James Ensor at the Modern

Finally made it to the Museum of Modern Art, my first visit since it reopened, since the reopening somehow coincided with my new fathershipness. My last visit must have been the Matisse/Picasso show in Queens.

I don't have much in the way of a fully formed reaction to the renovations and new galleries. I like that the helicopter is still prominent. The galleries feel a little confusing, for lack of a better word, in that I found myself having to think a lot about where I was walking next and why. And I have to say I liked the old Matisse room better, which had a window and felt more comfortable than the current Matisse gallery. The current gallery feels a little airless and claustrophobic in comparison and the paintings could use a little more breathing space. Some of the ab-ex stuff hasn't aged too well, I am sorry to say.

A couple reactions to the paintings, though, via my hero Henri Matisse. This time my favorite Matisse was the subtly drab Rose Table. And I found myself thinking about The Dance in a new way, perhaps because I've read Spurling's excellent two volume biography since the last time I was able to visit the Modern's fantastic Matisse collection. Looking at the Dance, I was struck by how he must have felt working on this piece in his studio, how strangely frightening it must have been, working on that scale, with that kind of color, and that simplified drawing and elegant crudity of line. It might have been exhilerating and terrifying all at once to be looking at this big wild thing in your studio.

I am nowhere near as afflicted with studio anxiety as Matisse was [it was almost debilitating for him], but I do feel it often enough to be comforted in knowing that Henri - and another painting hero of mine, Willem de Kooning - had his own doubts in the studio.

So anyway, the Ensor show. A trip and a half. Before this, I had seen only a handful of Ensors, and had not really ever given him much thought. When you've only seen a few in person, it's easy to write him off as a flake and a reclusive eccentric. But the chance to see a larger selection, all at once, that includes the scraped and knifed and darkly colored early work, the trademark masks and grotesqueries, and the beautiful graphic work - both the drawings and the etchings were a real revelation - really helped to make his work resonate with me, especially because of the theatricality, weirdness, and humor of my own b-movie paintings.

I'm not sure how yet, because only work will tell, but I'm looking forward to seeing how Ensor's own obsessiveness, theatricality, weirdness, and humor will affect my work. I know it's time to make some prints again, monotypes, drypoints, and some larger linocuts. And we'll see what happens.

Ninotchka in New York

'Ninotchka' was on tv the other night. I first saw the Ernst Lubitsch film 'Ninotchka' during my first summer in New York, the summer of 1992. I was a student in Pratt Institute's MFA program, and as such, I enjoyed the benefits of membership to the Museum of Modern Art, the chief benefit being free admission whenever the museum was open.

So on hot summer days it was great, one of the cheapest ways to enjoy air conditioning -- the price of a couple subway tokens and a slice for lunch. Besides the Matisses, Pollocks, de Koonings, Cezannes, Seurats, Picassos, Mondrians, and the rest, The Modern also has movies. Free movies for money-challenged grad student. An even better way to escape the summer heat.

I found myself at the Modern one afternoon when 'Ninotchka' was playing. I knew nothing about it. I'd heard of Greta Garbo, at least, but had never seen one of her movies. The blurb in the museum guide said this was the one where 'Garbo laughs!' Good enough for me. I found a seat in the auditorium, which was filling with a mix of older movie fans and young students like me.

First things first, I loved the movie for the same reasons everybody does -- funny, sophisticated, satirical, elegant, sparkling. And then there's Garbo. What I really remember most clearly about watching it that first time, was not the movie, but the reaction of the moviegoers when Garbo came on screen for the first time. The three Soviet envoys are at the train station in Paris looking for the new emissary from the USSR. They expect a man. But it is Greta Garbo. She stands stiffly, in drab Soviet clothes, with a plain hat, but of course the camera holds on her for a couple beats, a shot of her stern but luminous face. And the New York crowd applauds. Long and hard, the crowd applauds. For an actress in a movie! An actress who's dead! (An actress, it must be said, who was a New Yorker herself.) And the crowd applauds as if this is the Zeigfeld Theatre and we have Garbo up on stage alive and in the flesh and doing a buck and wing. Well, I've never forgotten that moment to this day. New York is a lot of things, one of which is a pretty damn serious movie town.