Tag Archives: Picasso

New York City Blog — January 1 – January 5

Francis Picabia’s exhibit at MOMA goes from room to room. Each space demonstrating another phase in the French artist’s career. I spent a great deal of my childhood at MOMA, wandering through the galleries, pausing to look at favorites, going to the movies. One of the first painting that fascinated me was Picasso’s Three Musicians. It awakened in me a life long fondness for cubism. Exhibition History at the museum’s website is a wonderful on-line history of the various MOMA exhibits beginning in 1929 to the present.

Mechanical Object
Francis Picabia
MOMA
Francis Picabia
MOMA
Francis Picabia
MOMA

 

I would never have gone to Silence if a friend had not baited me with a delicious Chinese supper before the show. Fortified with duck, dumplings and wine, I steeded myself for a very long movie about Catholicism. I’ve never appreciated Martin Scorsese’s love of violence. The movie was way too long (another Scorsese flaw) and, at times, boring (yet another…) BUT fascinating and beautiful. Also, Scorsese turned on its head the notion of one religion deciding it had the truth and the right to inflict it on other cultures. 17th century? The three western, Portuguese priests spoke in 20th century jargon and looked modern. The Japanese actors in sumptuous, exotic costumes and deliciously weird hair dos conveyed a sense of long ago and far away.

 

COMING SOON:

Graphic Lessons: Recent widow Millie Fitzgerald applies for a private school teaching job, faints on a stabbed and dying man, deals with the only witness to the stabbing – a troubled nine year old, develops a crush on a NYPD detective and her dog dies.

Graphic Lessons: NYPD Detective Steve Kulchek: something’s eating at him: a failed marriage? surviving a car bomb? his girlfriend marrying his corrupt boss? screwing up an important case?

Graphic Lessons: Nine year old Dana is the only witness who overhears three people fighting with George Lopez, the soon to be stabbed Windsor School kitchen worker. Who can she tell? Her mother who never listens or accuses her of lying? Her father who’s started a new family in Singapore?

 

 

New York City Blog Oct. 11 -Oct. 17

Boo! Halloween in Brooklyn
Boo! Halloween in Brooklyn

On October 11 The New Century Jazz Quartet belted out original and standard pieces at the Emmanuel Baptist Church jazz vespers. It has built itself an enviable reputation in Japan and the States. The Quartet’s quintet of bass, drums, piano, alto saxophone and trumpet made the church rock.
Across the street from the Church, Brooklyn was revving up for Halloween.

Afterwards, we had dinner at Madiba a “South African Cuisine in a Brooklyn Scene”. The name is a tribute to Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela. The location was originally a garage and has been modeled after sheens which are South African dining halls. It’s a cosy atmosphere in a series of funky rooms. No, I didn’t have ostrich. We had lovely chicken wings and then crayfish.

 

Madiba
Madiba

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A friend and I thought Free Friday evening at MOMA would be packed. The plan: the Picasso exhibit on the fourth floor, supper in the fourth floor cafe and a Chech movie downstairs in the basement. The reality: the cafe was surprisingly empty. We sat on the balcony overlooking the sculpture garden three stories below, eating and drinking to abandon, skipped Picasso and proceeded to the movies.

 

Move over Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni,.The most boring movie prize goes to the 1962 Věra Chytilová. Does anyone watch the movies of Bergman, Antonioni any more?

Also featured was a ten minute 1958 feature by Roman Polanski.

New York City Blog Sept. 27 -Oct. 3

I went to the Vittorio De Sica festival at Film Forum. Being cowardly, I didn’t choose to see Umberto D. again, a heart wrenching movie about old age in postwar Italy. It even includes a dog. Instead, I saw Max Opel’s The Earrings of Madame D…starring Danelle Darrieux, Charles Boyer and Vittorio De Sica. What a load of elegant nonsense. The three actors swan around for what seems like hours in gorgeous costumes and great jewelry. The late Roger Ebert lauded the film for its technical mastery. Mr. Ebert was a white male and his eyes seemed as teary as John Boehner’s as he described the lost and found and lost love motif. I’m a white female and reacted differently. I was angry with myself for having fallen in my youth for the myth that all a woman needs are looks and guile. Danelle Darrieux has outlived her princess heroine who dies young. (After all, what’s a woman worth after the age of thirty?) Ms. Darrieux is 98. She’s neck and neck with another Parisian inhabitant, 99 year old Olivia de Havilland, one of the few actresses who could play goodness well i.e. Melanie in Gone with the Wind.

The New York Academy of Medicine sponsored Andrea Wulf’s talk about her newest book, The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World. The naturalist, Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859), introduced many theories about nature, ecology and weather which have been incorporated into our modern sensibility. Wulf honors her fellow German by recounting his adventurous life, describing his accomplishments and name dropping. Among von Humboldt’s disciples were Charles Lyell, Charles Darwin, Henry David Thoreau, George Perkins Marsh and John Muir.  Wulf is an engaging speaker and attracted a large crowd in the Academy of Medicine’s library.

N. Y. Academy of Medicine's Library
N. Y. Academy of Medicine’s Library

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I chose to go to MOMA’s blockbuster Picasso Sculpture on a rainy Friday, thinking the threat of Hurricane Joaquin would keep New Yorkers indoors. I hadn’t reckoned on the tourists, but it still wasn’t too crowded. MOMA allows photos. People were taking selfies with the sculpture. I chose to spare you. I’m throwing in the permanent helicopter.

Picasso Sculpture
Picasso Sculptures
Picasso Sculpture
Picasso Sculpture
Permanent Fixture
Permanent Fixture
Picasso Ceramic
Picasso Ceramic

New York City Blog Feb. 1 – Feb. 8

Wasn’t the Super Bowl fun? I like football because it’s so American and so politically incorrect. But what’s happened to the cheerleaders? In the old days they were pretty, bouncy, sexy girls. Now, they look as if they take gymnastics very seriously.

I chose a day when the temperature hovered around eleven degrees to go to the Barbara Mathes Gallery to see Rakuko Naito’s paper work.The gallery is a townhouse that has the secure features of a vault, It also has the hushed, immaculate, tony atmosphere that makes you lower your voice. Then on to the Lauder Cubism exhibit at the Met. Picasso, Braque, Gris. Léger are artists in the collection. Cubism grabbed me as a child when I’d wander through MOMA and stand in front of Picasso’s Three Musicians.

Fernand Léger"s The Typographer
Fernand Léger”s The Typographer

NYCB’s Glass Pieces with music by Philip Glass and choreography by Jerome Robbins was the best piece of an afternoon performance. My head was still filled with the images of cubism so I imagined I saw it in Glass Pieces. This is the first time I’ve appreciated Philip Glass. Choreography complements his music.