mmm, sun

Very happily got to see the Martin Sharp exhibition in Sydney on Wednesday, it closes this weekend, quite fortunate as a week shorter and I would have missed it. Still remains something of a mystery that Sharp's work doesn't have a greater presence in Australian galleries, but I think that is starting to change.

It was great to spend a couple of days in Sydney again, catching the ferry across the harbour on an absolutely perfect Sydney day reminded me of why I like the place so much, even despite that background thought of 'damn, I forgot the sunscreen AGAIN'. I found it oddly pleasant to be back in the sweaty embrace of a humid Sydney summer. Excellent to see friends and distribute fridge magnets and catch up over assorted beverages, and remind myself of why Pitt Street mall is the Devil's Arena in the week leading up to Christmas. It didn't seem quite as frantic as it usually is at this time of year, but maybe New York has just shifted my definitions of that? Having finished MY Christms shopping in VEGAS, DAYS ago - that's right, DAYS ago, in VEGAS - I was - I felt - quite generous in accompanying other people on their ventures into the fray, even though I always seem to end up buying me more presents... I've now finished buying all my christmas presents, and am buying my birthday presents. Including, finally, High Fidelity, and the Late Show best of, which is long overdue, as I've been quoting that since about 1994.

Stone fruits are another reason to be happy to be back, stood in the grocery store sniffing them like a beagle scenting cocaine. Also, leaves, it is nice to see them again, and quite startling after getting used to not having them around. Except in LA, on one of the most fabulous things I have ever seen: a mobile phone transmitter tower disguised as a giant pine tree. Taking the tack of plastic flowers to enormous new levels by creating an entire fake tree.

Collected my brother this morning and have returned to the Southern Highlands, have graciously acceded to taste test the fruits of Dad's labours on his rotisserie bbq.... can I just say 'aarruuurgh... mmm, good'

There's no place like home... ?

After a seriously unamusing 15 hours squished between two people, with the magical seatback entertainment failing to be magical by ceasing to work, I touched down in Sydney. After approximately 48 queues and a slight pause to rearrange my belongings because Qantas baggage handlers are lame, I transferred to the domestic flight to Canberra, inside the rowboat of the aviation world. It is a surprise that aircraft doesn't need a push start. I left Canberra with 22 kg of baggage, I returned with 62 kg.

Walking across the tarmac at Canberra I was greeted with the familiar eucalyptus-summer smell of Australia and as I went through the doors into the terminal, by a very excited toddler leaping upon my person. Fortunately one that I was equally excited to see. Said toddler has now sleeps with an NYC taxi, yellow school bus and a police car. Small toy versions that is. And gave me a similarly excited welcome when I came back from the shops. Very nice to be welcomed home in such a fashion. Canberra, aka The Ghetto, didn't welcome me back quite so nicely, after I spent a night the house of my friends I came out and found a smashed car window. I was fortunate that they were only searching for change and didn't notice that all of Christmas was inside the car, including the duty-free alcohol and perfume on the backseat. At this point I have developed such an aversion to packing - I tend to rock back and forth and ullulate for awhile whenever I have to deal with my suitcase - that I hadn't so much packed the car as moved into it, and there was such a profusion of possessions filling every available crevice that it disguised where the more valuable things were. That and the probability of them being in some state of withdrawal. Having only owned the car for 24 hours at this point I was grumpy and pouty. Fortunately I was still on LA time and so was out early enough that no-one else came along to see what they could obtain. Possibly the only time I will ever arrive at my office before 8am on a Sunday morning.

I'm now enjoying the munificence of the parenal fridge and laundry service before heading up to Sydney, because that's right, there's an exhibition I have to see that's closing this weekend. So the travel isn't quite over, if not on quite the same scale.

It's cold!

In pursuit of all things shiny

Some thirty-two million people use JFK airport each year, and most of them were there last Friday - the aircraft had to wait for planes to land, then for some to take off, and then for more to land, and then for more to take off... all while we had to sit still, understimulated, and underbeveraged. Finally we took off, the beverage trolley came around, the magical seatback entertainment units were switched on, and happiness ensued. I even had three seats to myself! Happiness! I was met in LA by family friends, who helped me collect the vast mountain of baggage I've accumulated, and took me back to their house and fed me quesadillas. mmmmm, quesadillllla.

Saturday I had an interview to do, which was really helpful, another Australian who lived in London in the '60s. Then to LACMA for the Magritte exhibition - carpet with clouds on it. Driving around LA is crazy, the freeways are endless, and nuts, and the smog is unbelievable - similar to Sydney but five times as large. And with palm trees. Beautiful weather after the east coast though.

Sunday morning we head off to Vegas! Yeah Vegas! I joined in the annual family Christmas shopping trip, so now have my Christmas shopping done, and another swathe to add to my baggage. Driving there was great, across the Nevada desert, with endless rocky hills covered in primordial spiky shrubs. Getting to Vegas is such a contrast to the surrounding landscape - as though they decided to funnel all the available resources for the state into just the one spot. What Paris is to historic elegance, Vegas is to Kitsch. Which I don't mean as an insult, it's excellent, one huge site for replicas of Paris, New York, Egypt, and Pirate ships. Also, lots of lights, shiny glass and water features. The volume of gambling, especially of slot machines, is insane. Excellent buffets. And the only time I've seen sushi and french toast share the one plate. One night we went to Cirque du Soleil's Ka which was great, I'd never seen any of their shows, so that was great, especially to see it in a custom built theatre. And the show has people dressed as a turtle, a crab and a starfish - so cute. And then lots of people doing crazy flippy things at great heights. And fireworks. And little speakers in the seatbacks.

The rest of the time we shopped. And shopped. And then, oh, we shopped. Ah, the American outlet mall, a place of happy, shiny things.

We got back from Vegas last night, today we headed off to Watts in South Central LA to check out the Watts Towers which is one of my favourite things. Then we went to Disney Downtown - the mall outside of Disneyland, which I looked at through the gates and declined to spend the eighty dollars it takes to enter.

I fly home tonight, arriving Friday. I don't get no Thursday.

I'm leaving today...

Will be heading off for JFK in half an hour, then waiting for the usual extravagant period of time before my flight. This morning I ate a waffle the size of my face. Then I went and bought a hat, because it was subzero at noon and my ears felt like they were going to snap off like, ... like frozen snappy things.

Went for a walk, despite the subzero temps, around Chinatown and Little Italy... sigh.

Will be home in a week!

Archive Madness!

Yesterday and today have been spent in the archives of the Museum of Modern Art, nicely housed in their new building on 54th Street - the foyer is particularly cool, it has a ferrari mounted on the wall, and one end uses Warhol's cow wallpaper - most excellent. The archives were great, although tinged with the frustration of not having nearly enough time to look through stuff - unbelievable amounts of correspondence with artists about their work and about museum exhibitions and so on.

Yesterday I was so excited that after the Museum shut I went to the NY Public Library to continue looking things up (I resisted the temptation to request Vargas, Paul, 9 Lives for those that share that urge... ). It is the kind of library that if I wasn't already a big nerd, would convert me instantly. Who wouldn't want to sit around reading all day in such surrounds? They have a dedicated Art and Architecture research room that is very good.

Then I went and had pizza, really good pizza, which is always a thing of joy isn't it?

Today saw me ploughing through files at a rate of knots, all to aware that I only had today to do it *ever* - I got through most of what I wanted to, but I would have been happier with at least twice as long to do it in. Afterwards, I thought to myself that I couldn't very well leave New York without eating a pretzel - mmm salty goodness...

Now I am doing my laundry - Hurrah! Coffee-less trousers! Then I will go out in search of snacks. Tomorrow I fly to LA, Sunday I go to Vegas :)


Midtown

MoMA

Brancusi

of art and feet

Sunday started as more Sundays should: with cinnamon pecan brioche french toast covered with fruit. Good fruit, not just three pieces of banana atop a melon mountain. I didn't know whether to eat it or marry it. I ate it. And coffee, lots of coffee. With the Sunday paper. Strange to have the team-of-Egyptians-to-drag-it-home paper on a Sunday rather than a Saturday - and you really need all weekend to get through those things.

Then, off to the Met again, their permanent collection of nineteenth century stuff mostly - Cezanne, Van Gogh, most excellent. Courbet and Manet are two painters that did so much to kick modern painting into gear, yet their work doesn't do much for me in the pigment - does anyone else feel that way? More Renoirs to heap scorn on. V. good Monet - surely an artist that has truly suffered at the hands of reproduction, so much of what you see its just 'yep, that's Monet' but then something will come at you and swipe your knees out from under you (the massive waterlilies at MoMA, the lilies at the Met). Endless Degas - kind of similar to Monet in that regard - though I very much like the whole room of small Degas bronze figures. But I feel like that Ballerina, the one that's about a metre tall and has clothes on, is stalking me, she's everywhere I go. And speaking of that - Rodin? Does every gallery in the world need to have the same pieces? 'tis very odd. Though he clearly knew what he was doing (or his estate does) - pick a medium that is both reproducible, too big to put back in the cupboard, and can handle being exhibited all the time.

Monday I awoke feeling rather shabby, due to a cold, but also to email giving me the appointment that I have long been wanting at the MoMA archives - which is the one that I was worried I wouldn't be able to get, for those that heard the fretting earlier in the year, which is most of you I think. So that will be tomorrow and Thursday. I went in search of soup. Most galleries are shut on Mondays so that ruled that out, and was probably a good thing as I didn't really want to go anyway. Was attempting to do some reading of a productive nature but my fuzzy head prohibited that. So I went and read Marilynne Robinson's Gilead at Barnes and Noble, and discovered that it is well worth the Pulitzer it was awarded. Read it! (Sim - she's the author of 'Housekeeping', that we had to read for American Accents)

Then I trundled off uptown to hear a panel of speakers discuss book design, which is something that some of you might consider uninteresting, and you know what? You're wrong! The panel was Dave Eggers , one of my favourite authors, and the reason I'd paid attention to the advertisement, along with Milton Glaser, the guy who among other things, designed the 'I heart NY' logo, which for its simplicity and newfound veracity, I love, and the third was Chip Kidd, who designs for Knopf. So they all chatted about book design, the involvements of authors in the designs for the covers, funny stories and so forth. Very engaging. Kidd was incredibly funny which was great, and I'm sure I'll be recycling his anecdotes whenever I'm in a bookshop with someone and see one of the covers he spoke about, but I really enjoyed Eggers stories of how a small publishing company tries to do things that are a bit different - particularly because they work with a printing firm in Iceland.

Today I woke up with a newfound love of cold medicine (I've never really taken it before, normally I just drink a lot of juice, which never works, but makes me feel like I'm trying). After baptising myself with coffee at Breakfast [and its been so long since I last doused myself with coffee, dammit], I headed off to the Frick Collection, dragging J&T behind me, they weren't very enthusiastic, and I wasn't either, as the collection was largely complete by 1919 it doesn't have anything that I was particularly interested in, so I felt that I was going because it was Good For Me. So I was pleasantly surprised when I loved it. It is housed in the Frick's house, so it is largely as it was when the house was lived in, and tries to keep to his arrangement of his collection, so it doesn't have any particular organisation according to chronology or nationality, and mixes paintings with sculpture and the decorative arts. They give you an audio guide , which is done by a number of different people, so you get all sorts of different accents, and lots of background information, I loved that they included some of Frick's instructions to his architect and interior designer, instructing them that the house, that was to cover most of a block on Fifth Avenue, should be 'simple' - which is so often a feature of eighteenth-century European style mansions... but you can see what he meant in that the house is only a couple of stories and has a lot of natural light thorughout. And excellent carpet, I wanted to take a nap on it. That could have just been the cold. I wanted to take a nap on the subway as well. I don't think Frick and I would have totally agreed on what direction his collection should have taken, he installed some unfortunate rooms of Boucher and Fragonard - if you take a particularly large chocolate box and turn it inside out, and stick your head inside, you will get the general idea, lots of cherubs, and people gaily walking through gardens in puffy outfits. But then some of the best Vermeers and Rembrandts that there is. And an excellent Cezanne. And some nice Whistler. He made his money from coke, and clearly a lot of it. [that's the coal kind of coke, not the dealing kind]

Winter is definitely here, with the kind of wind that laughs at your feeble clothes, goes straight through your bones and then rubs up against your soul. Because it is t-shirt weather up here on the fifth floor I hadn't been quite expecting the change, so didn't take the full complement of accessories with me, and so had acquired new gloves and a scarf before many blocks were out... I can't quite comprehend that I'm going to be in wilting-heat before too long.

Then I went to Chelsea to see the private galleries there - such a strange 'hood - all car repair shops, self-storage units, and then gallery after gallery, pretty much matching with their polished concrete floors and white walls. Some amazing stuff up though, the Gagosian Gallery has an exhibition of late Andy Warhols, which made me experience a wave of angst that he got shot when he did, as he was on a roll when he died. Then I saw another Callum Innes exhbition, excellent, and then a Henry Darger, for something a bit different (they guy spent years holed up in his house drawing illustrations for an elaborate childrens book that he created, and was only discovered after he had died). And then Ray Johnson. And then I needed to go find snacks, and reassure my feet that this won't be happening forever.

Still clucking after all these years...

Taken today, downtown.

Sorry about the upside down factor, but I can't be bothered fixing it. C'est la vie.

G'night.

living in her uptown world, oo-err-ah-err-oo

So on Friday I headed back up town, to visit the Guggenheim Museum. Another fun place to visit because it is fun to say.

Guggenheim, Guggenheim, Guggenheim.
Guggenheim, Minster.

Malkovich, Malkovich.

Unfortunately the exterior is still swathed in scaffolding as they are trying to restore the original surface, so I didn't get to appreciate Frank Lloyd Wright's work in all its splendour, but the inside is way cool. The main show that they have on the moment is Spanish Painting from El Greco to Picasso, which is an excellent topic for an exhibition, encompassing as it does El Greco, Velazquez, Dali, Miro, Gris, Goya, Picasso and so on. The works were arranged thematically rather than chronologically, as they were trying to bring out similarities in Spanish art from across the centuries, which worked well, highlighting particularly the Spanish artists' love of black and of the grotesque. The downside to this exhibition, taking up the spiral and the level six annexe, was that I didn't get to see much of the permanent collection. There was also a Fontana exhibition, and very cool, and part of the museum's collection of Kandinsky. But as a gallery I'm not a huge of fan of the spiral, although it would be excellent if you had both a sense of balance and those shoes with wheels, the constant slant downwards doesn't encourage lingering, or gaping-mouthed staring.

After that I had some cawfee, spent some time in Central Park (lovely! many undulating hills, and the last remnants of the autumn leaves are clinging on bravely) and then had a wander around a few of the commercial galleries - a v. good Jasper exhibition. Very intimidating galleries, around Madison avenue, lots of shiny surfaces. One was mostly made from marble, which my shoes, exhibiting the proletarian streak they sometimes share to protest such decadance, decided to squeak as though I had in fact strapped unhappy ducks to my feet. I didn't hang around too long there.

Evening was drawing in by then, which it does with startling haste in these parts, at this time of year, and at a loss for what to do, wandered. Shopping uptown makes you realise why people marry for money. I wandered until I was in Time Square again, and ended up with a ticket to High Fidelity, the musical. Which is weird, because I'm not a huge fan of the musical, to the extent that I can't remember the last one I saw in Australia (Phantom of the Opera maybe? About ten years ago? That would explain why I haven't been in so long possibly...) but now I've seen three in three months. Also weird, because, that's right, they've made a musical out of High Fidelity. Being a big fan of both the book and the film (it's the dvd I always hire when I'm lost in the shop amidst endless hollywood pap - I should probably have just bought it about three hires ago) it seemed only appropriate that I go see the musical. It has only just opened, a fact which I think shows, if it ever does come to Australia (ie if it survives this season) I hope it gets a damn good edit and a casting agent who has read the book, not just seen the film. The lead at the moment really isn't Rob, or even John Cusack, and the guy playing the Jack Black character that I can't remember the name of, seems to be playing Jack-Black-playing-the-character-I-can't-remember-the-name-of, but not as well. Laura also not quite right. Ian, Liz and Dick v. good. The entire first act seems to be dedicated to setting the scene, and goes on way too long with songs that need to be about 1/3 as long. Certainly no Rogers and Hammerstein. About halfway through the first act I realised what was bothering me about it - the incongruity about turning a story about characters who would heap scorn on broadway musicals into a broadway musical. Were they to be in NYC on a Friday night, it would seem unlikely that they would be sitting where I was, they would be in a club listening to a band that was little known but very cool. The central plot device of the novel and film - of looking up his exes and going a on a personal discovery tour, was covered in one song, a duet with a faux Bruce Springsteen. Nuff said really.

Barry! That's that character's name.

The weather until this time had been freakishly good, I'd just been wearing a hoody all week - with trousers and so forth, obviously - and had been perfectly toasty - but with the advent of December someone has flicked a large switch somewhere and we have arrived in Jacket weather overnight.

Yesterday was very cold, but beautifully blue and clear which was nice, although with a wind that could slap you around. I drank a bucket of coffee over the Village Voice to start my day. On coffee: the supply was so erratic in the UK that I'd actually cut way back, could start my day without the coffee-absence-salsa in my frontal lobes until like, 2 in the afternoon, very strange - but as soon as I arrived in the US of A the coffee supply lines have been resumed and I'm back in my usual morning focus on Get-me-to-the-coffee-and-then-we'll-figure-out-what-my-name-is-where-I-am-and-what-I'm-supposed-to-be-doing-today thing. I haven't had espresso though, which is very bizarre, because the filter coffee is actually good here, and excellently, served in buckets, so you can read a whole newspaper or the entire internet in the time it takes to get through the coffee. Which is also why this blog is now up to date. And how I've figured out the origins of Irish dance. [i.e. if you sit for an hour or so over bucket of coffee and then stand up, you have about 2 minutes to find a 'restroom' to have a 'rest', if you also have to shut down a mac in this time, you will have a new experience of how time can actually physically slow down, and find yourself needing to dance from foot to foot while trying not to move.... ]

In other matters pertaining to food: all that super size me stuff convinces you that food in America is perpetually awful, which, for Washington and New York at least, is definitely not true. New York especially, because you can get pretty much anything at pretty much any time of day or night (and that's just in the East Village...). I can see why you could end up the size of a small semi-detached though: they do junk food incredibly well. Not as in trashy crap food, but taking good ingredients and transforming them into something wildly unhealthy, and then giving you a lot of it, for a fairly respectable price. Except for root beer. Which is the only soft drink I've every consumed and thought "I wonder if there was a meeting about this product when they had to decide if they were going to sell it as a beverage or a bathroom cleaner." And frankly, they made the wrong choice. But, my goodness, the bagels: surely they prove that the Jewish people do indeed have a special relationship with the Lord. Mightly refreshing to be in a country that if you order a bagel you get a properly boiled bagel, not just any old leavened item with a whole in the centre. In Canberra recently I went to a cafe called 'Bagels' and got a bread roll with a whole in it: I find that unacceptable in a milk bar in say, Dubbo, but in a cafe CALLED 'Bagels'?! Also, they have little containers of cream cheese, in an array of varieties. V. good.

Then I wondered downtown [when you're feeling low, downtown!], and found that shopping downtown creates that feeling you get when all you've consumed all day is starburst and black coffee {which if you haven't done you should, you won't really enjoy it but everything will be very entertaining and requiring your attention simultaneously]: far too many places to look and interesting things to touch. This is one reason why it would be very dangerous for me to live in NYC: going for a simple walk can involve several shoe shops. On an aside, I seem to be thwarted when it comes to boots this week: not the boots made from ponies, nor the rainboots with the kitten heel, nor even the gold faux-snakeskin, which have all been on sale, have they had in my size. Which some of you will no doubt think is a mighty good thing. But others will know the pain of being shoe-thwarted and will join me now in a sigh: *sigh*. Thanks. Then I found myself in a large department store of brand discounts! happiness! Unfortunately a happiness I had to share with most of New York and a good percentage of the mid-west. On your receipt it tells you how much you spent, but also how much you saved: so sure I spent 50, but I saved 110, so that means I made money! Clever huh?

This was, incongruously, across the road from Ground Zero, which was a deeply surreal place to visit. Having now spent a little time in New York, doing my usual things of gibbering at art and drinking coffee and pawing footwear, and developing a hope that I'll spend a lot more time in the future doing those things here, it seems even less comprehensible that something so reprehensibly horrendous as 9/11 could have happened in what for me is a happy place. Also, that morning the main story in the Village Voice was about the growing number of unusual cancers (for healthy working age men) that have been developing in the workers that cleared the site in the months after 9/11. Thousands already have serious respiratory illnesses, but several hundred now also have cancer. There is already a mass lawsuit about his, because, unbelievably, a week after 9/11 the EPA said that it was categorically okay to drink the water and breathe the air in downtown Manhattan. Despite that the testing hadn't been completed. Later, it came out that the White House had a lot to do with this, taking the red pen to more cautious statements and inserting more positive remarks about the air quality - which subsequent tests showed to be ridiculously high in things that will kill you. Because they were concerned about getting Wall Street up and running. The article drew on several stories of individuals effected by this, one of whom recounted how he was working both at Ground Zero and out at the site where they sifted through all the rubble - mostly the contents and structure of the buildings that had been powdered - with all the protection of a face mask. One day when they were taking a break, in came in the FBI, in full hazchem suits, with any possible opening taped up. There were something like 40000 people involved in the operation, let alone all the people in downtown New York on that day and in the subsequent months.

With this all in my mind it made the experience of visiting the site hard to process - it looks like any other huge construction site that hasn't gotten much past the hole-in-the-ground stage, but with a fenced-off viewing area, and a huge photo display of what the finished buildings are projected to look like, what the WTC looked like, and lots of images taken on 9/11 and subsequently. Including a really poignant one of part of a squashed Calder sculpture - I've seen so many of them recently and they hang with that grace that Calder infused into metal, for me that photo sums up so much of what was lost on that day to see something that was just about beauty squashed and wrecked. There are a lot of people there looking around, and a lot of people visibly moved by the experience of being there. I was glad that I had gone on a weekend, when most of the workers in the Wall Street area are not likely to be there, I can't quite imagine how you would deal with seeing all those people checking it out everyday. And I really don't understand the people who take photos of each other standing in front of the site?

I continued my path south, although actually I veered west, because I had turned a corner and forgotten, and walked on down to the Hudson, thinking to myself, "I wonder where the Statue of Liberty actually i-" as I rounded a corner "... ah, there". So took many photos of the distant statue in the sunset, and kept walking along, and came to the Staten Island ferry and caught it and then caught it back and now I have lots of photos of blurry statue of liberty in the sunset and blurry NYC at night. Taking photos at night from a moving ferry is strangely challenging.

New York, New York, issa wonderful town.

Hey look, the counter is past the 1000 mark! [thanks Mum...]

The Museum of Modern Art: eeeh hee hee hee! Eee! Hee! Hee! Eeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Just to give you an insight into my internal murmurings of excitement as I approached MoMA. Resisting the urge to dance with excitement, as MoMA is home to one of the best collections of Modern art ever – if you put all of the works in Australia by those artists into the one space I think you’d end up with a collection about five percent as good as the fourth floor – lots of works that I would see out of the corner of my eye and turn around and almost say hello! Because I feel like we’re old friends. The constant presence of many security guards fortuitously served as a reminder that I shouldn’t hug any of them. The works I mean, not the guards.

Mondrian, Matisse, Miro, Picasso, Cezanne, Pollock, Rothko.... These are a few of my favourite things. The new building is beautiful [not that I ever saw the old one], the design is a great frame for the works and has a great sense of space, you constantly get glimpses of where you’re about to go or where you’ve just been. Although the central atrium up the centre is a little scary, now that I have my new fear of heights. [Other people get tattoos and shoes when they travel; I get phobias. Excellent.] There’s also a lot of natural light, and views out over the surrounding streets and the sculpture garden. And a really expensive café that serves excellent cookies.

By about halfway through the day I was ready to sit down on the floor, go foetal, and gibber, such was the state of hyper-stimulation of my brain. The only downside to the fabulousness of seeing all this is seeing it in such a short space of time, knowing that I’ll be heading back home and not seeing anything in the same vein for quite some time, and not having much time to mull and muse over things to fully absorb and appreciate them.

Les Demoiselles D’avignon!

My first Saturday night in New York: and I spend it doing my laundry. And running around surrounding streets because I kept needing more quarters. Gorgeously attired in an ensemb from my remaining clean clothes: bright red embroidered skirt, pink and turquoise striped top, lime green flip flops. Excellent. Fortunately it would take more than that for the East Villagers to take a second glance.

Clean socks!

Sunday and it was off to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Having slept in and generally dithered about it took me quite awhile to get there, and once I did get in the general vicinity I had to then find coffee immediately, as several caffeine receptors in my frontal lobe had taken to dancing a samba on my nerves. So by the time I got in there and got looking it was in the afternoon, so I’m definitely going to have go back. But I went through their modern collection (Georgia O’Keefes, a Pollock that will have you drooling down the front of your shirt and leaving a hazardous puddle in front of it) and saw a temporary exhibition – Vollard and the art that went through his hands as a dealer – Cezanne, Picasso, Van Gogh, Vuillard, Bonnard, Renoir, and so on. The guy had an eye, and some very good connections. Deeply strange experience of sitting on a bench, gazing in a state approaching a coma, at a wall of Cezannes (3 still lives and 4 late landscapes) and sharing the bench with 5 or so New Yawkers who were debating the merits of the various CSIs. Insanely loudly. Such a weird experience to be in front of such works and for them to be having the most incredibly mundane conversation. So that half the gallery could hear them. I’m never a stranger to a deep and passionate analysis of the trivial, but in front of Cezanne? And it’s never a debate is it? Everyone just takes turns in saying that the Vegas one is better than all the others, what were they thinking with that guy in the Miami one and then the conversation moves on to how many Law and Orders there are. Apparently Monday night is a particularly bad one for TV in NYC, just so you know. But then, they just had this conversation and then moved on, I’m the one putting it on the web.

So moving along.

Monday: Getting Fricked. I went to the library of the Frick Art Gallery and Reference Library: which is excellent, if only for the fact that it is an old school nineteenth century style library – dark wooden bookcases and desks, lamps, old stone building – very conducive to work. Even over my internal conga line of “I am in New York, yeah! I am in New York!” [repeat, ad infinitum]. They had some cool stuff, lots of catalogues from exhibitions from the ‘50s and ‘60s in New York and surrounds. Happy times.

Tuesday: Out to Queens to visit the MoMA research library – eee hee hee – art nerd joy! - catalogues, artist files and so on – eeeeheeeeheeeeheeee.

Tuesday night: the train back from Queens went to Time Square so I figured it was time to fulfil Tourist Tick Box #1 and look at all the pretty lights. And my, there really is a lot of them. And then I found a cheap ticket to Spamalot: The Monty Python Musical. So I bought it. It was a standing room ticket, so J & T were thrilled – Thrilled! - by my decision. But looking at how much room you got to sit down in, I think I made the right decision. And much better access to the toilets at interval as you get quite the head start when you are at the back of the room. Strange how I’ve never been invited to write theatre reviews isn’t it? The musical is great, I wasn’t sure how it would translate, or if it would just be for the serioius trekkie-level python fans that can ruin an entire evening once they start quoting at you, and heaven forbid you go on a road trip, but it has been really well written, nice mix of the lines they have to include (ni! And so forth) and new material. So go see it if you get the chance.

Wednesday: Whitney Museum – Picasso and American Artists, exploring, wait for it, the influence of Picasso on American artists, surprise! Great excuse to get a whole bunch of Picassos, Lichtensteins, Pollocks, de Koonigs together for a little party. The Pollock room was particularly great, as it had a nice span of his development as a painter.

After that I wandered about, looking at shiny things and trying not to impulse buy. So many pretty frocks!

Thursday: MoMA research library, Manhattan – more great books and catalogues, and in the pleasing surrounds of the new MoMA library which just opened this week. It is in the building on the other side of the sculpture garden from the main museum, so you get a great view over to the other building, the sculptures and 54th street. More internal conga. Thence, to Soho and Chinatown and a wander about, looking at some seriously cool shops and pondering just how much it would cost to send a shipping container home.

I heart NYC

.... pretty much sums it up really.