Category: Art

Manhattan Adventures

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WAITING OUT IRMA

We led a schizophrenic existence the past few days enjoying lovely sunny fall days in Manhattan while mentally anxious about Hurricane Irma’s path and the fate of our Florida home. We were some of the fortunate ones; by the time Irma reached us, she had lessened in intensity and the wind direction sent any potential storm surge away from our house. We did not suffer any damage, just a few downed trees and branches around our property, while many in our area are without power.  While we waited, we walked, ate, went to museums, and spent time with our granddaughters.

EAST SIDE VIBE

The Upper East Side is a new neighborhood for us as we’ve always stayed in midtown or the West Village in the past. We love the West Village, its irregular streets, its funkiness, its cutting edge restaurants, and its overall small burg feeling. But, there is life for us in the UES too. The streets, while straight and grid-like, are bustling with people and places to shop, and a European aspect to some blocks. The dining is mostly more traditional, Old World German or French bistro-style, with in between a Chinese or Vietnamese eatery. Lots of bakeries too. Where Italian food seems to predominate in the Village, here it’s French. Although we did discover Nicola’s, a family-friendly popular restaurant serving delicious Italian food.

MUSEUMS

Met Breuer

We are a short walking distance from Museum Mile on 5th Avenue and have visited two museums already. We had long ago been in the Met Breuer building when it was the home of the Whitney Museum, but not since then. Flora Bar, their coffee and pastry outpost, offers a wide selection of coffees and teas, but also a tasty slice of greens pie and an awesome sticky bun that has sugar on top, but is not too sweet. It’s a pleasant spot to while away the time.

We were less impressed with the one exhibit on display. A retrospective of furniture, ceramics, jewelry, and textiles by the designer Ettore Sottsass, it was challenging for those who had never heard of him. With label text written in high museumese, it was not nearly as accessible to a general audience as it could have been.

We bought a Met membership since that gives us entry to the big Met on 5th Avenue and The Cloisters as well as here; if, however, we had bought admission tickets for just this museum, we would have been disappointed that there wasn’t more to see.

Neue Galerie

My friend Patricia has been singing the praises of Neue Galerie for several years, both for their collection and for the luscious Viennese pastry at their Café Sabarsky. We went and were very impressed on both counts. Feeling relieved after Irma left us intact, we indulged in a celebratory lunch starting with champagne and ending with a shared slice of apple strudel. The Chief Penguin went the traditional route with bratwurst, German potatoes, and cole slaw while I had what might be called, the “ladies special.” It was a mound of delicate fresh crabmeat salad covered by a silky ripe half an avocado with a few micro greens and cherry tomatoes around it. Just perfect!

Concentrating on Austrian and German art from about 1880 to 1940, the museum’s permanent collection includes lots of Klimts and Schieles as well as works by other artists of the period. An especially beautiful work is Klimt’s “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer,” which Gallerie founder Ronald Lauder purchased in 2006. This study in gold was the subject of the excellent feature film, Woman in Gold, starring Helen Mirren.

“Woman in Gold” from Neue Galerie

We also appreciated seeing the first ever museum exhibit of works by Richard Gerstl, an Austrian painter known for his revealing portraits, both of himself and his musician friends. His early suicide, after an affair with Arnold Schonberg’s wife, resulted in his work being sent to a warehouse for many years.

Note:  All other photos by JWFarrington.

Art at the Whitney

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WHITNEY BIENNIAL.

The Whitney Biennial brings together works of art by a wide variety of artists (60+ this year, I believe), many of them young.  Most of the art is recent or new works and includes paintings, sculpture, and video.  Overall the art is strange, provocative, disturbing, and sometimes even realistic.  We did just one floor of this extensive exhibit and will have to return to see the rest.  Here are some samples of what we saw.

One section of a cube by Pope. L, you could walk into whose interior and exterior walls were all covered with these slices of bologna each one with the face of one individual Jew in New York.  Almost 2,800 of these slices representing a fraction of a percent of the Jews in the city.    Odd and slightly disturbing.

  Work by Jon Kessler

La Talaverita, Sunday Morning NY Times, 2016 by Aliza Nisenbaum

One of John Divola’s series of Abandoned Paintings.

Section of stained glass wall by Raul de Nieves.  In front of it were several life sized figures made of yard, fabric, beads and the like.

  Glimmer Glass, 2016 by Carrie Moyer

Rug, 2015 by Ulrike Muller

 

The Whitney’s outdoor terraces are a wonderful venue for large scale sculpture.  I was particularly taken with the series of red cubes within cubes graduated in the degree of transparency.  The sculptor is Larry Bell.  The header photo is another view of this captivating work.

Note:  All photos by JWFarrington.

UK: Town & Country

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This week we’ve seen two exhibits and made a short jaunt to visit friends in Dorset, Wareham to be specific.  We’re a short walk from the V&A Museum so that was an essential as was the featured exhibit at the Royal Academy.   Being in Dorset was being transported to another world, full of history and marked by heaths, ridges, flood plains, and even a castle.  Corfe Castle sitting high on a ridge in Corfe.  All lovely.

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FASHION AT THE V&A

The Victoria and Albert Museum has free exhibits and ones for which you must pay.  We decided to take advantage of one of the free ones.  It was a history of British fashion from about 1790 up through the ages to around 1970.  Mostly women’s clothing, but here and there examples of menswear.  It was fun to see the many layers women wore in the early years, so many that you wonder how ordinary women, as opposed to rich ones, could dress themselves.  Here are a few highlights that appealed to me.  You can probably guess which decade the later ones are from.img_1245 img_1246 img_1249

 

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ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM

The other exhibit we saw was “Abstract Expressionism” at the Royal Academy of Art, and it was superb!  A very detailed exploration of the movement with lots of attention paid to several of the biggest names, Gorky, Pollock, de Kooning and Rothko.  But also, we were introduced to Clyfford Still, an outsider in the movement whose work was really only seen by the public after his death in 1980.  The museum in Denver dedicated to his work owns ninety-five percent of it.  A westerner from North Dakota, his work shows the influence of those landscapes.  img_1285

I found the exhibit fascinating, appreciated Pollock’s work and impact in a new way, and loved the intimate display of seven of Rothko’s works in a smallish space–strange to say, I know, since the works themselves aren’t small.  But in this hanging, you can immerse yourself in the saturated color.  No photography allowed so I can’t share it with you, but, if you’re in London, do go!

Note:  All photos copyright JWFarrington (some rights reserved)

London Days

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Days two and three in London involved more walking (only one Tube round trip so far), an art exhibit and a long browse in one of my favorite bookshops.

ART

It was Sunday, the last day of the exhibit, and very foggy.  Like us, many like-minded folks streamed toward the Tate Modern for the Georgia O’Keefe retrospective.  For most people, O’Keefe evokes the thought of flower images and New Mexico.  But she was so much more than a flower painter.  img_1226 img_1227This exhibit traces her work from early abstracts through a brief New York phase (who knew she painted skyscrapers?) to summers in Lake George, NY (loved the simple straight lines of a green door and her presentation of foliage), to the landscapes and adobes of the Southwest and her fascination with skulls and bones (which she insisted did not mean death to her).  Even later, she painted several series of patios and flowery trees.  And, yes, the flowers are here; I’m partial to the poppies and, of course, the stunningly beautiful and beautifully composed white jimson weed!

We rented the multi-media guide (audio with photos of the works being discussed) which was excellent.  Commentary by various curators plus the voice of O’Keefe explaining her approach to her art.  I find that having an audio guide, particularly in a crowded exhibit, helps me focus even if it means I don’t stop and peruse every work.  [I saw no one taking photos of the art and so was hesitant to do so, only taking the above two photos.]

We had lunch in the museum restaurant on the 6th floor and were just ahead of the crowd.  Veal milanese with sauerkraut on the side and a very nice panfried hake with sautéed greens were our selections. img_1230 In keeping with the coloring craze, the table was covered with a mat to color and a glass of crayons.  A diversion for the adults as much as the kids.

BOOKS–HATCHARD’S

After lunch, we walked across the Millennium Bridge and along Sermon Lane to St. Paul’s Cathedral.  From there we took the Tube to Tottenham Court Road and then walked through Leicester Square, past Eros on Piccadilly, and onward.  Hatchard’s has been around since 1797 and is a very proper bookshop. It not only has three floors of books, but is carpeted, not blazingly lit, and offers some quiet nooks where one might sit.  Several years ago it was taken over by Waterstone’s and there are now some signs of that with more gifty items and notecards on the main floor which are nice, but, to me, detract from the seriousness of the place.

The extensive fiction section has been re-located to the second floor along with the largest array of crime novels I’ve seen anywhere.  And there’s an inviting sofa under the window on which one may alight.  Small tables with piles of books on them are staged throughout the entire store, each with a titled sign and then a quotation from some author’s work.  Strong suits are certainly British history and biography as well as the aforementioned fiction and the latest new titles.  We easily spent an hour and I left with a short novel by Tessa Hadley and a few more notecards for my collection.

All photos by JWFarrington; header photo is London Millennium Bridge