, after all). Some Scandinavian
girls reveled in it too. An Asian mother had a little boy
and two little ones who especially enjoyed the bridges
over water. I reacquainted myself with David Smith,
Picasso's goat, a Calder stabile, Maillol's falling female
nude, Matisse's four bronze woman backs showing increasing
abstraction, and others whose names I don't necessarily
recall. WE looked south to above the wall and up across
the street at an amazing variety of architectural styles
and conspicuous consumption: copper roofs, rounded
windows, bay windows in an apartment obviously undergoing
rennovation (blue masking tape around the edges).
Skyscrapers beyond with their angled glass and massive
curved upper facades. Part of the modern art experience
reflecting decades of modern experience. Didn't make the
Whitney this year. I guess we went the Rockefeller route.

A note for Eric Zillner from the eighth of April and the
previous visit to the Metropolitan. Eric likes Clyfford
Still and we noted that he has room with many works in it
in the Lila Acheson Wallace wing, with DAvid Smith's Becca
in the center of it. Compared to his peers, he seemed more
represented, perhaps a comfort in the face of his native
state, NOrth Dakota, rejecting his offer of providing his
works should they construct a museum. He may have come
from there, but the folks who didn't leave, weren't
impressed, at least enough for putting out such dollars.

BAck to early afternoon on the ninth, we subwayed in fine
fettle to Lafayette and Broadway. It persisted even though
I took off confidently in the wrong direction; but re-
correction meant finding Wooster and the address I'd seen
mentioned in the New Yorker, but lamentably the show had
given way to another (oh well) we visited a number of
galleries up and down the streets and caught the view on
Houston that featured the picture we have of "Red Dog
Entering Manhattan" acquired in the Greenwich village area
with Mary many decades ago. On return we will look at it
again, with these memories refreshed. We wondered at the
effects of the recession --- some works were marked half
price.

We had seen reviewed the Rubin Museum on Seventh Avenue
that had Nepalese art, so we walked there and felt most
impressed with it: lavishly mounted and exhibited. Six
floors with wonderful lighting. We learned that Donald
Rubin with his wife Shelley had been collecting Himalayan
art for the past 35 years. His money came from health care
industry. I reflected to myself that the present day
counterpart to the Rockefellers and their oil money hinged
on Lyndon Johnson's mid-1960s turning on the governmental
spigot with Medicare/Medicaid. Health care entrepreneurs
saw money was to be made by intervening between the
patient and the doctor with both left holding the bag. But
at least we have this museum.

WE learned about the Bon religion of which I'd never
heard. The Buddhist majority often marginalized and
suppressed those practicing this, apparently. The art and
iconography seem very parallel, with Chinese influences
evident.

I think the best part of that museum experience was the
photography of Keven Bubriskey. He was in the Peace Corps
in the 1970s and then came back to Nepal with a larger
camera in the 1980s.

After dinner at a modestly priced Lemongrass Thai
restaurant (part of a chain) we walked to 13th Street to
the Classic Stage Company Theatre for a most enjoyable
theatre experience with the Seagull of Chekhov. Turns out
neither of us had experienced it before, at least if so it
hadn't registered like it did this time. A prima donna
mother, her anguished writer son and her writer lover who
also seduces a young woman. All takes place in the country
of 19th century Russia. HOme late for us in a cab with
sleep gratefully our reward for a pleasant day.




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