Postcard from New York City - Modern art
The Museum Of Modern Art is one of the must sees of NYC. It's an interesting visit, even if for the European visitor the two top floods are a waste of space, containing as they do a collection of impressionist works that are better curated in the shows they visit in London. Still, in a city of strangers it was good to see a familiar face or two (or a familar bottom or two in the case of the Rubens) and, to be fair, there is at least one exceptional Barbara Hepworth on display.
The oddest thing about American galleries (after you get over the fact that you don't have to pay for an audio guide, which I think is great and a policy UK galleries should adopt at once - having coughed up thirty quid to peer at a daub through a crowed of other visitors, I'm not sure I am in the mood to fork out a fiver to hear John Nettles giving me a lecture on how the artist expired of syphilis in a Danish brothel), is that the public are allowed to take photographs of the pictures. As long as they don't flash, which is good because there are quite enough nudes on the walls as it is. And people do. They not only take pictures of pictures, but take close ups of pictures, presumably to be used as one of those 'what famous painting is this a detail from' questions in their pub quiz, or have pictures of themselves taken standing beside a painting, as if you would beside any other landmark.
The gear delight of the museum is the collection of Warhols. I've never really appreciated Warhole before but, having spent even a little bit of time in the city you can see that they have the same sort of cheeky energy as the city itself, a mixture of commerciality and icon.
Not to be outdone by the smaller Whitney across town, the MOMA had it's own disturbing painting: 'Christina's world'. No wonder writers flock to New York, you are never stuck for inspiration. Every street corner would fill a notebook and a visit to a gallery is not unlike flicking through the bumper book of creative writing questions where you have to compose a short story based on the picture above.
The cafe on the top floor of the MOMA delivers a new twist on catering to hungry gallery goers. Because it's in close proximity to the paintings, they don't cook hot food! Luckily, soup was a loophole. I was betting that even new Yorkers couldn't screw up soup, especially with so many paintings of the damn stuff hanging downstairs, and was right.
It was delicious, and very orange. As was my beer, which had a slice of orange in it also. Which was interesting.
The beer on draft was your typical che che artisan brewery type light beer, which the Americans do very, very well, turning out seemingly endless versions of beers with a distinctive flavour that are a pleasure to drink in a way that six pints of Stella on a Friday night are not. But the wedge of orange on the glass? Were they taking the piss?
Highlight of the MOMA was the trio of pictures detailing how the 'I heart N Y' logo came into being. Lowlight, a painting that was black. The audio guide then told you to look at it and you could see it was different shades of black. Indeed it was, you could make out different shades of black if you looked at it for about thirty seconds. That's half a minute of my life wasted, because even when you can see the different shades it's still a black painting and it's still toss. Suspect the artist was crap and painting flowers.
Evening comes early to certain sections of NYC. If you are in the shadow of a skyscraper (and unless you're on an even taller skyscraper, almost everybody is) you can expect to see your last sunlight around about the same time you finish your breakfast.
The oddest thing about American galleries (after you get over the fact that you don't have to pay for an audio guide, which I think is great and a policy UK galleries should adopt at once - having coughed up thirty quid to peer at a daub through a crowed of other visitors, I'm not sure I am in the mood to fork out a fiver to hear John Nettles giving me a lecture on how the artist expired of syphilis in a Danish brothel), is that the public are allowed to take photographs of the pictures. As long as they don't flash, which is good because there are quite enough nudes on the walls as it is. And people do. They not only take pictures of pictures, but take close ups of pictures, presumably to be used as one of those 'what famous painting is this a detail from' questions in their pub quiz, or have pictures of themselves taken standing beside a painting, as if you would beside any other landmark.
The gear delight of the museum is the collection of Warhols. I've never really appreciated Warhole before but, having spent even a little bit of time in the city you can see that they have the same sort of cheeky energy as the city itself, a mixture of commerciality and icon.
Not to be outdone by the smaller Whitney across town, the MOMA had it's own disturbing painting: 'Christina's world'. No wonder writers flock to New York, you are never stuck for inspiration. Every street corner would fill a notebook and a visit to a gallery is not unlike flicking through the bumper book of creative writing questions where you have to compose a short story based on the picture above.
The cafe on the top floor of the MOMA delivers a new twist on catering to hungry gallery goers. Because it's in close proximity to the paintings, they don't cook hot food! Luckily, soup was a loophole. I was betting that even new Yorkers couldn't screw up soup, especially with so many paintings of the damn stuff hanging downstairs, and was right.
It was delicious, and very orange. As was my beer, which had a slice of orange in it also. Which was interesting.
The beer on draft was your typical che che artisan brewery type light beer, which the Americans do very, very well, turning out seemingly endless versions of beers with a distinctive flavour that are a pleasure to drink in a way that six pints of Stella on a Friday night are not. But the wedge of orange on the glass? Were they taking the piss?
Highlight of the MOMA was the trio of pictures detailing how the 'I heart N Y' logo came into being. Lowlight, a painting that was black. The audio guide then told you to look at it and you could see it was different shades of black. Indeed it was, you could make out different shades of black if you looked at it for about thirty seconds. That's half a minute of my life wasted, because even when you can see the different shades it's still a black painting and it's still toss. Suspect the artist was crap and painting flowers.
Evening comes early to certain sections of NYC. If you are in the shadow of a skyscraper (and unless you're on an even taller skyscraper, almost everybody is) you can expect to see your last sunlight around about the same time you finish your breakfast.
Labels: America, Cities, New York, New York City, Travel, Travelling, USA
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