Around the town via my cell phone camera

Posted on October 2, 2010 by Exile on Pain Street

Here are a few random photos take with my crappy cell phone camera. (Hence, the poor quality.) Hopefully, they’ll pass muster on the strength of the content and composition.

Coming out of the Times Square subway station into the blue night light.

In the DeKalb Avenue subway station in downtown Brooklyn. He had a long braid of hair that he looped up into a perfect cylinder.

In the balcony overlooking the main entrance of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. One of my favorite spots in the city. Below is the big parade of humanity and above are archways within archways. I like the flare of light from the window.

The next two were taken by 4-Year Old Daughter. I’m sure they’re just an accident, as she is to young to know anything about texture and light, but I think they’re great!

These are window blinds.

A lamp!

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Happy birthday to Mrs. Wife! You’re not older, you’re…actually that’s a bunch of baloney. You’re exactly one year older. But you’re still a hell of a lot younger than I am, so you’ll get little sympathy from me on that account!

* * *

Last night we went to a wedding in deepest, darkest New Jersey. We were almost at the Pennsylvania border! A beautiful venue, a beautiful wedding. Guess who I saw there? The guy who was charged with the unpleasant task of laying me off from Morgan Stanley in 2008. What are the odds?! Astonishing! That was real comfortable.

I don’t bear any animosity or ill will towards him. He was just the messenger. But it was still an odd sensation, especially after the third glass of wine. The fact is that the last time I saw this guy, I lost my job and it was the beginning of a long, dark period.

He’s nice enough but he’s one of the dullest people I’ve ever met. It’s like trying to talk to a block of concrete. It doesn’t jibe with his chosen profession as a personnel manager. His wife was up dancing with some girls the entire night while he sat at the table, more often than not, alone. She was astonishingly cute and vibrant. I wonder how that happened?

Actually, people probably look at the astonishing cute and vibrant Mrs. Wife and wonder the same thing.

That old radical Matisse

Posted on August 31, 2010 by Exile on Pain Street

There’s happy news for those in, and about to visit, New York. The Matisse show at MoMA, Matisse: Radical Invention, doesn’t close until October 11th, so there’s still time to catch it. And catch it you should. You’ll need a timed ticket to get it because, as with all blockbuster shows, it’s packed. [Guess what recent blockbuster show at MoMA was one of best-attended EVER? Ready for this? The Tim Burton retrospective!] The whole timed ticket thing is a bit of a pain in the ass, but it doesn’t cost any extra and you won’t get in without it.

Boy, I love Matisse. He’s the anti-Renoir. I can’t stand Auguste Renoir, with his pastelly, soft focus greeting card art. But Matisse is the guts, man. This show is the proof. These painting were executed mid-career and don’t fit into neat categories. It was a period of experimentation for Matisse. They are some of his more abstract works.

I love this painting. The Italian Woman. Look at those fantastic angles on the left side of the canvas. Mama mia!

This painting is as creepy as anything that was in the Burton show. His eyes are black and hollow. They follow you around the gallery and know what’s in your demented little soul. Easily, the best work in the show.

Matisse at play: On the left, a table, a bowl and some apples, quickly sketched and rendered. The table and background are given a radical treatment. Remember, folks, this is around 1914! Hanging next to this is the same table, bowl and apples. This time, however, a slower, more thoughtful rendition.

The Moroccans. Matisse considered this work to be one of his most “pivotal.” I thought they were men bowed in prayer. They’re melons! I don’t know shit from shinola.

MoMA has early morning viewing hours for members before the museum opens, Wednesdays–Mondays, 9:30–10:30 a.m. You can buy breakfast with mimosas and there ain’t no crowds. If you’re in my zip code, contact me and I’ll get us in.

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Here are a few bonus paintings from MoMA for those of you who hung in through the entire post.

Gauguin’s playful Still Life with Three Puppies.

Vinnie van G.’s Starry Night. There’s always a big crowd around this painting. Do you know why? Because it’s a really moving piece of art. And, unlike the Mona Lisa, when you see this in person for the fist time, you’re not disappointed.

Cringe-worthy art

Posted on August 2, 2010 by Exile on Pain Street

Lever House is considered by many architectural purists to be one of the more important buildings in Manhattan. Located at Park Avenue and 49th Street, many of its revolutionary design elements were co-opted by other architects (as is often the case). There’s an emphasis placed on the public space and the skin of the building is made of a heat resistant blue/green glass that doesn’t have windows you could open and close.

Lever House acquired a fancy art collection and uses its lobby as gallery space to show it off. They have a rotation of pretty interesting exhibits but the one that’s on display now is a big, dumb, mess.

Mike Bidlo’s Not Warhol (Brillo Boxes, 1964), 2005 is up through September 11. The piece is merely a recreation of Andy Warhol’s stacked Brillo boxes. It’s a stunning display of laziness and low ambition.

Bidlo “thought it would be interesting to appropriate a work by another appropriator.” I’ve seen Warhol’s work. He’s no Warhol, if that’s what he’s trying to imply. Can you imagine? You are given a commission to do a piece in a high profile venue like the Lever House gallery and the best you can come up with is copying Warhol. Shame on you. They try to draw a thread between the original exhibit and this one by displaying a Brillo box from Warhol’s exhibit inside a Plexiglas cube.

The exhibit’s unintentionally comical bio states that “Bidlo is best known for his incredibly accurate replications of masterworks by important twentieth century artists…” That’s just lazy. It doesn’t require any original thought. During a 1982 exhibit where Bidlo made replicas of Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings, he “re-enacted Pollock’s infamous act of urinating into Peggy Guggenheim’s fireplace (which Bidlo finds relevant to Pollock’s painting technique and is related to Bidlo’s later recreations of Warhol’s urine splashed “Oxidation” paintings).” What an idiot. Why do curators fall for this crap? He also has the nerve to claim he comes from the same school of thought as Richard Prince and Barbara Kruger. Yeah, you wish.

The Lever House plaza includes a Noguchi sculpture garden where you’ll find this playful Hello Kitty sculpture. It’s not Great Art, but it’s a hell of a lot more interesting than what’s going on inside the lobby.

Play me: 5,288 keys

Posted on July 4, 2010 by Exile on Pain Street

Play Me*, I’m Yours is the installation by British artist Luke Jerram. It follows a successful run in London. Jerram gathered 60 used pianos and placed them in parks, plazas and on street corners throughout the five boroughs. Anyone can walk up, sit down and bang out a tune.

This is one of two pianos in Times Square. It was smack dab in the middle on an island on Broadway and 47th Street.

All 60 pianos were painted by volunteers. Each piano has its own distinctive design. One of them was painted by Sophie Matisse, granddaughter of Henri Matisse. (Not this one.) The pianos are protected from theft by being tethered to big cinder blocks. That, and the fact that they’re pianos.

I thought it was going to be a lot of people just plonking away at the keys but most of the people I heard play seemed to be quite accomplished. There were dozens of brief concerts in a wide variety of music styles. For free!

This piano was painted a boring battleship gray. Not very imaginative at all.

But it was in a great location. Right behind the New York Public Library’s stone lion, Patience. (Or is that Fortitude? They all look alike to me.)

The paint job on this one was also nothing to marvel at. They placed it in a playground in Madison Square Park. This piano took a lot of abuse. Many of the kids were playing with their balled-up fists. But what can you expect?

Of the several I saw, this was clearly the most imaginative paint job. It had a great location, too; at the southern end of Times Square.

In what other city can you stumble upon this unlikely pair of strangers—a young Japanese guitar player and an old black piano player—and watch them find their way through a quiet song, all with the warm, summer Times Square night swirling around them? This town is pure magic, I tell you.

* Every time I stumble across one of these pianos and see the exhibit name painted on the side, I get Neil Diamond’s Play Me in my head as an unwanted earworm. This is courtesy of my mother, who played Diamond’s Moods album constantly when I was a kid.

You are the sun
I am the moon
You are the words
I am the tune
Play me

It’s a jungle up here

Posted on June 30, 2010 by Exile on Pain Street

Every summer, the Metropolitan Museum of Art mounts a sculpture exhibit on its roof. Aside from the sweeping views of Central Park and the mansions along 5th Avenue, it’s a chance to see some big-idea installations. I don’t know who curates these things but it’s been one home run after another. Last year’s Maelstrom by Roxy Paine was a hoot.

This year, Doug + Mike Starn have mounted Big Bambú. The project consists of fresh cut bamboo poles lashed together with nylon rope. The construction of the sculpture is ongoing and will continue throughout the summer. It closes October 31st, which is pretty late in the year for this sort of thing.

The cool interactive aspect of this project is that the sculpture contains a series of steps and ramps that allow you to actually walk up into it. During the day, workers continue to assemble the sculpture around you. Unfortunately, you have to be at least 10 years old in order to walk into the sculpture, so when I was with 8-Year Old Daughter, I couldn’t go up. But the exhibit is there for a while so I’ll make my way up at some point and post photos. At its completion, it’ll be 50 feet high!

You have to get a (free) timed ticket in order to go in the sculpture and my understanding is that you’re better off going on a Wednesday or Thursday because on the weekends, tickets for the entire day are taken fairly early in the morning. For me, the exhibit doesn’t have the “wow” factor that Maelstrom did, but it’s worth a visit simply because of the grandeur.

What’s a trip to the Met without visiting some old friends? Take a look at this photo and compare it to the one in my banner. She grows! The background on van Gogh’s irises was originally painted a pale rose, but over the years the pigment has faded out of the paint and now it’s a chalky white. The original color can still be seen along some of the edges if you get close enough.

Photo: Artistè Florenza

This shot of Damien Hirst’s shark in formaldehyde was taken surreptitiously. You can take photos of pretty much anything you want in the Met as long as you don’t use a flash. But a security guard is always on hand to prevent people from taking pics of this piece. I wonder why? I quickly snapped this while the guard was yelling at someone for taking a picture. Yes, the shark is (was) real.