August travels - part 1B (High Line/ Whitney)

I had heard quite a bit about the High Line, and I managed to get down to the 14th St. entrance at 6 pm.  That gave me a bit of time to check out the High Line and then to get dinner before heading over to the Whitney.  I figured I might as well wait until 7 pm to get in on the Pay What You Want deal.

I had sort of thought that after the visit to the Whitney, I would then walk back on the High Line all the way to Hell's Kitchen, as I then wouldn't be all that far from my hotel (which was slightly west of the Port Authority Bus Terminal).  Not to give too much away, but my feet were absolutely killing me after another couple of hours walking through a museum (the third museum of the day) and it had gotten really dark by that point, so I ended up going back to the subway.  Also, while I liked the High Line, it was far more of a park with an amazing view, and much less of an efficient transportation corridor.  Chicago now has some elevated structure called The 606 (a few more details here) and its primary focus is on being an elevated bikeway and is a park second (not that I don't expect there to be some conflicts around these uses down the road (or bikepath).)  Cyclists aren't even allowed to ride their bikes on the High Line, which I thought was quite unfair until I went up there and saw that it really was not appropriate for going fast but rather for meandering and just taking in the view.  So without further ado, here are a few of my pictures of the High Line.

 

Traffic watching...

Everyone's gotta hustle, even on the High Line

As I said, the views are quite stunning, and perhaps on my next visit I will pace myself better so that I can walk the whole thing.  Anyway, I got to the Whitney at about 7:10 and the line was quite long see below).  It felt longer than the lines used to be at the old location, but maybe that is just my imagination.  It moved reasonably quickly, however.

I was there primarily to see the Stuart Davis exhibit, but I checked out the art on all the other floors as well.  I don't have the floor plan or anything, but it felt to me that this was a real wasted opportunity and that the Whitney actually has less space for its permanent collection than before.  It isn't quite as bad as the MCA in Chicago (which I feel is a completely unforgivable waste of the available footprint) but I was expecting they would have doubled the exhibit space, more akin to where the MoMA ended up.

Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Portals (detail), 2016

Susan Hall, New York Portrait, 1970

Urs Fischer, Standing Julian, 2015

It's a little hard to see from this photo, but Standing Julian is actually a larger-than-life-size candle in that doubles as a "portrait" of Julian Schnabel.  Over the course of the exhibit, it will burn down perhaps as low as the torso.  (I would expect the legs would not stand on their own and become a fire hazard, but perhaps they will brace them somehow if the candle actually does burn down that far.  Actually, it is only today that I noticed the fire extinguisher back by the window!)

By now, I was quite prepped for the Stuart Davis exhibit.  It really did cover all the major bases with quite a few of his early Paris scenes and then the major paintings held by the Met and the Whitney and the Brooklyn Museum.  I was pleased that this painting in the Cornell University collection was included, so that I don't have to road trip to Ithaca just to see one painting.  (I probably would never have gone to Lincoln, NE to see Arch Hotel, so that was another bonus.)

Stuart Davis, Place des Vosges No. 2, 1928

 

Stuart Davis, Arch Hotel, 1929

The major paintings were all there.  For some reason, The Mellow Pad (owned by the Brooklyn Museum) didn't grab me as much as Report from Rockport (owned by the Met), perhaps because it felt like marginally more controlled chaos.

Stuart Davis, Report from Rockport, 1940

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The Whitney itself owns two of the more important paintings in the show -- Owh! in San Pao and The Paris Bit.

Stuart Davis, Owh! in San Pao, 1951

Stuart Davis, The Paris Bit, 1959

I was impressed that they had managed to borrow Stuart Davis paintings from the Art Institute of Chicago, and even the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid.  The latter museum had requested that no photos be taken of their painting (Pochade), not that this stopped most visitors and the guards seemed fairly indifferent, but I will respect their wishes here.  I actually bought Pochade on a refrigerator magnet on my trip to Madrid, though I haven't been able to turn that up.  One day...

In terms of paintings that were completely unfamiliar to me, I think my favorite was For Internal Use Only from the Wake Forest University museum in Winston-Salem.

Stuart Davis, For Internal Use Only, 1944-45

One thing that I particularly liked about the second part of the exhibit is that it focused on the serial nature of Davis's art -- how he kept returning to compositions and reorganizing them and changing the color scheme.  I could only fit three of four into this photo (along with the disembodied arm of another art tourist).

The exhibit ended appropriately enough with Fin, which was Davis's last painting (itself in a somewhat incomplete state with masking tape still on the canvas).  I thought it was quite a privilege to see this in person, since it is in a private collection and is only loaned out on very special occasions.

Stuart Davis, Fin, 1962-64

As I mentioned before, the exhibit has closed in New York and will be reopening fairly soon at the National Gallery in D.C.  I hope to make it down there, but that is by no means guaranteed.

At the gift shop, I didn't pick up the catalog (In Full Swing), mostly because I have so many other ones covering his work, though it does look like a pretty decent one, and if I ever see one at a super discount, I'll probably bite.  I did get a small pin inspired by his art, and I probably should have gotten some hipster socks, but I passed.  (Maybe just as well, given how much I ended up having to carry back from Chicago.)  I was kind of astonished that they had quite a few copies of the Archibald Motley catalog that had gone out of print, so I went back and forth and finally grabbed one.  I was pleasantly surprised to find out that it was part of an unannounced sale.  Score!

All in all, it was a very enjoyable visit, though a bit exhausting overall.  I made it back to the hotel and read a bit and got ready for another half day in New York.

August travels - part 1A (NYC)

I only had a day and a half in New York.  I stayed at some pod-like hotel, though this one had individual showers at least.  I thought the robot arm they used to store and retrieve checked luggage was pretty cool.  I'd probably stay there again.

I decided to focus on the Met and the Whitney on Friday, and then to hit the Guggenheim Sat. morning before heading out.  This is one of the first times I've skipped MoMA, though we did spend most of a day there back in the spring.

I actually got up fairly early and decided to head to the Cloisters first.  I do not routinely go there.  In fact, I probably haven't been back in 10 years or so.  The museum is fairly timeless, though they had shifted some of the carvings from the basement up to the main floor, but that was about the only change I could recognize.

I tried to be somewhat meditative on the walk through the grounds, and I also stopped and read a bit (Hill's The Book of Negroes).

On the way back, I took a slightly different path and found a huge tunnel I had never seen before, as well as the back of a lodge.  I suppose it is true that, if you keep your eyes open, there is always something new, and in this case a bit magical, to uncover in Manhattan.

There wasn't a particular exhibit I wanted to see at the Met, but basically I go on every trip to New York.  Many years ago, I used to have a set number of sites I always visited -- the Islamic room with its small fountain, the Chinese courtyard (also name-checked in Lethem's Chronic City), the Frank Lloyd Wright house (in the American Wing) and the Temple of Dundar.  In recent visits, I usually skipped one or more of these, either due to time constraints or because they were closed for reconstruction.  This time, however, I was able to get to all of them, as well as look at the 20th Century art wing, the Impressionists on the 2nd floor, and I made a quick pass through the American wing as well.  It was probably the most thorough visit in years, though there was plenty I skipped of course.  I even went up to the rooftop garden and saw this odd piece, which was a barn which had been reconfigured a bit to look like a house from a Hopper painting.

But it was really just the equivalent of a movie prop.

I was quite disappointed that the Beckmann triptych Beginning was not on view, though I did see it back in March.  On the other hand, I was a bit surprised that the room with the Thomas Hart Benton murals was still up, but after reading a bit more about the transfer, it sounds like this might become a fairly permanent part of the Modern Wing.  It is a bit hard to indicate the scale without seeing it in person.

As always it is a total embarrassment of riches at the Met, and it is hard to even decide what really caught my eye this time around -- the Chagalls, the Cezannes, the Vermeers, etc., though I was particularly drawn to this Cezanne.

Paul Cezanne, Still Life with a Ginger Jar and Eggplants, 1893-94

As I mentioned, I spent a bit more time exploring the Asian galleries and the American Wing than I have on the past several trips.  So that was a bit of a corrective.  I will say I was fairly exhausted by this point, however, and had to convince myself a few times to keep pushing on.

Samuel Halpert, The Flatiron Building, 1919

I decided to skip the Met Breuer (at the site of the former Whitney Museum) and just head down to the new Whitney.  This would give me a bit more time to explore the High Line before it got dark.  Since I said previously that I would break off the discussion of the Stuart Davis exhibit into its own post, I'll also talk about the High Line at that point.  I will say that I thought it was a pretty interesting space, but one that was only marginally useful for pedestrian movements.  In most cases, you would be faster just sticking to walking on the street grid below.

I did see some fairly amusing sculptures inside the 14th Avenue subway station (en route to the High Line).  This is an installation called Life Underground by Matt Otterness.  I'd seen parts of it before, but I took a bit more time on this visit.

The next morning I work up fairly early and walked over to Times Square.  I had wanted to see the Vikings exhibit at Discovery Times Square on the last trip, but no one was up for it.  For quite a while I was the only tourist in the building, and there was only one other family that came to the Viking exhibit, which was in its final weeks.  The costumes of Star Wars was doing slightly better business, but it was still too early for most tourists.  Anyway, the Vikings exhibit is supposed to correct a number of misconceptions about Vikings, including that they wore horned helmets.  That didn't stop them from selling plenty of horned helmets in the gift shop!

I have to be honest that most of the more interesting pieces were just reconstructions, and that really dampened my enthusiasm for the exhibit.  There were still some interesting gold trinkets and lots of swords (again somewhat undercutting the general theme of the exhibit that the Norsemen were generally peaceable farmers...).

In contrast, the Guggenheim was quite packed, even though it wasn't the free day.  I was there primarily for the László Moholy-Nagy exhibit, which has since moved to the Art Institute of Chicago.

Moholy-Nagy, Nuclear I, CH, 1945

Moholy-Nagy, Space Modulator CH for R1, 1942

There were several other interesting things on view in the other parts of the Guggenheim, and I found this sculpture/cityscape made from couscous by Kader Attia to be particularly droll.

I may have seen these two (from the permanent collection) previously, but they registered more on this visit.

Gino Severini, Red Cross Train Passing a Village, 1915

Albert Gleizes, Chal Post, 1915

All in all, it was a lot of art squeezed into a day and a half.  While I certainly saw several museums in Chicago, the pace wasn't nearly as frenetic.  I had basically planned on taking a cab to LaGuardia for the flight to Chicago, but since I was done with the visit to the Guggenheim almost an hour earlier than I had scheduled for, I decided to take transit out there.  I will say that they have made improvements on the express bus to LaGuardia (once you get into Queens), as it used to be a local bus that made all kinds of stops.  Unfortunately, that was about the only transit improvement that I experienced, since in general the subway felt very unreliable with poor headways.  It's actually at the point (to me) where it feels like the city is just no longer functioning well at all, and I am no longer particularly interested in living there any longer.  I suppose this is also a function of how so many of the quirky stores I liked have been lost due to rent increases and a general homogenization of Manhattan (despite the occasional magic moments I referenced above).  This falling out of love with NYC would certainly come as a major surprise to my 20-year-old self...

Feeling blocked

I almost always have too much going on, but usually I can push through or at the very least prioritize.  However, I think I ended up taking a week longer than I thought on Lethem's Chronic City (which I did enjoy considerably -- seeing it as sort of a lost DeLillo novel focusing on reality and simulacra -- though DeLillo wouldn't have snuck in quite so many references to PDK's Dr. Bloodmoney) and other things have piled up from the library.

I'm just about to start Kay's Lucky Coin Variety by Ann Choi (and perhaps I am feeling a bit guilty about not pushing through with my own writing, since she has sort of a similar trajectory to be in terms of plotting out a novel decades ago but never quite writing it down until a few years ago in her case).  But also I have Ursula Franklin's Massey lectures on technology, several plays by Edward Albee, O'Casey's Dublin Trilogy, and just recently a few poetry collections by Earle Birney.  In the case of Birney, it should be a relatively easy decision on whether to just buy a used copy of his Selected Poems, but I have to admit I am really weirded out by his last poetry sequence, which was a series of love poems to his last companion -- a young woman 45 years younger than he was at the time.  That's kind of pushing it, in my view.

Part of me wants to just dump all the current lists and only focus on a stack of books downstairs, where at least I would feel I was making tangible progress in getting rid of some books.  But I think I'll try to stick with my current program (though maybe cut slightly back on non-fiction books) at least until January or so, by which point I should have read Vanity Fair (probably the single biggest omission from my reading history, though a few of the Dickens and Thomas Hardy novels I skipped are fairly close).  But what I really need to do is stick to a schedule of writing at least an hour a day (not counting the blogging).  I think I would feel better all the way around.

In any case, I had to work from home today, since the washing machine was being delivered.  I actually had to straighten up a fair bit downstairs (in case we needed access to the water cut-off valve).  Now that I put in the effort, I'll try to maintain this at least until my father-in-law comes to visit.  (You can see the sewing machine in the foreground, which is for another project currently on the back burner.)

It turned out that, yes it had been necessary to dismantle the doorframe just to get the machine through, though fortunately, I only had to take off one side.  That should make it easier to rebuild the door.  We also had to take the outer door off the hinges, though that was easy enough to rehang.

The Fate of a Doorframe?

I suppose I am most grateful that we didn't have to turn off the water to the house, since there is no guarantee that something wouldn't have gone wrong.  It could have been a lot worse, all things considered, though I obviously wish the original washer hadn't broken down so badly in the first place.

But maybe I should have taken a load to the laundromat down the street, just for old times' sake and see if I could get any writing done there.  I don't think I've gone to a coin laundry since 2001 or so when we were living in Brooklyn.

As it happens, this is the nearest laundromat to me, which sort of brings things full circle to the top of the post, though I do not know if this is run by a Korean family or not.  Perhaps someday I will find out.

Washed out weekend

I suppose that is a bit dramatic.  It hardly rained at all yesterday, and I did run off to Nuit Blanche, but more about that momentarily.  No, our washing machine went on the fritz Friday afternoon.  I had not been having a great day (we had a quasi-going away lunch for some co-workers transferring to different divisions and the orders were all screwed up and it took forever for only passable Middle Eastern food).  This didn't help.  Also, I couldn't drop everything, since I had dinner planned with another former colleague who lives in Vancouver, but it did mean that we had to cut dinner a bit short.

My wife had done a bit of researching and it looks like it was the MCU (Motor Control Unit) that was going out (either the entire thing or the temperature sensor).  Between parts and labor, this is a $400-500 job, so actually not that much different from just buying a new washing machine.  And there is no guarantee that once this part goes out once (and is replaced), it won't go out again in another year.  So this was thrilling news.

When I came home, I was able to actually restart the machine and do a light wash (of all the clothes that had been stuck inside for hours!).  I was hoping this would buy us a week or so to decide what to do next, but no, the machine broke down again, and I had to remove the panel just to unlatch the door this time.

I was able to reschedule my ticket to a matinee (The Watershed* ironically enough), and spent more time researching the issue.  In the end we decided to just buy a new washer (different brand though) and pay the extra for a 5 year warranty.  So that was frustrating and a bit exhausting mentally.  (I wasn't thrilled to find out they would take the old washer away but wouldn't unhook it.  I was able to deal with that this morning, though the cut-off valves seem to leak a bit, and we're not entirely sure the washers will get in and out the basement door.**  So Monday might be a very difficult day...) 

Anyway, after the purchase of the new washing machine, I decided I would go off to see a concert at UT (Vaughan William's London Symphony and Britten's Four Sea Intervals from Peter Grimes -- the last one sounds a bit like Shostakovich or Prokofiev's Symphony 5).  The concert was quite good.  I thought I would stop by the Hart House Art Museum to see if they were part of Nuit Blanche, but UT was not participating this year.

I decided I would just look at a bit of Nuit Blanche this year (I ended up skipping it last year), and I went down to City Hall.  I have to say it felt like a rave there and in general, the only art that was outside was video art (plus this huge balloon ball thing).

The event definitely felt smaller and less impressive than 2 years ago, and this article says that this was the smallest Nuit Blanche in 6 years.  (Not that surprising, when one of the main corporate sponsors pulled out.)  I guess I missed some of the stuff up on Bloor, but overall it looks like I saw all the highlights of the evening, except for a bunch of books tossed about on Queen St. right in front of the old City Hall.  (I have to be honest that this sounds like a stupid idea, and one that actually appalls me as a book-lover, so probably just as well that I missed that.)

I still like the communal feel to it, and being able to walk down Queen and John without any cars is always neat.  But the art was pretty dreadful, especially this truck piled up with coffin liners, or at least quite forgettable.  There was one space I couldn't get into at King and Bay, as the line to get in was huge; still, I was pretty sure by this point I would be completely underwhelmed had I actually gotten in, and I would have been mad at how much time I had lost.  About the only thing I really did like was the video of people crawling up the columns of Union Station.

Frankly, I just don't think I will bother next year.

* Just back from The Watershed.  It is somewhat better than what I was expecting from this review, but it really is too long and self-indulgent (just like Tideline...).  I really think it would have been better to just have the talking heads going on about the politics of water science (sort of like Anna Deavere Smith and her Twilight, Los Angeles play) and cut everything about how the family was going to go on this big adventure together in Act II.  First, I agree with Slotkin that it just pulled the play in too many directions, but more centrally for my reflections upon the play, I ended up thinking that the playwright was a total, irresponsible flake.  She really didn't think that the fate of the Experimental Lake Area (ELA) was interesting enough on its own or, perhaps even worse, she thought that her domestic drama was just as compelling to anyone outside her immediate circle?  I am glad that Ontario stepped in and saved the ELA, and recently the feds have restored their commitment to fund the ELA, but even after watching this, it still wasn't entirely clear that this was the single most damaging thing the Conservatives had done (in their crime spree against science) and why it was the focus of the entire play.  Really this is a play without answers, since no one is really ready to give up their carbon-fueled lifestyles (particularly when it enables families to travel across Canada in a rented Winnebago), and while the playwright acknowledged that from time to time, it kind of feels like a lot of wooly-minded talk about how bad the oilsands are without taking any responsibility for our own complicity around energy consumption.  Honestly, I only went to see Eric Peterson again, and he was quite good in several roles, so I guess I shouldn't gripe too much.  And it turned out to be his birthday!  Happy birthday, Eric!

** I've already removed the door, but it was a smaller, non-standard size, and it looks like they closed it up -- apparently after the washer and drier were delivered, so I actually will have to remove part of the doorframe.  This is pretty unbelievable and is putting me in a foul, foul mood.  After this, we are just going to deal with maintenance and not replacing these machines.

Ripped Tideline

For anyone who was inspired to see Wajdi Mouawad's Tideline at Hart House due to my urging, I am sorry for the plug.  A friend from out of town decided to join me, and I apologized to her for inadvertently dragging her out to this the minute that the lights went up.  I simply cannot believe this is the same playwright who wrote the brilliant Scorched.  This was saggy and so repetitive.  (Slotkin sort of touches on this, but really needed to be more blunt about what an exhausting and self-indulgent play this is.)  Why have 2 orphans telling their stories about a war-torn land, when you can have 5!  And how long do we need to hear the corpse go on about how he wants to be buried on the land, not at sea, and then sort of declaims poetry about something or other?  It was like the extended, extended edition of Lord of the Rings where it just would not end.  I guess it ran about 2 hours 40 minutes, but it felt like 3.5 hours or more.

And it is a shame, since there is maybe 10-15 minutes of interesting material in the beginning, but after meeting the coroner and seeing the corpse, and then having the uncle reveal the big secret about his father, that is all we need to launch into the much superior second act.  (Everything about the knight that appears in dreams should be cut, and basically any reference to Wilfred's night of passion on the evening he got a phone call telling him his father was dead.  It was not well-written the first time we heard about it, and it was repeated about 10 times throughout the play.  The show started off as a kind of metaphoric wankfest and never truly recovered.)  But even the second act needs to be tightened drastically with 2 and probably 3 characters cut.  Basically I thought this was a flabby mess of a play, and it would be hard, though not impossible, to redeem it.  More than anything, I guess I will use it as a reminder for myself that really the audience knows when a play is too long, and extra padding is only of interest to the playwright and occasionally scene-chewing actors.  I'll have to have friends be ruthless and tell me when my writing is getting boring.

Looking back (to August)

I really have not gotten as far as I wanted on several posts, some of which have been left as draft for a few weeks.  The ones that are more general or that are reviews, it doesn't matter so much.  However, for posts that are tied to what I did and especially to travel, then it gets to the point where I just don't feel up to filling in the gaps.  I think I will go ahead and write just a bit about what I was up to in August, though I will certainly post fewer pictures and try to be a lot more concise.

In this post, I'll write just a bit about my Stratford trip and then lay out 3 upcoming posts, covering my trip to New York and Chicago at the tail end of August.  I'm going to have one post cover the New York leg, but then a special breakout post on the Stuart Davis exhibit at the Whitney (which was largely the reason for the trip in the first place) and wrap up with a post on Chicago.

Apparently, the Stuart Davis exhibit closed this past weekend (though it was scheduled to be there until mid October), and I am sorry to not have gotten into more detail about it, though I know I mentioned it a couple of times.  The exhibit moves to the National Gallery in DC right before Thanksgiving and will be on view through March.  I'm hoping I will make it in January, but only if I have a paper accepted to a major transportation conference.  The Moholy-Nagy: Future Present exhibit at the Guggenheim has also closed, though it will be moving to the Art Institute of Chicago this weekend and running to early January.  It was an interesting exhibit, though not one I feel I need to see twice.  And in what is a recurring theme, the Kerry James Marshall exhibit has closed at the MCA (Chicago) but will be moving soon to the Met Breuer (NYC), and then to MOCA in Los Angeles in the spring of 2017.  This is definitely worth checking out, and it gave me a better appreciation of his work to see so much in one place.

Anyway, this year I only saw one play at Stratford (in 2017 I might go as high as 4, but it will most likely just be 2).  I wanted to see Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman.

The trip down on the bus was fine.  I've started taking more photos of the parts of town away from the theatre for a project that I am considering tackling.
 

I was a little surprised that the 2nd Thai place was closed on Sundays (More Thai above), but I went to the original Thai place.

I had a bit of time to wander around and took a look at the art fair and the swans of course.  It helped that the weather was really nice that day.

 

While the acting was quite good, I have to admit that the play was a bit of a stinker.  I agree with this review, which made it clear that the stakes just never felt particularly high, and beyond that the audience just couldn't relate to Borkman or his wife or his sister-in-law.  The son was pretty callow and not a particularly interesting character.  I was a bit more interested in the older widow he was pursuing, but she had almost no lines.  There were several times that Borkman would say something outrageous (like he impartially tried himself and found himself innocent) that made the audience laugh, but not really in a good way.  I don't think Ibsen really wanted the audience to dismiss Borkman as a deluded meglomaniac, but that is how he came across.  I did have slightly more sympathy (certainly than the reviewer) for Borkman's companion, Vilhalm (who has deluded himself that he is a great writer).  Vilhalm is so willing to see the good in any situation that he seems perfectly content to have nearly been run over by a sleigh, since it contains his daughter who is escaping to continental Europe for musical training and a better life than he could offer her.  I don't regret going, since you almost never have the opportunity to see this play, but it is not one that resonates particularly well today.  That basically wraps up my Stratford trip.  The play was so short that I went over to the Shoppers and did a bit of shopping while waiting for the return bus.  I'll try to get to the other posts soon.

Edit (10/8): I forgot that I had specifically gone looking to see if they had any DVDs of Brian Bedford.  Apparently, they really do not, which is a shame, and I suppose if they do have anything recorded they didn't clear the rights.  I did pick up a spoken word CD that Bedford did a few years back (recorded at Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto in fact) with various monologues from Shakespeare.  I saw a somewhat interesting DVD of Christopher Plummer in the Tempest (which the library has) and Elizabeth Rex, though that was a bit disappointing.