Museums and More
Today Sarah and Margo were hanging out and chatting with family. I'm sure you'd love to read more about it but instead I will share my boring stories of walking around Manhattan.
Today after taking the LIRR in again, I took the C line subway north to 86th (all by myself and I wasn't even scared). Then I crossed Central Park to visit the Guggenheim.
Most of the spiral gallery was dedicated to Zaha Hadid, an architect whose visions are hard to describe. Lots of sharp angles and ribbons. The exhibit was in chronological order, starting on the lower level and working up, and I noticed that for quite a while none of her designs had been actually built, and I could imagine why: her drawings skew perspectives impossibly so that it's hard to imagine them in reality. But further up were 3D models of her designs, many made by laser-cut perspex, and later were videos of virtual mockups of buildings, and finally some photos of actual buildings. Viewing the movie mockups reminded me of the cover art you see on cheesy sci-fi novels, and sci-fi movie backdrops: they painted a future you'd want to live in.
There was also an exhibit on Jackson Pollock. It might be tempting to dismiss much of his work as mere paint splatters, but you can see the effort to create something more. I couldn't tell you what makes them unique, and I'd guess even Pollock couldn't, but you can see that there's something about it. I've read that his splatters are actually fractal in nature, that the patterns are independent of resolution. I'm thinking that's got to be hard to pull off.
It was also neat to browse the regular exhibits. Plenty of Picassos and Kandinskys and others.
Afterward, I got a tiny $2 hot dog (guess that's why they're called weenies) then dove back into Central Park to find the Great Lawn, which is more a series of ballparks, but I figured it would be the best chance to get a decent view, since normally all but the tallest nearby buildings are obscured by trees.
Then I hoofed it back east across 5th Avenue, Madison Avenue, and Park Avenue (looking south below) to Lexington to catch the number 6 subway downtown to my next stop.
So again, after riding the subway alone and not being killed, I popped back up at 53rd to walk over to the Museum of Modern Art. (I have to admit going a few blocks the wrong way first.) First I called Margo to get the skinny on our dinner plans, and agreed to make it back by early evening, so I saw I didn't have much time. I raced up to see the architecture and design floor, where I quickly browsed the furniture and, being a Mac user, ogled the Mac SE and iMac on display. (Gee, no PCs. Wonder why?) Then up to the first of two floors for sculpture and painting. Ho hum, more Kandinskys, Picassos, Monets, Seurats (yay!), Gaugins, Van Goghs, some Joan Miro (hey, getting closer) and then finally, my Holy Grail, Salvador Dali's The Persistence of Memory in the same room as works by Rene Magritte.
Then it was back across Park Avenue (below, looking north) and so forth to 8th to get my C train south to Penn Station and back to Long Island (or, as the locals say, Lawng Oyland).
But I'm not done with NYC yet! I'll be back soon enough.
Today after taking the LIRR in again, I took the C line subway north to 86th (all by myself and I wasn't even scared). Then I crossed Central Park to visit the Guggenheim.
Most of the spiral gallery was dedicated to Zaha Hadid, an architect whose visions are hard to describe. Lots of sharp angles and ribbons. The exhibit was in chronological order, starting on the lower level and working up, and I noticed that for quite a while none of her designs had been actually built, and I could imagine why: her drawings skew perspectives impossibly so that it's hard to imagine them in reality. But further up were 3D models of her designs, many made by laser-cut perspex, and later were videos of virtual mockups of buildings, and finally some photos of actual buildings. Viewing the movie mockups reminded me of the cover art you see on cheesy sci-fi novels, and sci-fi movie backdrops: they painted a future you'd want to live in.
There was also an exhibit on Jackson Pollock. It might be tempting to dismiss much of his work as mere paint splatters, but you can see the effort to create something more. I couldn't tell you what makes them unique, and I'd guess even Pollock couldn't, but you can see that there's something about it. I've read that his splatters are actually fractal in nature, that the patterns are independent of resolution. I'm thinking that's got to be hard to pull off.
It was also neat to browse the regular exhibits. Plenty of Picassos and Kandinskys and others.
Afterward, I got a tiny $2 hot dog (guess that's why they're called weenies) then dove back into Central Park to find the Great Lawn, which is more a series of ballparks, but I figured it would be the best chance to get a decent view, since normally all but the tallest nearby buildings are obscured by trees.
Then I hoofed it back east across 5th Avenue, Madison Avenue, and Park Avenue (looking south below) to Lexington to catch the number 6 subway downtown to my next stop.
So again, after riding the subway alone and not being killed, I popped back up at 53rd to walk over to the Museum of Modern Art. (I have to admit going a few blocks the wrong way first.) First I called Margo to get the skinny on our dinner plans, and agreed to make it back by early evening, so I saw I didn't have much time. I raced up to see the architecture and design floor, where I quickly browsed the furniture and, being a Mac user, ogled the Mac SE and iMac on display. (Gee, no PCs. Wonder why?) Then up to the first of two floors for sculpture and painting. Ho hum, more Kandinskys, Picassos, Monets, Seurats (yay!), Gaugins, Van Goghs, some Joan Miro (hey, getting closer) and then finally, my Holy Grail, Salvador Dali's The Persistence of Memory in the same room as works by Rene Magritte.
Then it was back across Park Avenue (below, looking north) and so forth to 8th to get my C train south to Penn Station and back to Long Island (or, as the locals say, Lawng Oyland).
But I'm not done with NYC yet! I'll be back soon enough.
posted by Michael Nelson at 6:02 pm
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