Category: Art

Tidy Tidbits: Recent Reading, etc.

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FEELING GRATEFUL

The Chief Penguin and I were extremely fortunate, lucky, actually.  We endured an anxious 48 hours in New York as Hurricane Irma moved closer and closer to our coast and to the possibility of obliterating our stretch of paradise.  But as Irma shifted eastward and the winds changed direction, we were the beneficiaries of good fortune.  We returned home earlier this week, and yes, there were big trees uprooted and a fair amount of debris, but our house was intact and dry.  We heaved a big sigh of relief while sympathizing with many of our friends nearby who lost power for 5, 6, 7, 8 or even 9 days.  And we feel for the many thousands of people in the Keys and Puerto Rico who were not so fortunate.

 MOMA

Before we left Manhattan, we walked the High Line and paid a visit to the Museum of Modern Art for lunch in their café (good food at a very reasonable price) and a tour around the Robert Rauschenberg retrospective.  It turns out we were there just before the exhibit closed.  Quite a range of works from paintings with objects like metal fans or a stuffed bird affixed to the canvas, to colorful textiles, and even a vat of brownish bubbling mud.  To read more about Rauschenberg’s work, here’s an exhibit review from the New York Times.

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

CURRENT READING

 Strangers Tend to Tell Me Things: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Coming Home by Amy Dickinson

Many of the memoirs I’ve read in the past year or so have dealt with the act of dying.  While Ms. Dickinson has had more than her share of hardship and disappointment, she has a basically positive attitude about life and this book ends on an up note.  I especially enjoyed her account of growing up in a teeny tiny burg in upstate New York (not all that far from where I grew up) and what it was like to choose to return there to live permanently as a middle-aged adult.  Not something I would have chosen for myself.

From finding love post 50 to navigating the shoals of gaining acceptance from her newly acquired stepdaughters, it is a heartfelt, candid book.  Dickinson also writes the “Ask Amy” syndicated advice column carried in many newspapers. (~JW Farrington)

What Happened by Hillary Clinton

I am a Hillary fan (not that I think she ran a perfect campaign) and was one of her supporters.  I got her new book immediately, have begun it, and am about a quarter of the way into it.  Two immediate observations.  One, she comes across as warm and flexible and human in a way that she has never been before in her public life.  Two, she shares her regrets, personal mistakes, and apologizes for her loss in the election.  She doesn’t take all the blame, but she says she’s sorry in a way I can’t ever imagine a male politician doing.  I can’t envision any man writing this kind of soul-baring prose.

But, it is a very long book and she is wordy and so determined to be comprehensive that I get bogged down periodically and have to set aside the flow of words.  Even though she lost, her candidacy was an historic first, a fact that may have gotten lost recently.  She provides a very good chapter on what the challenges and obstacles are for female politicians in general.  Some of those also apply to women scaling the corporate ladder.  I will persevere on the book.  (~JW Farrington)

ON THE HIGH LINE

Note:  All photos by JWFarrington (some rights reserved)

 

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)