Baggage 10/23/10

We leave later this morning for New York. I have had my usual battle with packing, trying to fit two weeks' worth of clothes and other stuff into a bag small enough to carry onto the airplane. I would not do this but for the new fees they charge for check-in bags. I much prefer to check my bags and tote just a small bag onto the plane with a couple of magazines, my crossword, and maybe the laptop. Now, with the new fees, EVERYONE is trying to keep ALL their luggage with them, which results in stuffed overhead bins--not to mention bruises and frayed tempers. The system is absurd. There's just as much luggage. It just gets crammed into the cabin instead of the cargo hold.

As you can tell, I'm a bit testy in anticipation of the day's travel. I'm actually rather spoiled: we're traveling first class. For $10 each. I was on the phone with a United Airlines agent a couple of months ago, looking for ways to use our mileage to upgrade from economy to business. Business, we find, is now just about what economy used to be, about ten years ago. Anyway, she kept telling me it was impossible and I kept telling her it couldn't be, and then she said, "Oh, wait a minute..." Somewhere, in some nook or cranny of her computer system, she had found this special deal which allowed us to pay $10 for our tickets and upgrade to first class, with the same amount of miles we would have used to upgrade to business. Go figure.

So we travel first class. You'd think we could afford to check our bags with this deal, but I'm just too cheap and pissed off at the system to fork out the extra $25 per bag, each way. So we'll aim to cram the first class cabin bins with our overstuffed "carry-on" bags. I'm planning to continue making entries, though perhaps less regularly, from our travels, so I may get to report to you on this experience. In the meantime, here's hoping for a bon voyage. See you in New York City...

Not First Class-10/24/10

As I was saying yesterday, with a bit of a boast... We had these first class tickets for our flight the New York. The seat reservations were confirmed electronically only hours before the flight. Then we arrive at the check-in counter at the appointed time and find that, mysteriously, we have been downgraded to business!

The indignity! You can imagine how we felt. The agent at the check-in counter said she could do nothing, that I would need to talk to the agent in the Red Carpet Lounge. The agent in the Red Carpet Lounge said she could do nothing, I would need to talk to the agent at the gate. The agent at the gate said she could do nothing--she was too busy!--I would need to talk to the agent at the United Airlines customer service desk. The agent at the United Airlines customer desk... well, there was only one of them, and there was a line of half a dozen people ahead of me, each with their own problem. I gave up, until...

We arrived on board and I communicated our displeasure at the seat change--there's a principle at stake here, friends!--to the on-board cabin chief, who went out to talk to the agent at the gate. He came back with polite explanations, none of them accounting for the fact the we had reservations for seats 2C and 2D on our tickets, and were now given different and far less classy seats. I know, I sound like a pathetic bore. Complaining to be sitting in the best seats in Business? Kind of small. Still, the airline had clearly screwed up, and why not hold them accountable?

From then on, of course, we were given the best possible attention in our new seats. The attendants were particularly... well, attentive. Seated in the front row of business, by the door, we had leg room for giants and suffered only from the absence of those pockets in back of the seat ahead of you, where you can usefully stow your magazines, books, etc. Everything was a bit on top of us. Oh, and they have new entertainment features, little hand-held boxes with screens where you can choose your own music, move, game, or television show. You have to squint a bit at the little screen, and you tend to get tied up in connection wires for power, headphones, etc. But okay. I watched "Dinner for Idiots" (something like that) which was one of those exasperating movies where everything keeps going wrong for the hero--until he learns his inevitable life-lesson. An occasional chuckle. Not heartily recommended.

Anyhow, lest I seem carping and ungracious, here we are, installed in a wonderful 31st floor apartment overlooking Central Park...

... enjoying the fact that we're back in New York after quite a few years' absence. Last night, arriving late, we took a midnight walk from 56th Street and Broadway down to 53rd, across to Fifth Avenue and back up to Central Park, ending up back at Columbus Circle. A late night snack, a good night's sleep, and we woke this morning to a gorgeous autumn day. Looking forward to getting out and about.

Sunday In The Park (Without George) 10/25/10

... AND A MISADVENTURE

(About yesterday's entry: that was supposed to be tongue-in-cheek, light-hearted, not a serious gripe. At least one reader read it otherwise, which must have made me seem very mean-spirited. Apologies!)

As I was saying, we woke to a glorious Sunday morning in New York City, discovering for the first time our view out over Central Park, where the leaves are only just beginning to turn--rather later than usual this year...

In a week or so, they should be in full splendor. We had no plan, but for a walk in the park... and a theater date in the evening.

But first, that misadventure. We have a new Whole Foods market just around the corner from where we are staying, on Columbus Circle, and our first venture into the city was to buy a copy of the New York Sunday Times and provide ourselves with some of the basics, tea and coffee and breakfast cereal and eggs. A fantastic market, occupying a vast space below the new(ish) Time Warner Center...

Well, we found what we needed and returned to our apartment loaded with shopping bags. Unlocked the door into the apartment from the long corridor, and left the key--for a moment, I intended--in the lock while I took the bags into the kitchen. Door swung closed automatically behind us, and I promptly forgot about the keys. A moment of inattention only... We enjoyed our breakfast and got ready to head out around noon; felt in pocket for key... and remembered, suddenly where I'd left them.

A moment of panic. Checked the door. No keys. Searched pockets, bags, apartment. No keys. Someone, surely, had turned them in at the front desk, downstairs. I took the elevator down. Nothing. no keys. If someone had noticed them, I reasoned, without ringing at our doorbell to let us know--and without turning them in at the front desk--they could have no good intentions. We'd have to get the lock changed to our friend's apartment.

Enter Richie, the handyman for this huge apartment building. Within minutes, literally, he appeared at our door with a new core and had it installed, at relatively minor cost. Our hero. Then came the embarrassing task of letting our kind friend know about my mindlessness, and that he now had a new set of keys to his apartment waiting for him at the desk. A flurry of calls and emails, (I discover that my I-Phone is not working) none of them returned. I'm left with my embarrassment and discomfort as we finally leave for our walk in the park. Ellie is kind enough to remind me, with exquisite cruelty, that this is a fine moment to recall the Buddhist teachings about the importance of mindfulness.

Ah, but the park... such a treat to stroll for miles along its byways. Surprised to find, on our way there, that Broadway had turned into one huge street fair for the day. Quite a scene!

We found Central Park bustling with activity, buskers...

... and skateboarders...

... and lovers...

... and tots in the playgrounds and ancient couples sitting hand in hand on the benches everywhere.

What a pleasure to walk and walk aimlessly, and to be in touch with every aspect of humanity, people of every nation, race and color, and to overhear snatches of conversation in dozens of different languages. To watch the fountains playing and the rowboats on the lake...

Such a treat. Here's Ellie on the Mall...

We walked for hours, ending up with a very late lunch at Le Pain Quotidiain...

... before heading for home to rest up a bit before our theater date. (Turned out to be not so restful: I spent much of the time with AT&T, trying to resolve the I-Phone problem. With success, I'm happy to report. You can now call me, if you know my number.)

The Richard Rogers theater is located only a dozen blocks from where we're staying, so we walked down the hugely crowded 8th Avenue, expecting first to meet our nephew, Danny, and his fiancee in the lobby. They had recommended the show. Picked up our tickets at will-call and, failing to find them found our seats instead, second row, first balcony, great view of the stage. Had no idea what to expect. "In the Heights" turned out to be a musical about Washington Heights, uptown, a predominantly Latino area bustling with life and a multitude of people living it. Imagine "Our Town" meets "West Side Story" in a contemporary setting. People struggling to get by in a tough economy. Immigrants struggling to find an American identity and keep something of their own. The driver and energy of the performance were extraordinary and the story a compelling and moving one. If I were a theater critic, I might carp about what seemed at times like overdrive--a multiplicity of production numbers that tended to overwhelm some very tender, very emotional moments where we were allowed to get closer to the characters. But I'm not a theater critic.

After the performance, we went backstage to meet a couple of good friends of Rachel's--one of the leading actors in the show, and an engineer and hopeful playwright who works for the theater and gave us a full backstage tour of the working end of the things that happen on the stage, from wardrobe to set design and lighting to sound systems for the actors. Then on for a glass of wine at a bar called Thalia--also the name of the main street off which we live in Laguna Beach. We felt right at home. It was after midnight by the time we got back to the apartment, where we found Harry waiting for us with his customary air of disapproval.

MOMA-10/25/10

This is Harry...

... seen here with his EVIL twin, yrraH. He's the boss of the apartment, and still not sure if he approves of his visitors. He did ask NOT to have his picture taken, and is clearly astounded that I rudely violated his wishes. Maybe we'll be better friends once I've fed him a few more times...

We were delighted that our friend, Huw, whose apartment this is (and whose cat!) found time to stop by briefly this morning to say hello. Ellie had made him a small painting...

as a gift to say thank you for his generosity, and was delighted that he so obviously liked it.

For those who plan on seeing the exhibition Abstract Expressionist New York--and I warmly suggest that you do, if you're anywhere within traveling distance--I have one piece of advice: plan on seeing it three, or four, or five times. Or more. This is an incredibly rich and profound exploration of perhaps the greatest American contribution thus far to the history of art. The quality and number of works included is staggering. It's a genuine feast.

But--and I say this advisedly, after my own intense few hours--abstract painting is especially demanding on the eyes and the brain, because it leaves you nothing but itself to hang on to. There's no "getting it," storing it in the mind, and moving on to the next piece on the wall. Each one is its own experience. Every single piece demands your sole (I first wrote, "your soul"! It does!) and rapt attention, if you're to anywhere close to "getting it." Take a look at this beautiful, early Jackson Pollock, for example...

... and you might see what I mean. (All the images are snapped with our little Canon, with apologies to MoMA and the artists.) It's a small piece, but it devours the eye and can keep it occupied for hours on end. Or this detail from a much larger piece...

Imagine now the full scope of the huge painting and what it requires of you. The same is equally true, though in a different way, of a deceptively simple painting like this one by Barnett Newman...

... one of many in the show. Or, particularly, a Mark Rothko...

... which does not even begin to work for you until you've done the work yourself, watching and waiting for the shapes to lose contour and float before your eyes, exercising their particular, ethereal magic on your mind.

So yes, absolutely, don't miss the opportunity to explore the depth and diversity of this great moment in our culture. But do what I regret to say I didn't do myself: go prepared to give it time and do the work. None of this gives itself up to you easily, without a responding effort on your part. It's like when you want to control your appetite and lose some weight: stop when you're full. And believe me, your mind will soon tell you that it's confused and bored with this stuff, once it feels satiated. I left wishing I had seen... less!

And after the great emotional upheaval of the AE show, the most moving moment at MoMA came, for me, just before we left, when we caught a glimpse of Yoko Ono's Wish Tree (this link includes her "Voice Piece for Soprano," also on view at the museum) and went outside into the sculpture courtyard. Here she has left a large bucket of blank, white tags, ball point pens and a writing desk, with the invitation for all to write their wish and attach it to a nearby small "wish tree." The tree is now heavy with the fruit of people's deepest wishes...

... written in every imaginable language and on every imaginable topic: "I wish my mom was still alive," "I wish I could pass my chemistry exam," and so on. The most frequent wishes were for world peace and happiness. John would have approved. I still miss that man, as I am sure Yoko Ono must do, a thousandfold...

We returned late afternoon to our apartment...

... and enjoyed a brief, much needed nap before heading out for dinner at La Bonne Soupe and a very pleasant conversation with good people at the neighboring table. Such a pleasure, to be in this city!

A Great City-10/26/10

It's a great city for walking, this New York. After lazing about a bit at home, we set out into the streets and walked from our place on 56th Street down Broadway and across to the Rockefeller Plaza, where we stopped to watch the ice skating...

... and catch a cup of coffee. We enjoyed the irony of these two fellows, one with a hammer, the other with a sickle..

etched in relief into the wall of this monument to American capitalism (under the guise of homage to the "worker"); and noted the sadly optimistic inscription about the entry: "Wisdom and Knowledge Shall Be the Stability of Thy Times."

Not much of either around these days...

From the Rockefeller Plaza, we followed Fifth Avenue south. It's a chronicle of wealth, from the Guggenheim and the Met and the discreetly opulent hotels and apartments of the Upper East Side, past stores like Tiffany's and Bergdorf Goodman in midtown to the endless rows of souvenir shops at the southern end. We stopped a the great New York City Library...

... repository of the collective wisdom of the Western world--and some of the East, and spent an hour in its timely exhibition of Three Faiths, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, whose devotional texts are copied, illustrated and eventually printed with a loving care that sadly belies the strife that has existed historically between the three. It was amazing, to me, to stand looking at a copy of the Gutenberg Bible!

Back on Fifth Avenue, on the same note, we passed the church where Norman Vincent Peale preached his version of the Christian gospel of prosperity, and where the outer railings, today...

... have become a memorial to those killed in action in the Muslim countries of Iraq and Afghanistan, row upon row of ribbons, a fluttering yellow and blue-green prayer for peace. And passed the elegantly deco Empire State Building, a reminder of those American "empire" days which seem, now, about to pass. We are going the way of all empires, all human societal constructs and all vain aspirations for power and dominance.

Reaching the Flatiron district, I recalled that my first novel was published by St. Martin's Press--at that time (still?) installed in the Flatiron Building itself. We stopped for lunch at the new Italian-flavored food emporium, the Eataly...

... where New York-style crowds jostled for places at bars and gelato counters, coffee shops and restaurants set in amongst the many stores hawking cold cuts and vegetables, fish and cheeses, beer and wine... We were fortunate to find a table fairly speedily at a pizza and pasta restaurant, where we were served by a jaunty young man from Seattle with, I suspect, theatrical ambitions.

We stopped at the gelato stand to indulge the sweet tooth, and took our tubs across to the Madison Square Park, relaxing for a few minutes and enjoying the spectacle of the dogs of all shapes and sizes frolicking joyfully in the dog park, and the squirrels, pigeons, sparrows and starlings--New York's principal wild life, and not very wild at that--competing for a handout with their fellow, two-legged homeless ones.

From the park, it was just a couple of blocks north to the Museum of Sex. Yes! It had been highly recommended by the young man who came to fix our online connection, so we decided to stop by and see for ourselves. We were not, honestly, that enchanted. The bottom floor is devoted to a somewhat scant history of eroticism and pornography in film, still photography and video, with a few genuinely entertaining glimpses into what was considered naughty in the past. All genders and orientations happily included. The second floor devoted to kinky sex, from cross-dressing and mechanical means to technology and sado-masochism. Good for the occasional chuckle and raised eyebrow: really? On the third floor, I learned more about the mating habits of animals than I ever needed to know--with a rather heavy emphasis on same sex encounters, including a startling case of duck necrophilia. Don't ask.

We walked west to Broadway for the long walk north--a compleat encyclopedia of the hustle. At the southern end, endless open storefronts leading into interiors crammed with stuff of every imaginable kind: cheap jewelry and watches, luggage, underwear and overwear, electronic goods and camera and video equipment... everything imaginable in wholesale quantity. Everywhere, too, particularly further north, as we approached Times Square, men and women with signs for goods and services, barkers handing out leaflets to the gathering stream of pedestrians--a stream that became a river, then a flood as we continued north. Times Square, brilliant with neon and flashy commercial images...

... was so crowded it was barely possible to elbow one's way through. (These pictures taken from the middle of an intersection, and give no sense of what I'm talking about.) A seething mass of humanity, a single, vast living body, a fine Buddhist metaphor for the body each of us inhabits, not the firm, stable body it so often seems but rather an activity, a process in which change never, for one instant, stops.

It was a moving and a humbling experience, but I was happy, further north, past Times Square, to be back on a simply crowded sidewalk. We made it back to our apartment, rested a while, then headed out for a Thai dinner around the corner. We have no television here, as I may have mentioned, and it's a new and somewhat unsettling experience to be cut off from the news. We found Comedy Central on the computer, and settled for late night's Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert.

Masterpieces; and Bits & Pieces 10/28/10

What a strange and telling contrast between the two museums we visited yesterday! We went first to the Frick Collection, walking kitty-corner across Central Park to the Upper East Side and ending up, providentially, exactly one block south of that grand palace that Henry Clay Frick built for himself at a prime location on Fifth Avenue at the turn of the last century. Like many of the very wealthy of his era, he participated heartily in the "rape of Europe," using American money to buy a vast amount of the European patrimony--which Europe, be it said, was happy enough at the time to sell off in exchange of vast amounts of American dollars.

Ah, well. What an astounding collection Frick managed to put together, and to make available to the public as a museum following his death. It's a long time since we visited the collection, and were glad we had chosen to do so again this time. Today's wealthy collectors, if they chose to go for masterpiece art, have frankly slim picking compared to this treasure trove of some of the finest of works by some of the greatest European artists, from the Italian Renaissance through the late nineteenth century. The most recent work we spotted as an interesting bullfight scene by Manet, placed interestingly adjacent to a number of paintings by Goya. Nearby, exquisitely installed to best advantage, Velasquez's masterpiece portrait of King Philip IV of Spain, "The King at War.

The great period of English art--Constable, Reyolds, Turner--was well represented in the great gallery, built specifically to provide wall space for paintings of heroic scale. Wonderful, to stand in the presence of this extraordinary output of human skill and aspiration. But my personal favorites for the day was the pair of portraits by Hans Holbein of mortal enemies Sir Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell...

...the latter instrumental in arranging for the former to lose his head at the hands of the Henry VIII, and only a short time later losing his own to that same murderous monarch. And two, almost twin, tall portraits of infinitely elegant ladies, done with the modest palette and decorative style made fashionable by the discovery of Japanese art in the Western World.

A feast of masterpieces, then. We left the Frick and walked over to Madison Avenue, stopping for lunch at a corner bistro before heading for the Whitney Museum of American art where we wanted to see the exhibition Paul Thek: Diver, A Retrospective. Thek's brief life and strange contribution to the history of contemporary art ended with AIDS in 1988. After a moment of great acclaim in the 1960s for stomach-churning, hyper-realistic sculptures of raw meat and viscera exhibited in plexiglass boxes--and uncomfortable with the acclaim--Thek left New York for Europe where he spent more than a decade working on complex, collaborative installation pieces that occupied entire gallery spaces. His many paintings were essentially throwaways, done on butcher paper or newsprint, often involving washy blue underwater scenes evoking the Thek's belief that the artist's job is to mine deep into the reality of the inner self. In this context, the meat pieces seem like self-portraits of a peculiarly agonized intensity.

The most moving part of the exhibition, at least for this observer, were the two spaces at the end showing work from the last year or two of the artist's life, when he knew that he was dying. At this time in his life, he seems to have accepted--embraced--the transience of his own flesh and to have wittingly produced work that refined the spirit of suffering and ephemerality that had also characterized his earlier work. Installed at knee height in the last gallery of the Whitney exhibition, as they had been in the last show of his life, a series of small blue paintings seem to adumbrate the artist's death with a serenity that is at once remarkable and deeply moving...

The overall impression of this artist's work reminds us that, for better or worse, we have largely abandoned the motion of the masterpiece. We are left, as in Thek's work, with "bits & pieces," fragments of perception, fragments of feeling, fragments of life, put together with that sense of the authoritarian absolute that justified the masterpiece.

An interesting day. By the time we left the Paul Thek show, we found ourselves in the first rain of our New York stay. Setting out to walk across the park for a movie on the West side, we must have lost our way because we walked full circle and ended up exactly where we had started on the Upper East Side. I had walked, by this time, as far as was pleasant or comfortable, but taxis are scarce in New York in the rain, so we gamely walked back across the park--this time taking care to ask for orientation at key intervals, and found our way to Central Park West. And eventually to the theater, where we enjoyed the luxury of comfortable seats to watch "The Social Network." Excellent movie, but no review here.

Home for a soup and cheese dinner, only to find that our host has no can opener. A bread and cheese dinner, then. With a glass of wine.

Chelsea: The Best Show in Town-10/29/10

If you're headed for the Chelsea gallery district in New York, as we were yesterday morning, here's a great way to go: get yourself to the 14th Street subway station and walk west on 14th to 10th Avenue, where you'll find stairs leading up to the wonderful High Line Park, recently reclaimed from an old elevated railway line that ran up the west side of the city, above the traffic. The steel railroad tracks are still visible among the plants and grasses and small trees that line the boardwalk...

... high above street level and the city's constant roar, and you're offered fine views of the river and the city below. Here's a glimpse of the Empire State Building...

You end up, currently, at the lower end of the gallery district, at 20th Street, where there's a charming piece of entropic art by Valerie Hagerty.

But work continues on a northward extension of the path, just visible through the chain link fence.

Now you're going to have to forgive me for a rave. We saw a great deal of art in Chelsea, much of it ho-hum, some of it more appealing to the eye and mind. But I'm choosing to ignore the rest and write about the Best Show in Town. (Well, I have to admit I haven't seen them all, and a good number of the big-name galleries were closed for installation. But I'm choosing to call this the Best Show in Town.)

It's at the Jack Shainman Gallery, and the artist is a Cuban named Yoan Capote. The show's title is "Mental States." The first work we encounter is a massive seascape in stark, deeply impasto'ed black and white...

(The decent images come courtesy of the gallery; the crummy ones are mine)

Gaze at it for a while, approach it a little more closely, and you discover that what you thought were thick swaths of black paint are actually densely massed barbed fish hooks. Suddenly, the huge painting becomes not merely beautiful, but dangerous.

Though epic in scale, this is poetic work which relies heavily on the richly associative quality of metaphor. (I'm reminded very much of the tradition of magical realism in Latin-American literature--a tradition also evident in Latino art of recent years.) The next work we come across in Capote's show is a crude representation of the Stars and Stripes, created out of bricks and mortar. A parallel pair of videos...

... allow us to watch its creation, cut out as a rectangular window from a wall that opens out to a view of a blue stretch of ocean, and we realize that this work is not only an object of seductive beauty in itself, but also a poignant reminder of the split between the United States and the tiny island so few miles off its coast; the flag embodies not only the spirit of freedom, but also its denial--a poignant symbol of the wall that seals off access to the promise.

That promise is evoked again in Capote's large-scale fish-hook paintings of New York.

(detail)

Though he lives in Cuba today, the artist experienced first-hand the siren call of the Big Apple on a visit a few years ago, and these paintings powerfully suggest both its seductions and its dangers for an artist--and an immigrant. The barb of the hook is unmistakable.

It is said that all art is political. If you take the time to think it through, the politics of Capote's art range from international issues of freedom, world capitalism and the history of colonialism to the personal and sexual, and its themes are as evident in the objects he creates as in his paintings. Compare, for example, the massive "Status Quo"...

... to the more modestly-scaled "Beautiful People."

The former, despite its avoirdupois and its seriousness of intention, is a rather humorous indictment of social injustice and inequality, in which the scale of the ordinary, dull bronze is heavily outweighed by its huge, polished golden counterpart. "Beautiful People", when closed, evokes the serene minimalist aesthetic of a Donald Judd...

Opened up, it delights in every form of sexual penetration know to the human species...

The politics of human sexuality is pursued in secrecy, beneath the polished veneer of respectability. (Pornography, by the way, is strictly censored by the political authorities in Cuba.) Capote is not afraid to have fun with his subversions.

I love the way Capote is able to make art that is at once beautiful to look at, radically simple in its compression of idea and image, and radically complex in associative meanings. It's the kind of art that compels you to keep looking even when you think you've got the message, whose presence is a reminder of the best of which we humans are capable. The exquisitely carved pair of sneakers in Carrera marble is at once a humorous commentary on the pretensions of art history, the "market" and the "value" of art, and finally nothing more than an admirable, beautiful and seductive object in itself.

(This image should be white, white, white!)

If ever I saw a "museum-quality" show in a commercial gallery, this one is it. It is extraordinary not only in its range, depth and scale, but also in the quality of the artist's workmanship and the passion of his ideas. If I had any influence with museum curators, I'd say, Take note!