Discovery Times Square

Took my son to see the Terracotta Warriors exhibit on Memorial Day.  We loved it.  I still remember the first time I heard of the first Chinese emperor's terracotta army -- from an article in National Geographic back when I was a kid. 

Also on view was an exhibit about spying and espionage.  We loved that, too -- very interactive, including a room full of crisscrossed, changing, green security lasers that you have to navigate through in twenty seconds.  No crowd, so my son must have tried it about ten times.  I tried twice.  Some other great interactive stuff, and lots of amazing spy artifacts, especially from WWII and the Cold War.  Turns out you can put a camera in just about anything, from a glue stick to a robot dragonfly. Fascinating stuff, and highly recommended.  Tix are a bit pricy, but well worth the splurge.

I'm not proud of it

But here are two things that always make me laugh:

1. The car rental commercial with Tennis Great John McEnroe. "Choose any car??!! You canNOT be serious!!!!" Gold.
2. Every time - every time - that Owen Wilson, as a tiny cowboy, calls Ben Stiller "Gigantor" in the Night at the Museum movies. Every time.

Like I said. I'm not proud of these things, but they are true. Have a nice day.

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.

the Frick Collection

Last Wednesday I had the day off. I left the house early for a doctor's appointment in Manhattan. I like my doctor, but I don't like having to go to midtown to see him, and it gives me yet another excuse to avoid doctor visits. This was kind of a part one visit. I met with a naturopathic doctor who works in his practice, and they took a lot of blood, and then I see my regular doctor this Thursday to talk about the blood work, which will mostly be a discussion of how bad my cholesterol is. I've been working hard at improving my diet, and exercising more often for the last 14 months or so, and I've lost about thirty pounds in that time. I feel pretty damn good. But unfortunately, I'm pretty sure I'm still going to have to go on meds to get the cholesterol under control, and that disappoints me.

After the doc visit, I found a diner for some breakfast, since I'd had to fast for the blood work, and after that, I decided to walk the twenty blocks or so up to the Frick Collection, a place that has always been one of my favorite spots in NYC. The secret has gotten out, so it's not quite the restful and quiet place it used to be, but that's okay. It still has some of the most beautiful paintings in New York.

They have all their Whistlers all in one place for a special exhibition. I don't care a whole lot for Whistler, to tell the truth, but it was nice to see the four full length portraits all together in the oval room, just off the courtyard [I have always loved the spitting frogs in the courtyard]. Interesting to see how he used different coarsenesses of canvas with his thin and breathy washes. Only one of the four is a very good painting, although they all are worth looking at.

I have also always loved the Titian, the Bellini, the Holbein, and the great Vermeer of the soldier and the laughing woman. What I found interesting this visit is how different things strike you as you age, even with galleries and paintings as familiar and comforting as the Frick's. I'm getting older, so more than ever I found myself wondering about some of the people in the paintings, particularly Hals' big round guy with the twinkly eye. Like so many before me, I marvel at the silky and luminous blacks, but this time I'm also just a little curious about who this guy was, what it was like for him to be painted by Hals, what was on his mind, what they talked about. Maybe I'm getting sentimental.

With the way the Mets are playing, I'll take all the sentiment I can get. And beauty.

The Frick is the kind of place where every time I've walked out of there I'm sure I've found a new favorite painting. This time it was a smallish painting by Goya, a simple portrait of a woman with pale and fair skin, dark eyes and hair, the hint of a moustache, dressed in a simple black dress, standing against a brownish murky background. What made this my favorite of this trip: the difference in handling between the delicate, gorgeous, precisely observed painting of her face, and the coarser, rough, faster handing of her figure and the black dress and grey gloves. Rough and thick paint there, delicate and pearly here.

I spent a little more time than I usually do with the early Italian paintings, too, especially the little Pieros, so serious and dignified and then that red, wow. And all in all, I came away that day with a new appreciation for the strangeness that runs through the history of Western painting [the Ingres! that arm is all wrong, but who cares! those weird old stories and juxtapositions of scale in the religious paintings, the odd narratives in the Veroneses. And partly, you find what you look for, and what you've been thinking about, and lord knows I've been embracing the oddities in my work lately.].

After the Frick, I walked down Fifth to Union Square, about fifty-five blocks, taking my time, people watching on the Library steps, getting rained on a little bit, window shopping. Highlight was watching a guy in a suit ahead of me fruitlessly trying to catch a cab going downtown, waving and checking his watching and jogging and waving again. No cab for you, pally.

I do like knocking around Manhattan with no place to be.