August travels - pt 2 (Chicago)

The Chicago leg of the trip was marginally more relaxed.  At one point, we had planned to run up to Milwaukee, but my cousin and his family were not in town (we missed each other by about 2 days).  So we had a day of just chillin' in Chicago.

Getting to Chicago itself was just a bit fraught.  Fortunately, I had gotten there on the early side (and I didn't have any checked luggage).  There were some weather delays affecting many flights.  I managed to go stand by on the flight ahead of mine.  (I haven't managed to go stand by (without paying extra) for ages.)  While that flight left 30 to 45 minutes late, my original flight was considerably delayed.  I really can't recall much about that evening, though I think I ended up doing some work and emailing it in.

The next morning, I set off to the Chicago Cultural Center.  While I usually like the exhibits there (and am quite stoked to see Norman Lewis exhibit in just a few more weeks), it was definitely underwhelming this time around.  I also don't like the changes they have to made to the main floor.  It just didn't feel welcoming at all, and just in general Chicago felt very depressing to me on this visit.

The rest of Sunday was devoted to theatre.  I saw Sister Cities and stuck around for a while to participate in the talk-back with the playwright.  Then I took the CTA up to catch Fefu and Her Friends.  I blogged about both plays a while back.

Monday there were not that many museums open (though I suppose the Field Museum and the Museum of Science and Industry were).  In any case, I took the kids to the Art Institute.  My daughter really wanted to see the miniature rooms in the basement, so we started there.

I was not expecting to see this Romare Bearden piece in the basement, but it was a nice surprise.

Romare Bearden, The Street, 1964

This time around, the main draw were the exhibits in the Modern Wing.  They had a photography exhibit featuring Gordon Parks and his work in Harlem with a special focus on his efforts to illustrate Ellison's Invisible Man.

Gordon Parks. Untitled (Harlem, New York), 1952

I might have riffed on Jeff Wall's slightly more overwhelming take on the book already.  While in some ways I prefer Wall's version, Parks was working directly with Ellison, so there is no question which is closer to what Ellison had in mind.

Jeff Wall, After Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, the preface, 1999-2001

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The other exhibit was focused on U.S. paintings from the 1930s.  There were of course several Hopper and O'Keeffe paintings, as well as Archibald Motley's Saturday Night (on loan from Howard University).

Archibald J. Motley Jr., Saturday Night, 1935

Once again, I think the Art Institute sort of dropped the ball, by not having a short note telling visitors to go look at Motley's Nightlife in the appropriate gallery.

Archibald J. Motley Jr., Nightlife, 1943

Since Nightlife was painted in the 1940s it couldn't be part of the show, but I still don't know why they didn't loan it out to the Motley exhibit the year prior.*

I think the 2nd most interesting painting they brought in (as opposed to being drawn from their collections, which constituted the the bulk of the show) was this fairly creepy piece on loan from MoMA.

Peter Blume, The Eternal City, 1934-37

We did have to sort of cut the museum trip short a bit after seeing the Modern Wing, as the children were getting a bit restless.

Tuesday, I went downtown and had lunch with a colleague from a previous job.  Then I took the kids off my wife's hands and took them to the MCA.  I had wanted them to check out the Kerry James Marshall exhibit.  The exhibit is very comprehensive with basically all his masterworks in one place.  It will be opening soon at the Met and will run through Jan. 2017, and then will transfer to MOCA in Los Angeles in the spring.  I would certainly encourage interested folks to check it out, as I did come away with a deeper respect for his work.

I'll post a couple of paintings that I thought worked particularly well, but due to the way that Marshall represents Black people, his paintings are quite difficult to actually reproduce and are better seen in person.

Kerry James Marshall, Campfire Girls, 1995

Kerry James Marshall, Souvenir I, 1997

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We stayed downtown and had just a bit of time to explore Millennium Park and Maggie Daley Park before heading off to Midway.  I was very burdened by a heavy suitcase filled with all kinds of books and CDs (including the Motley catalog), but somehow we got on the plane and then through customs without any snags.  I was glad to be back in Toronto, though I did feel that I could definitely have used another day or two of actual vacation...

* Actually, Nightlife was technically in the Motley show (and thus it is in the catalogue) but only was shown at 1 of the 5 locations, and it was definitely not on view at the Chicago Cultural Center.  So strange.

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.