NYC 2008 - Day 3

Wednesday July 2

Still kind of beat from the prior night's adventure we slept in a little and so did not beat the rush to breakfast and had a short wait. Next up was the M&M store which we promised the kids we'd get to after they spent 2 nights freaking out over while watching the billboard from our window. Its an awful place. Everything costs alot, they play terrible, saccharine pop music at jet engine decibel levels. We spent money, took pictures and got M&Ms. I don't really want to talk about it any more.

From there we headed uptown to the Met stopping on the way for a bit of baked stuff and coffee in place of lunch. The upper east side looks like it does on tv, rich people with tiny dogs in apartments with doormen.

The Met is an impressively large place and a total maze inside. We spent a little time going through some egyptian stuff at the beginning and then headed for the Arms/Armor (what did you think the 9 year old boy would pick?). The collections are documented pretty well and the scope of what they have is really impressive. Just to name a few:pre-Crusader stuff, Renaissance European, some non-European (Indian, Tibetan and Japanese in particular), amazing wheelock/flintlock, combo sword/knife guns and some fully decked out out armored horses sporting armored knights with lances. It was all very amazing but there was a group of Germans there and somehow hearing German spoken in the context of military weaponry gives me pause.

From there we decided to spend some time (turned out to be all the rest of the time) in the modern art sections. I bet we saw 15% of the whole place in the 5 hours we were there.

We started up on the roof where they had some Jeff Koons stuff. I'd seen a thing about him so am vaguely aware of what he's about. I was initially kind of dismissive (my art appreciation-fu is not strong) but hes kinda growing on me.

Both pieces are pretty big and at first its just a big balloon dog...but up close when you really look at it, its an amazing piece of craftsmanship. I'll have to think some more about what I think a giant ballon dog 'means' but if nothing else its easy to enjoy this on the level of an interesting thing made awesomely.




From there we went down into the museum proper and cruised around. I made scribbly notes in the margin of my crossword and found images of some of what I liked below.

Susan Rothenburg - Galisteo Creek




Chuck Close- Mark

Must be seen to really get the full value. It seems pixelated here but in person looks like a photograph. Amazing




Kusama - B. 62

A red painting that looked like dragon scales, can't find it online

David Smith - Beca

Up close the etched wavy lines seemed 3D and in motion


Bridget Riley - Blaze 1

link

Joel Shapiro - (didn't catch the name on this)

Sophia loved this one



Sol Levitt 13/3

Picture does not do it justice. The shadows and light made this simple set of boxes totally amazing. I probably wandered around this one almost as long as the Kapoor one.

Marco Reille - The Battle

Can't find it online, it was on the wall next to Pollock (who I'll freely admit to having no use for) and I really want to see it again. It reminded me of 'the scream' but like 100 of that guy all sort of woven together. I'm sure I wrote it down wrong.

Matta - Being With



Tina hated this one because the dudes seem like they are being tortured, which I guess they are. I liked that it had alot of depth (literally I mean) I kept seeing little things further back in the background. I get the torture stuff but I saw it more about a big machine that sort of eats us up.

Jasper Johns - White Flag




Kenneth Noland - Magic Box

Sophia loved this one, can't figure out which it was from him but here is our picture:

Anish Kapoor - Untitled

Kinda hard to explain but here is a picture...sort of. Its like a concave piece of metal made of small scales maybe 1" by 1". standing dead center in front of it bends all the sound from the room around you kind of like you hear it going past you but you are no longer in the room. The scales also reflect strangely so that at most angles you don't see anything but a shine until you find just the point and then its like seeing a fly's eye seeing you. Totally freaking loved this.


Kandinsky - Garden of Love





Chuck Close - Lucas



Again...so different in person. This is a huge grid where he did a sort of color by numbers deal putting colors into the squares to replicate a photograph. The picture is like 8' tall and frankly terrifying.

Picasso - Girl Asleep at the Table











Dali - Madonna













This is like one of those mall paintings (oh pipe down art guy) where you can get different pictures dpending on how you focus your eyes.

Max Bechman - Beginning




After all this we headed over to Plataforma for dinner. Tina and the kids had never been to a Rodizio so we thought to give it a shot. The place was fine but lost on a little family who aren't big enough to really eat their weight. We had Caipirinha's which were nice. I didn't bother to take any notes, the salad bar was all great and mostly not salad. Most of the meat they brought was between fine and good and we hated the yucca flour salsa combo. It was a nice time but hugely expensive and not at all worth it. If I was 21 I could have eaten enough to pay for all of us...now I am old.

We had a relatively early night and watched Nim's Island which Sophia liked but wasn't very good.