every person in new york.

i am totally in love with this picture, and this project. artist jason polan is attempting to draw every person in new york. some of the drawings are highly detailed pieces and some are just quick, artful sketches. (check out his picture of marathoners on the site--so fun!) i am also in love with the idea of being drawn for the project, but i'm still trying to think of a location in which to be spotted... perhaps i'll invite him to the museum?

a night with the "hi-def yo-yo ma"

note: this was originally published on my museum's blog. i have pulled portions and added a few details.

hold on,
one strong,
and you’ll never be alone,
each day, each night,
we pray our dreams take flight,
cuz i need you, and you need me,
and together we stand for unity.

so goes the hook of “the forum”, a song off of dana leong’s latest album, milk & jade. the artist and his multi-talented collaborators celebrated the CD release at symphony space on friday, march 5 with an audience filled with fans and friends. it was a night that rejoiced in unlikely unions, the chance for long-time listeners and first-time initiates to enjoy leong and his unique blend of hip-hop, jazz, electronic and classical music. dana leong in concert is unlike any other musician i have seen—he is incredibly inventive, weaving his personal history (classically-trained cellist and trombonist, of chinese and japanese descent) with his artistic influences (jazz and pop greats, local NYC MCs, film and fashion), to create a new kind of performance. with a foot propped on his electric cello, he bobbed and moved, occasionally grabbing the mic to emphasize a lyric or reaching to hit his laptop to introduce a new electronic element to the sonic landscape. his biography includes a mention about his work with artists including dafnis prieto, ryuichi sakamoto, DJ spooky, wynton marsalis, yoko ono and kanye west, and i think this best describes him: if all those amazing and disparate artists got together and had a baby (just go with me on this one), it would be dana leong. he is more than one influence, he is more than one style, he is even more than one instrument (and somehow manages to play many at once.) he unites cultures and musical styles in a new way, and makes it wholly his own.

his guests that evening were equally talented. hagar ben ari (who performed live but is not on the album) rocked out on the bass for much of the evening, and added a wistful solo to the opening of “opus one ‘why i cry’”, a hauntingly beautiful song about the tragedies of human life. it is rare that electric bass is played as a melodic (rather than strictly rhythmic) instrument in concert, and it made me wish for more of that. as a former cellist, i recognized some of her technique and was jealous of her skils. core rhythm, the anchoring MC of the evening, is leong’s most frequent collaborator on milk & jade projects, and their chemistry is apparent. it is a pleasure to watch fellow musicians enjoy each other’s work and processes (core rhythm spent much of the night nodding his head and pounding his heart when not rapping), and these two clearly work well together. core rhythm’s lyrics are clever and deep at the same time, and while it can be tough to decipher those lyrics in a live show, the audience got a copy of the words in their programs, which helped quite a bit. the guest rappers were a somewhat weaker bunch in person, though it gets better on CD. as a total "america's best dance crew" nerd, i also thoroughly enjoyed the popping and locking of dancer tommy “hypno” chan, who did a fantastic and fun robot to a song that combined human and technological sounds for a truly modern performance. dana closed the show with a cover of "a change is gonna come" by sam cooke, with his trombone singing the melody. it is a testament to his training and his artistry that i had tears in my eyes; his trombone sounded like a human lament, and it made for a powerful end to the show.

i was lucky to get enough tickets for myself, s, a friend and my mother, who was in town for the weekend. we all loved the show, despite being of different ages (and musical persuasions.) i look forward to hearing him again. symphony space, by the way, is awesome. it looks like it may have been recently renovated, but it is a beautiful space, and a great, intimate place to hear a concert. too bad it's so far up on the west side.

happy new year!

february 14th marked the first day of the lunar new year, a holiday i have been celebrating over the entire month (and will continue to celebrate) with the museum. events and programs at work and in other venues have abounded, and i was lucky to attend the met's recent event in honor of the new year, which included delicious food, strong drinks, and (best of all) a private viewing of mastering the art of chinese painting: xie zhiliu (1910-1997).

the show is truly epic--it spans decades of the artists life and work, including early studies as well as their final finished products. the studies are always my favorite. as a student of art history, i am interested in the pieces themselves, but i am also completely fascinated by the process. what inspired them? how did they learn their skills and artistry? how was that applied to this piece? there was a study of birds' feet that particularly captivated me, as xie zhiliu had spent hours and hours observing and illustrating the incredible detail of the scaly skin and long talons of the toes. to then see those same feet in a painting gives me such joy--it's like i know a secret about the artist and his work.

my other favorite part of the exhibit were the seals. chinese artists sign their pieces using seals (called chops) that are at once both their name and a representation of the self--xie zhiliu used different chops over the course of his life. many of them were truly lovely, and often very clever in translation. again, it's the element of getting a look behind the curtain, a look at the artist as a person and not just a master, that i really enjoyed.

there is a lot to see (and it is somewhat tucked away upstairs) but it is well-worth a trip to see his studies and seals. i was so grateful to be included in the event, and get a rare behind-the-scenes glimpse of the met and a master at work.

*if you are interested in lunar new year events, check out explore chinatown's calendar of events. the main parade is next weekend, so there's still time to celebrate!

present mirth hath "present laughter"

one of the benefits of dating someone with other interests is getting introduced to new things (and doing some introducing.) s, as an audio engineer, is always bringing new music into my life. as a theatre nerd, i have gotten to bring to him the joys of a live play. for christmas this year, i gave him tickets to see present laughter, the noel coward revival starring victor garber.

we saw the show in previews, which i really enjoyed. they were still working out the kinks, and i liked getting an almost-backstage look at their processes. little, almost indecipherable, trip ups (on lines and telephone cords) help the magic to me--you realize that they're real, that this is happening for you right now. that human effort is such a rewarding element in a live play. (it should never look like work, per se, more like play, but i like knowing it's all unfolding in front of me.)

it's an enjoyable show--noel coward is always funny--and the cast does well, for the most part. victor garber seemed to be holding back at times. his character gary essendine is accused of over-acting so often that i would have liked to see a little more over-the-top from him, but i thought he performed well. i especially liked harriet harris as gary's long-suffering secretary monica, and enjoyed the balance between love and exasperation that lisa banes struck as his ex(ish)-wife liz.

i went crazy for the art deco decadence of the set, although s wasn't too keen on all the marbled wood and golden fixtures. the costumes were similarly lovely and sumptuous, and fit the characters well. gary's dressing gowns did an especially good job at playing their part, and a set of pajamas added a nice visual joke in the second half.

overall, it was a very enjoyable night at the theatre, and i would recommend it. i would also recommend using the roundabout theatre's preview ticket system. the tickets were extremely well-priced, and we had good seats. i look forward to the rest of the season.

comedy/drama

we've had lots of lovely visitors this summer, which always means getting to be tourists in our own city. it also usually means getting to see at least one broadway show, and this summer i was lucky enough to see three!

the s family came to stay (in our teeny-beany bk apartment) for a week-ish in july, and it was a lot of fun. they touristed by day while i worked, and then i'd take them to dinner or a show in the evenings. through tdf, i got us tickets to mary stuart, which was absolutely phenomenal. we expected it to be a bit dry (it is a history play, after all), but the story and writing were extremely engaging, and the action moved along quite well. the cast did a fantastic job, which helped as well. it is (unfortunately) rare that a show has one, let alone two, strong dramatic roles for women, and both actresses blew me away in their parts. harriet walter as elizabeth takes on an icon and humanizes her, letting her vulnerability show through her icy reserve at key moments in the play. janet mcteer is a powerhouse as mary--it was impossible to take your eyes off her onstage, and her vocal and physical life held such power and passion. it was a really powerful night at the theater, and i felt very lucky to get to see such wonderful women at work.

s' mother is a big american idol fan, so when she saw that constatine maroulis was performing in rock of ages, she decided she wanted to go for her birthday. i always love a good campy musical--and am an unabashed 80s hair metal fan--so i was happy to tag along with the family to the show. it was a surprising amount of fun. the music is loud and goofy and it was hard not to sing and dance in my seat. the cast was clearly having a great time as well--especially franz, who (among other things) just wants to make chocolate, and lonny, the over-the-top narrator. constantin has a surprisingly strong voice, which certainly helped sell the show. all in all, i had a lot of fun, and was happy to get to go.

we rounded our summer of shows out with the norman conquests at circle in the square (the show sadly has now closed.) it was my first time at an alan ayckbourn play, and i enjoyed myself immensely. i don't often laugh out loud at plays, but it was incredibly funny, and the cast (imported from london and the old vic) was really very talented. it's part of a trilogy--you can see one or all, in any order--and centers around a family house in england and the crazy family that's descended upon each other for the weekend. s and i meant to see the other plays, but we ran out of time, which is too bad. it was really a wonderful revival, and i'd love to see more.

modern art like whoa

my parents were in town this past weekend for work (my mom for a conference, my dad for a meeting) and to hang out with me. we had a great time (enough for multiple entries, lucky you), and spent much of the weekend in museums.

i like to say that i was raised in museums. my father worked at the virgina museum when i was born, and they used to sell a post card of our little family: mama, papa and baby me looking at artwork. my parents taught me to look at art with a critical eye, to appreciate the beauty and power of a work, to consider the context of time and tastes, to form my own opinions of what is worthwhile. going to MOMA with my father is different than going with anyone else; he has a love, a reverence for the works of modern masters that is inspiring. he will pause to consider a piece for minutes at a time, letting the colors and forms move through him, sharing his new perspectives. i don't race through the galleries, but i think i often move too fast to experience the pieces in the way that he does. it was so much fun to explore the MOMA's permanent collection with him, to take each piece at a time and truly consider it fully.

on sunday we savored the fair weather (come back, sunshine!) as we walked up to the whitney. i am embarrassed to admit that we hadn't yet been to the whitney, especially considering it is on the us map (not for lack of trying! when we went last summer it was packed, with a line down the block and then some.) somehow i missed the eggleston and calder shows, which i regret completely. but i am glad that we were able to go this weekend. the whitney is sort of a bite-size museum, enough to fill a few hours, but not so large that you miss out on anything if you've got less than a day. (or a week--i'm looking at you, met museum.) we started from the top and worked our way down, first through the permanent collection which is heavy on the edward hopper, though still enjoyable--i do love me some claes oldenburg. their two major exhibits were "synthetic", which explored both synthetic materials and subject matter, and "site", devoted to the impact of place and process on works of art. there was an excellent video installation called "electric earth" in the site-specific exhibit which tracked a protagonist in-tune with the world and its sounds as he moved (and danced) through a desolate urban landscape. the artist had arranged multiple video screens through the space, so that the viewer progressed with the character through the world, always able to hear (and often able to see) what had come before and what was yet to come. we spent the most time in that installation, overwhelmed with images and sounds.

they were finishing the new jenny holzer exhibit, and i hope to make it back to see her installation. "protect protect" runs march 12 through may 31, and is billed as her most comprehensive exhibit in 15 years. as a fan of both art and words, i am always interested in jenny holzer's works, for their cryptic, insightful quality and modern-age presentation. i think the whitney is definitely worth a visit, and i hope to get back soon.

rebus

s gave me an excellent present for christmas: membership to moma for the year. this past weekend we decided to take advantage of this and headed over to the museum for the afternoon.

their big show right now is "marlene dumas: measuring your own grave" (through february 16--a valentines date perhaps?) our review was mixed. her brushy, ethereal technique works well in paintings of the deceased--i pictured their souls hanging around, waiting to see what happens next. but massive canvases of little girls hanging from nooses are not really my thing; i had not seen a large-scale presentation of her work, and what can be powerful in small doses is somewhat overwhelming in total. the most interesting thing is a room of quick sketches called "models" (i believe they are studies of all of the people who stopped by the model for her over a period of a few years.) they are revealing in their simplicity, the faces distilled to piercing eyes or strong noses, everything else rendered unimportant. in an interesting twist, amongst the pictures of women of all shapes, sizes and ethnicities, there is a portrait of a snake. i think that all of her work has a sense of the dark, almost brutal, parts of life, and this room is a distillation of that philosophy.

pipilotti rist has transformed the atrium into "pour your body out" (this just closed), a large-scale multimedia installation that encouraged visitors to take their shoes off and dive into her world of sounds and sights. while the explanation invited adults to make new friends, no one around me wanted to talk about rist's swim through a menstrual ocean (why not, new friends?!), and s was too shy to sit on the iris couch with me. he was concerned about the sound in the space--it was too open, too noisy to achieve the cocoon effect rist seemed to be going for, and perhaps the experience would've meant more in a more intimate space. but i love taking my shoes off in museums, so i considered it a minor success.

our favorite show, however, was "artist's choice: vik muniz, rebus" (through february 23.) to steal from the description, a rebus is a combination of unrelated visual and linguistic elements which create a larger deductive meaning, and muniz has raided the museum's collection to put together a startlingly engaging little exhibition. each piece is taken out of context (no title, no artist), so that the focus is solely on the piece and its relation to those that precede and follow it. i enjoyed the pieces in a way that i usually do not--instead of connecting to an overarching theme, each piece is examined for its own meaning and merit, and is connected to the other pieces in new ways. "do these relate because of imagery, or material, or meaning, or is simply enough that you are here to look at this piece?" the exhibition asks. we found ourselves making new connections between pieces, enjoying them on a purely experiential level. (my only complaint: the exhibit is too short. i wanted everything we saw to be this engaging.) i think it's worth it to go to see this exhibition alone.

top ten

i've been out of town for the holidays in d.c., but i head back to my beloveds (ny and the boy) tomorrow, just in time for new year's eve. in honor of the end of this year and the start of the next, i would like to present my top 10 list of things that happened this year. some are specific, and some are more general, and all are previously referenced in this here blog (which means you can go back and read more!) and everything meant something to me, whether meaningful or just fun. now we've had plenty of ado. and so . . .

10. i enjoyed all that restaurant week had to offer. i love a fancy night out to dinner and drinks, and restaurant week is a great way to experience places i might not normally be able to afford. i've marked my calendar for this year, too.

9. i heard a lot of new music. from hearing friends play downtown, to the mars volta at terminal five, to eric bibb on governor's island, to fred sherry plays zorn, we had a lot of great auditory experiences this year. i look forward to discovering more new music in 2009.

8. i watched men battle to eat the most hot dogs at coney island. i know it may sound strange that this was one of my favorite things, but the contest was hilarious, coney island was as weird and wonderful as i had expected, and the day was all-around perfect. i will always remember my view from the top of the wonder wheel.

7. there were some great celebrity sightings this year, including christian bale, tony danza and the johns (hodgeman and oliver) of comedy central fame. i promise i'm not a rubbernecker, but come one--there's something kind of cool about seeing someone famous right next to you.

6. i went to a number of museums, and saw courbet at the met, miro at moma, and the next generation at the whitney biennial. there's a lot of art in this city, and i aim to see more in 2009.

5. s and i enjoyed "spring awakening" and my mom and i were enthralled with "gypsy", among other shows. i saw some fabulous theater, and even got an autograph from miss patti lupone.

4. we got to see a game in the soon-to-be-old yankee stadium. all team loyalties aside, there was something special about going to a game in the same stadium my grandfather had visited. as new york grows and changes, the opportunity for that gets smaller and smaller (my g'pa lived here in the 20s through the 50s--this is a different city.) plus i am a huge nerd for baseball, so it was a great time for me. we'll see if i can convince s to go again this spring.

3. i've had some "only in new york" experiences, including seeing paul simon perform at "revenge of the book eaters" and crashing a vampire weekend after-party with some delightful new friends. for me, this is why i moved here, why i stay here--i don't always love the challenges, but i do enjoy the rewards.

2. i made a lot of new friends, like mk, aa, my neighbor, ls, and others, and got to reconnect with other people, including jay and zp. for me, it is the people that make the place, and i am thankful to have such wonderful people in my life here in the city.

1. we moved into our own apartment. we'd been in progressive co-habitation since college, and of course we lived with the boys in boyland when i first arrived, but this was the biggest step we've taken towards saying "you are the one i will be with for good." and it feels good; it feels great. even when things are not so perfect, there is no one in the world i would rather buy towels with, wake up to in the morning, cook dinner for on the weekends, share a tiny apartment with. in a year that often felt like growing pains, this was the easiest, best and most rewarding step towards adulthood.

thanks for following me down memory lane. what did you love about 2008? (oh, and if one thing you loved about 2008 was this business, magical new york, fear not: my new year's resolution is to blog more. yay!)

equus

you may not know this, but one of the only reasons anyone reads my blog is because once someone i work with saw daniel radcliffe at starbucks. (i kid you not: that got linked somehow on imdb, and legions of ladies who love hp came running.) so i may be about to quadruple my readership. we shall see.

my cousin was in town last weekend, and as a fellow theater-lover, he wanted to take me to a show. (and no one turns down free broadway!) he let me pick between "equus" and "spamalot", and as i am more into the order of the phoenix than [insert clay aiken reference here], i chose the depressing play about a horse. (also, clearly i am not a claymate, as i could not come up with an aiken reference. i consider this a personal victory.)

"equus" is an interesting show, as it takes a horrific actual event (the blinding of horses), and tries to suppose a reason behind it. daniel radcliffe plays the stable boy who is locked up after maiming the horses he seems utterly enamored of, a wounded boy who has a religious-ecstatic relationship with the animals. as an actor, he did quite well, i thought, at moving between the sullen bits in the hospital and the scenes that show his life pre-crime: at the beach (when he first sees a horse), dealing with tough parents, going on his first date. the play and production itself left something to be desired. as dictated by the script, it's a spare production with very few set pieces and a lot of blocks that get moved around by the actors an almost distracting amount. it's extremely talky, and richard griffiths, who plays the psychiatrist, was saddled (ha! horse pun!) with much of the monologizing, which he seemed somewhat fatigued by. the most evocative element was the horses, played by men in delicate metal horse head-pieces and hooves, who truly moved like the animals, stomping and strutting and reacting to the slightest irritant. (horses are actually an excellent metaphor for the mental state of this play, i think, in that they are so on-edge, so uneasy, and also so controllable by their man and master.)

overall, i am glad i got to see it, but it wasn't the experience i was expecting. i am an emotional person, easily moved, and even i left the audience dry-eyed. the play didn't produce any new emotions in me, i felt no sympathy for the characters or their situations--in a way, it felt very clinical. which i suppose is alright for a play that rejects religion and experience and is essentially about psychiatry.

art attack

i've had family in town off and on for the last two weeks, which is both fun and exhausting. it has meant some home-town-touristing, which i always enjoy.

this past weekend my cousin was visiting, and was very interested in visiting MOMA. i am always game for some modern art, so saturday morning we got up early (crack of 9 am!) and headed up there. we started from the top to try to beat the crowds, and s and i spent a good hour enjoying the fantastic show joan miro: painting and anti-painting i have long enjoyed miro's work for his whimsical reinterpretation of familiar subjects, a kind of soft picasso i think (all of the creative placement without the sharp edges of cubism.) my favorite part of the show was a series that placed collages side-by-side with the paintings they inspired. miro had given himself the exercise of painting from combinations of cut outs from machine catalogs, and it was incredible to recognize the curve of a handle of the plummet of a lever in the painting. it is the kind of display of process that you don't usually get to see, and that i think is so interesting. i think my love of art history stems from a kind of nosiness--i don't just want to look at the piece, i want to understand it in a larger context; who made it, and why, in what time and place, in response to what or whom. it also gave me an idea for a show i would like to curate (either in life or my head.) s was looking forward to looking at music, but i felt it was poorly arranged. there were some interesting pieces, but with little access (only one pair of headphones, MOMA? in a media exhibition? seriously?) we only had a couple of hours in the museum, so we moved much faster than i would've liked through their permanent collection and some new photography, thought it was wonderful to see what we could. and now i know i need to go back sooner rather than later.

(we skipped their big show, van gogh and the colors of the night, in part because it required timed tickets and in part because i didn't feel the need to stand ten-deep in front of the night cafe. i would like to try to see it some other time, however, perhaps on a weekday.)

a couple of weekends ago, i took myself to the guggenheim to see my beloved building uncovered post-renovation. i admit to being somewhat divided on the current exhibitions. catherine opie: american photographer is a well-curated look at her career, from early portraits of friends and self to later series' on families and nature ("icehouses" and "surfers".) her portraits are gorgeous, often close-cropped faces or bodies on display with vivid saturated backgrounds. her early portraiture focused on members of her los angeles community, with a lot of tattoos, piercings and indeterminate (or undiscovered) gender. (it was pretty interesting to watch the faces of my fellow gallery-goers.) i was especially taken with her later series, "domestic", in which she photographed lesbian families at work and at play, in really intimate, touching photographs. her outdoor work was really lovely as well, especially the "freeways" series, which looked like something out of an apocalyptic italian art film, all swooping curves and abandoned stretches.

i was less taken with theanyspacewhatever, the major exhibition that has taken over the rotunda. i enjoyed pieces, but felt the whole was lacking a unified theory. there were some interesting interactive bits--i took my shoes off to sit on the pillows and view "chew the fat", i enjoyed a beverage as i watched a film in "cinema liberte", and i would've killed to spend a night in the revolving hotel room. i particularly liked the hanging signs, though embarrassingly i now cannot remember who created them. i think that there were also pieces missing when i attended (this space left intentionally blank for performance, perhaps), which made it oddly empty at times, which felt strange for the exhibition supposedly welcoming back the museum after their big renovation. i don't mean to sound cranky--i love the guggenheim, i've just seen better shows there. i will go back, however, to see the jenny holzer illumination one friday. i love me some jenny holzer.

chromomaniacs

i know, i know, a post is owed.

s and i are members are of the met, a true new york treasure, and i've been itching to see the superheroes: fashion and fantasy exhibit before it disappears. (it's still there through september 1, and they'll be open labor day. go! quickly!) we went saturday, and while the galleries were a little busy, it was a very worthwhile experience. they've divided the collection into categories, such as "the mutant body" or "the patriotic body," which made for unusual curatorial notes. they combined costumes (from movies like "iron man" and "the dark knight") with pieces by designers like john galliano, alexander mcqueen and john paul gaultier. some of the designs were really incredible (and some felt like their inclusion was more of a stretch), but it was really interesting seeing fashion in a new artistic context.

having seen ads everywhere in the city for jeff koons on the roof, we were excited to check that out as well, but unfortunately it wasn't as impressive as i expected. there were three pieces, of which i thought "balloon dog", the star of said ads, was least evocative. i really enjoyed "coloring book", a large, bright, graphic representation of a children's art project. it was really beautiful and unusual, and i liked it very much.

we stumbled upon j.m.w. turner: painter of light (habitually chic wrote a post with some wonderful images from the exhibit.) i'm not normally big on landscapes, so i didn't originally want to go in, but i am so glad we did. turner was a bit of a maverick landscape and history painter, who experimented with color and form, and was a devotee of the concept of The Sublime, which seemed to be characterized by menacing clouds and snowpiles. his colors were the most sublime part, i felt, in part because he was so willing to use saturated colors that (while possibly not found in nature) looked quite natural in his compositions. i am a huge watercolor fan as well, and his watercolors were especially beautiful and colorful and experimental. (some of his studies were just huge swaths of color with little details to ground them.) plus i really enjoyed the biographical notes. every explanatory panel would discuss his influences and work, and then mention the constant critical pans the work received. some of them were very funny (we particularly liked that he was accused of "chromomania"), and it was a nice change from the usual accolades most individual exhibits are filled with.

you've got a little more time to see j.m.w. turner (september 21) and jeff koons (october 26), and i recommend it all.

on vacation in my own backyard

i had a lovely long weekend with my parents. i really like my parents, in large part because they are my parents, and in large part they are also my really nice, smart, interesting friends who don't let me pay for my own cupcakes. we have a lot in common, aside from being related, and i really like talking to them. and i would write that even if they didn't read this.

friday we took them to clemens for incredible fresh tex-mex and my dad bought a mexican wrestlers mask from the proprietors. then we took the subway (it was weird for me to picture my parents on the subway; they don't strike me as train people, so it was funny to ride with them) up to bryant park, where their lovely hotel was. we walked a square up to fao schwartz (everyone loves giant toys!) and along the park to my office, and then down 9th avenue to a delicious little italian place. then back to bryant park and to bed for us all.

saturday we brought them terrace bagels (i am a really good daughter) in the city, and all trekked to various museums, my dad to the met for the jasper johns gray show, my mom, s and i to the guggenheim for the incredible cai guo qiang show. it was a really intricate installation, with site-specific work about the intersection of cai's ancient chinese heritage, modern chinese upbringing and current new york life. it is the kind of show best experienced in person (so that you can walk among the wolves or take the yak canoe through the built river), and really a once in a lifetime opportunity, since some of the pieces were created specifically for this space. it was a lot to think about, and we talked about it the rest of the weekend. after an adventure (two closed subway stations and a bus!) we headed down to the village and the deliciousness that is john's pizzeria. once on bleecker it is difficult, of course, to not go to magnolia for some buttercream love, and my kind pa stood in line while we cooed over marc jacobs. (in retrospect, i should have tried something on. i probably could have gotten the sweet gift of good design.) i then walked us back up to the flatiron (with a stop to buy cushier socks and shoes) to fishs eddy, where we all admired the cheeky dinnerware. my mother and i, always the avant-garde pair, saw a really great new play at nyu, "i have loved strangers" (by anne washburn.) it was set in ancient new york, and various plotlines about a corrupt king, true and false prophets, and revolutionaries were intricately woven together. (a post-modern apocalypse play is a great follow up to an installation about controlled violence and painting with gunpowder. and cupcakes.) we cabbed uptown (i think i walked them out) and met s in the hotel bar for a drink.

sunday they made it to brooklyn on their own, and we walked park slope, stopping in to cutesy shops and spending lots of time at brooklyn superhero supply. after a gourmet market lunch, i sent them off and spent the afternoon looking for apartments (we are still future-homeless.) it was a full weekend, but a grand one, and now i am looking forward to the next one. i plan to sleep in.

new crush: gustave courbet

he's pretty good looking, right? the bohemian artist crush?

friday night i met s after work, the plan being to head up to the guggenheim to see the cai guo qiang show that i am desperate to see. but when we walked up to the museum, the line stretched out the door and down the block, and i just didn't want to peer past ten pairs of shoulders, even if i was paying what i wanted. being in the neighborhood and the proud owners of memberships (thanks again, mom) we decided to spend the evening in the met. they've got two really fantastic and different shows right now. we started with the gustave courbet show, a remarkable collection of paintings. we'd spoken briefly about courbet in my college survey courses (which tend to hit the "big points"), and we talked mainly about his social paintings, depicting the peasant classes in his hometown, never before the subject of serious paintings of great beauty (if included in art, they were idealized or background characters, which is what made realist scenes like the burial at ornans so shocking and spectacular.) so what i didn't know is how prolific courbet was, at realist scenes, portraits of friends and family, nudes, land and seascapes, images of the hunt, and my favorite, self-portraits. courbet was pretty handsome (hence the crush), but what i really loved about the portraits is that he liked to paint himself in character.

the desperate man has been incorporated into the show's logo, and stares you down as you enter. his eyes are mesmerizing (i promise the internet does this no justice), and while he looks crazed, he also radiates with purpose, a desperate man on a mission.

i also really liked the wounded man (i mean, he's an old-hollywood heartthrob, am i right?) this originally included a sleeping woman, and no wound, but when he broke up with then-girlfriend virginie, she got painted out of the picture and he shot himself with crimson paint. (ladies have never had an easy time in the art world.) aside from my new crush, it was a really interesting show, and i felt i developed a new appreciation for an artist i mainly knew from a throw-away joke in picasso at the lapin agile.

we followed courbet with the jasper johns: gray show, which was really beautiful and powerful in its simplicity. johns, a prolific artist fond of exploring the repetition of familiar images and motifs seen in new ways, is particularly interested in the color (or lack of?) gray, and this exhibit is full of paintings, assemblages and prints in the monotone. it's actually much more visually arresting than it might sounds, especially because johns is a master of so many different art-making techniques (i was particularly wowed by his prints on plastic--they have a really incredible translucency to them) and employs a variety of patterns and images. i think s was less impressed by johns (he really liked the courbets), but i was in modern art heaven.

post-museum, we headed down to e 6th street for some indian food. when i went to london a few years ago, we went to the east end for dinner one night (london's curry capital.) it was the only place where i have ever walked down the street as people tried, one after the other, to lure me into their restaurant. s had never experienced this before, so 6th st and its hawkers caught him a little off-guard. we got ambushed into one restaurant, and narrowly escaped with our lives when i realized it wasn't the one we wanted (seriously, they chased me shouting "miss! miss! this table!" as i ran for the door, politely refusing all the way) before finding some delicious food, chewed to the dulcet tones of a sitar player one table away.

saturday was our lazy day (s paid his taxes, i did crossword puzzles in the sunshine from the window) until we decided to go out with our roommates to union hall last night. have i written of my love for union hall? it's what i imagine a turn-of the century men's club to look like, with red velvet sofas and bookshelves to the ceiling, indoor bocce ball courts and painted portraits of shriners on the walls. we put ourselves on the list to play, but bocce is quite popular with park slope hip kids, and i was content just to watch. there was burlesque in the basement last night, but we stayed upstairs to talk and drink and talk some more. union hall feels cozy, like you're hanging out at the apartment of your coolest uncle. we went out early, and got home in time for me to go to bed and wake up ready to head to work this morning. it's about as perfect as a saturday gets, i think.

i want to study at the graffiti research lab

i think this is amazing:


G.R.L. @ M.o.M.A. from fi5e on Vimeo.

anyone want to go to the armory show with me this weekend? if i used my aging student id, it'll only be $10.