Karen and I got off to an earlier than usual departure from Hudson yesterday and made it into Harlem by 11 am. After some pauses to chase the various children around, we went off to The Museum of the City of NY at 103rd and 5th Ave. It was a warm day so we had a great walk from 121st to the museum, though our winter coats soon became a burden.

At the museum, the Joel Meyerowitz series: LEGACY: THE PRESERVATION OF WILDERNESS IN NEW YORK CITY PARKS (Oct 9 through Mar 21) was good fun. The tapestry size reproductions hanging in the entrance hall are a great reflection of Meyerowitz’s use of a large format camera and the inkjet images on Tyvek. A couple of the images of large trees are worth a pause. Overall, the photography is at times a bit worn out in its approach to framing and selection of topics. Landscapes are such a thoroughly worked over topic that it is hard not to fall into patterns of visualization that produce images that seem a bit predictable if not trite. Nevertheless, I also learned that park space accounts for over 25% of the land area of NYC. Made me think of making more of an effort to get beyond my usual ventures to Marcus Garvey park (aka Mt. Morris Park) and Central Park. Here is a link to the official website of NYC parks where you can explore more about the city’s 1,700 parks.

You could hear the chuckles and laughter at our next exhibit stop well before entering,  CHARLES ADDAMS’S NEW YORK (Mar 4 through May 16). But, for me the highlight of our visit was the 26 minute video installation, TIMESCAPES: A MULTIMEDIA PORTRAIT OF NEW YORK (Ongoing), a multimedia portrait of New York City. This is a terrific video history of the development of NYC from 1609 to the last few years. For example, NY shippers innovated regularly scheduled “packet” ships that sailed to Europe and back. This greatly increased the flow of goods and people over the previous approach of a ship only sailing when it was full.

After a bit we walked down to the Asia Society at 70th and Park Ave to see artifacts from Vietnam,  Arts of Ancient Viet Nam: From River Plain to Open Sea through May 2, 2010. Glad to have gone and a good reminder of how slight my knowledge of the prt of the world. though I continue to be surprised that human history is quite literally still being uncovered. Some of the artifacts on display had only been unearthed in the last ten years.

Noah’s Basketball Game

We rounded out our day of activities with a basketball game, the championship game for a league that Noah plays in. The game was held at PS 6. The whole family was in attendance, Nyla, Mom and Dad and two sets of grandparents. Despite vigorous  coaching from the stands, Noah’s team was not quite up to the challenge. They lost. But, I was really impressed with the level of play. I am certain that I have never seen organized basketball for this age. I was expecting more of something like swarm soccer. One of the little side drama was the presence of Noah’s best friend, Ben Gross, on the opposing team. As you can tell from the picture, no egos seem to have been shattered nor over-inflated.

G. Caillebotte's "Oarsmen Rowing on the Yerres" - Brooklyn Museum

Last weekend we spent one very busy Saturday in New York City museuming. We started in Brooklyn at the Brooklyn Museum. This time we took the 2 train from 125th St in Harlem. After 45 minutes and a bit of subway back and forth caused by track work, we emerged from the subway walking up to look straight at the new glass entrance hall of the Brooklyn Museum of Art.

Brooklyn Museum

Gustave Caillebotte: Impressionist Paintings From Paris to the Sea

We visited a number of galleries. I found the exhibition, “Gustave Caillebotte: Impressionist Paintings From Paris to the Sea” very interesting. Unlike the New York Time’s reviewer Holland Cotter,¹ I am not too bothered with issues of exactly where any particular artist fits into the taxonomy that art critics and historians use.

G. Caillebotte-"Factories in Argenteuil"

Unlike most taxonomies of the physical world, art taxonomy seems to obscure more than enlighten. At any rate I really enjoyed the industrial and street scenes. His perspectives are frequently novel.((pictures of Caillebotte’s work shown here borrowed without permission from the Brooklyn Museum website))

Judy Chicago’s “The Dinner Party”

Judy Chicago’s “The Dinner Party” is now on permanent display. I must admit that very few of the 1038 women honored in this piece were familiar to me. The “Heritage Panels” that are part of this work offer a timeline and some hints about why the women included at the dinner are there. The Brooklyn Museum has wonderful web pages on the Dinner Party, including a 360⁰ virtual tour here.

“American Identities: A New Look”

We made a return visit to the the fifth floor for the “American Identities: A New Look” permanent installation. This is proving to be worth a trot around whenever we get to this museum. The topics are great and the juxtapositions of art from different eras about similar topics provides an unusual view on artists  and topics.

The Black List Project: Timothy Greenfield-Sanders and Elvis Mitchell

We also stopped by “The Black List Project: Timothy Greenfield-Sanders and Elvis Mitchell” (web information here) on the way out the door. Large conventional portraits of notable people. This part of  “a documentary project that explores being Black in America.”. Not sure how they chose the people included, but with such a large population to pick from any selections would probably raise that question.

The Brooklyn Museum continues to be a very reliable source of good exhibitions without the crushes of the MET and MOMA. Good place to take the grandchildren.

MOMA

“Into the Sunset: Photography’s Image of the American West”

Stephen Shore 1973 photo Klamath Falls, OR in MOMA show

With that we got back on the subway and headed back to Manhattan and a visit to MOMA. Fortified by one of the wonders of urban life, a hot dog from a street vendor, we went into MOMA and first looked at “Into the Sunset: Photography’s Image of the American West”. This topically arranged visit to photographs of the American West was great fun for me. Lots of famous photographers juxtaposed with people unknown to me but shooting photos on a similar topic but perhaps from a completely different time. Leaving aside the pedagogical intent of the show, “the American West is a produced cultural artifact” – the quality of most of the images was very good. Lots to enjoy.²

“The Printed Picture”

I also returned briefly to look at an exhibition that I had stumbled on during an earlier visit. “The Printed Picture” explores the development of printing pictures, something that we take for granted. It is not so long ago that color pictures did not appear in daily newspapers. Color was reserved for the Sunday paper pullouts and magazines. On a daily basis one was used to quite grainy black and whites. Now color is ubiquitous, expected, and black and white images are the more unusual. One technology really caught my attention.  The Hewlett Packard Indigo press. This digital press prints in full four color at 120 pages per minute with variable page content on the fly. The age of on demand printing is here now. Maybe this should be obvious from the flourishing self-publication sites.

Karen has now purchased the book that accompanies this exhibition,  The Printed Picture, a book by Richard Benson that traces the changing technology of picture making from the Renaissance to the present, focusing on the vital role of images in multiple copies.

Paul Graham, “a shimmer of possibility”

Paul Graham. New Orleans (Woman Eating). 2004

Paul Graham. New Orleans (Woman Eating). 2004

I also went back to look again at a series of photos by Paul Graham, “a shimmer of possibility”. Working predominantly in series format, these photos are really compelling. I found myself spending more than my usual 10 seconds studying these series. “New Orleans (Woman Eating) is a wonderful series which is occupied with a woman sitting in a bus stop eating chicken. But, the series seems also to be about accidental art found in the rubbish at her feet.³

In another series, “Texas 2005″,  8 pictures taken around sunset. Only on close examination of the first, taken at a low angle through trees between two houses looking towards a setting sun, do you realize that there are two figures, very faint figures, playing basketball. Later photos in the series show this play up close. In none is there any connection displayed between the photographer and the basketball players. We seem to be an unseen observer. But, as the title of this show suggests, these events are just “a shimmer of possibility”. What in fact are we observing?

Martin Kippenberger: The Problem Perspective

We also rode the escalators to the top floor to look at “Martin Kippenberger: The Problem Perspective”. This strange fellow made an enormous amount of “art” in his short life. Most of this seems to fit into the genre of art which MFA and PhD students will worry about. Not much for me to say about this except for repeating my distain for this genere of self-indulgent silli-business masquerading contemporary art. Nevertheless,  I did take a few shots of the exhibition.

Here is a shot from above of Kippenberger large installation on the second floor.

Martin Kippenberger. Installation view of The Happy End of Franz Kafka’s “Amerika”. Mixed media, dimensions variable

I got more interested in some strange reflections as I was taking a few photos from the sixth floor balcony.

reflection-kippenberger-moma

MET

Pierre Bonnard: The Late Interiors

After a brief bus ride, we trooped in to the MET. By this time I was pretty museumed out. Reinforced by a stop in the cafeteria (I can get there blind folded), we did look at the exhbition,    
“Pierre Bonnard: The Late Interiors”. Could be the end of the day or my general lack of interest in Impressionist flowers, but, I was underwhelmed and glad to board the M2 for Harlem.

1. see his review March 27, 2009 “The Reluctant Impressionist here
2. Stephen Shore photo borrowed without permission from NYTimes
3. The picture here of the series was taken by me. The second is borrowed without permission from MOMA’s website

Louis Faurer Retrospective (thru July 28, 2002)

Two rooms filled with black and white pictures predominantly from the 1930′s thru the 1950′s. A lesser known street photographer, Louis Faurer, like Robert Frank and others, produced many of the photographic images that form the visual backdrop to our mind map of those times. Faurer’s work was completley unknown to me until this visit. The work stands on its own both from a content and technical perspective.

Louis Faurer, The Accident, Lexington Avenue, New York City, 1952, gelatin silver print, courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

(This photo is actually the result of an error. It is a double exposure. The chalk outline on the street is an earlier picture of an accident with the chilled boy taken later.)

(The title for this picture on the gallery’s web site is incorrect. Unfortunately I do not have the correct information. Probably from the 1930′s in New York City. One of many photos Faurer took of beggars, indigents, and others down on their luck)

(both pictures borrowed from the Addison Gallery web site without permission)