Meet George Jetson

Sometimes I think I live in the wrong era.  Today, 30,000 Santas have descended upon New York and have been given a map of where to go drink until 3 a.m.  Yes, really.  All the proceeds from their drinking will go to Hurricane Sandy victims.  I already had some surreal encounters today with Santa men and Santa women.  Imagine what the streets and subways will be like later, with drunk Santa men and drunk Santa women.

I much prefer the Museum of the City of New York’s approach.  This summer, I worked on inventorying their huge collection of Currier & Ives prints, so it was fun to see the show finally come together.

Whereas I don’t fantasize about being a part of that 19th century world, I did get a huge kick out of the sleigh and sleigh bells, the festive dress and winter coat, and the obvious need for the fur blanket (check out the slide show below for more).

I’m ready to go.  Want to join me?

 

 

Another really fun show there is “Designing Tomorrow: America’s Worlds Fairs of the 1930s.”  Now you’re talking an era where I’ve always felt like I fit.  And I just love every aspect of the design elements the exhibit shows off, even in its weirdly cramped space.  You know I love a weird gee-gaw, and I salivated over the souvenir cans (yes, really), makeup compacts, banks, razors, charms, neck ties, and napkin rings.  I’d take one of each, but literally have nowhere to put them.

Now this was a time when my hometown of Dallas (yes, really) was a shining light.  In case you didn’t know, Dallas is a city that’s all about the money, never more evident than with the National Cash Register Building at the 1936 World’s Fair in Dallas (yes, really).

The fair celebrated the 100th birthday of Texas as a state.  But interestingly, the deco design had Apache influence (not a tribe known for being in Texas).  Some of the buildings, albeit a bit crumbly, are still there, in Fair Park, and the State Fair of Texas is still an awesome annual event to visit.

 

The architectural program wasn’t built to last.  Just like all the other fairs (and so much of the American ethic), it was meant to be destroyed when the fair closed.  What hasn’t been torn down marks some of the classiest buildings in Dallas.

Check out the people sitting on top of the future in the “Futurama Spectators,” Margaret Bourke White’s famous photograph from the GM Building at the 1939 New York World’s Fair.  This was back when the U.S. had a vision for the future, and I don’t think there was a drunk Santa in sight.

 

 

Easily my favorite was Elecktro the Moto Man, from Westinghouse–my “Meet George Jetson” moment.  Elecktro is made of vacuum tubes, a 79 rpm record player, mesh, gears, and motors so it can walk and is much bigger than life size.

The exhibit features a film from the period, demonstrating Elecktro’s ability to respond to commands (take that, Siri!).  It was a pretty big Wow for the audience.

The idea was to help people embrace technology, when science fiction had been using it to generate fear.  Elecktro was described as a “friendly Frankenstein” — “all kindness and geniality.”

Hmm, what do you think?

Hercules

Matisse: In Search of True PaintingThe Matisse exhibit at the Met is sweet, and I recommend making a trip to see it, but what’s haunting me right now comes from the Frick’s current drawing exhibit.  The exhibit is full of gems, and with minimal crowds, I could put my nose right up to each one.  I love that!

Yes, see the Rembrandt’s, Tintoretto, Leonardo, Durer and Michelangelo.  Enjoy the wit of Watteau and surprisingly Goya.  Every master of disegno is represented.

It’s Peter Paul Rubens who caught my eye and heart.

Of course, I love how he portrays his second, or is it third, wife Helena.  Don’t you?  Look at that hat!

But the Hercules drawing?  I had to go back and look at three times.  Of course, it’s beyond gorgeous.  No wonder artists through the ages have wanted to copy it.  I’d like to have that man in my life 24/7.

Maybe Anthony van Dyck did, too.  Perhaps that explains why AV Dyck is clear at the bottom of the print.  Or not.  I know van Dyck studied with and was mentored by Rubens.  This drawing is unequivocally attributed to Rubens.  So why does it bear that signature? 

I started asking around.  No one had noticed or knew anything about it. Then I was directed to check in the catalogue.  It references AV Dyck as part of the ‘condition’ of the print, but doesn’t make any reference to it in the contextual essay.  Which means the authors probably don’t know how to make sense of it.

Now you see just how much of an art history geek I am!  We arth geeks want to know…

 

 

The Sublime Kate

If you are a Katharine Hepburn fan like I am, then get thee to NYPL’s Performing Arts Library exhibit in the Lincoln Center complex.   Love the Playbills, over-the-top movie posters, photos (my favorite was Hepburn in trousers standing on her hands), and other ephemera, but it’s the objects that bring Kate to life.

Seeing Hepburn’s makeup kit led into a conversation with a diminutive woman, stabilizing on her walker.  “She kept everything, you know,” the woman told me.  “A lock of her baby hair, her first school books.  She was an eccentric.”  While the woman didn’t know Kate personally, she saw her on the streets of the Upper East Side and went to the auction held after Hepburn passed away.  I think many New Yorkers feel ownership about Kate, even though she seemed to identify with charming Old Saybrook, CT.

You know how much I love hats, and to see the tiny, tiny hat she wore for Alice Adams, well, it didn’t look small on her.  That powerhouse on screen was teensy.  Of course, she always looked slim on celloid, but really.  The size of the pants and dresses make me feel hugely dinosauric.  Even in the late 1940s, when she was in her 40s, she had a waist size of 20 inches, and the gowns look even smaller than that.

Check out the Madwoman of Chaillot boa, and more, in the slideshow below.

 

 

 

 

The Well-Dressed Fella

"ivy style" raccoon fur MFIT "museumat fit"

Raccoon fur coat worn by Joseph Verner Reed, Yale Class of 1926

A meeting took me to the Fashion Institute of Technology this morning, and I do love their exhibitions.  Ivy Style is no exception.  Whether your guy is a Yalie in a racoon coat, on the crew team, or on the football field, there’s something of great good taste for everyone.

The installation is adorable.  You can peruse not one, but two closets of the well-dressed men.  Ah the shoes.  Don’t get me started on the hats!  Then there’s the dorm room, The Club, and the office.

Apparently, men’s sense of fashion is coming back, and I hope to see more good taste on our streets any day!

To the Circus

Although I found the circus frightening as a child, and I still don’t like huge crowds and big spectacles, I just loved the Circus and the City: New York, 1793-2010 exhibit at the Bard Graduate Center.

I’ve never even been a fan of elephants, although I would have loved to have seen this sight!

Animal menageries have been part of the circus from its colonial  beginnings.   In 1728, you could go to the fair and see a lion!  In 1796, the first elephants came to New York.

But the circus as we know it started as equestrian exhibits, with daredevil riding–the first in New York was in 1793. The banners demonstrate amazing feats, indeed.

By the 1820s, New York had several semi-permanent circuses, as well as touring shows.  Pantomime, acrobatics, and melodramas were added to the animal events.

In the 1840s, we get P.T. Barnum and General Tom Thumb.  The exhibit shows just how tiny he was, with his clothes, boots, and toy-sized violin.

This picture doesn’t provide any sense of scale, but to give you a sense, the boots are doll-sized.

The exhibit also had daguerreotypes of Tom Thumb dressed as the various characters he made famous.

Barnum was the ultimate marketer, adding posters and parades, as well as the “freak show” concept, turning the circus into spectacle.  By the time the Hippodrome was built in 1853 (and oh, how even I wish I could have seen that place, located where quiet Madison Square is now), the circus was the most popular form of entertainment in New York City.

You know the phrase ‘three-ring-circus’?  That came about after the merger of Barnum with Bailey, the two largest spectacle managers.  Bailey was a business man, while Barnum was the showman.  Bailey added electric lighting to the circus, so that three spectacles, or rings, could be staged simultaneously.

The exhibit featured charming paintings by Milton Avery (Three Ring Circus) and Walt Kuhn (no, not one of his scary clowns, but The Lancer), both from 1939.  But my favorite was the work by A. Logan from 1874, on loan from the Whitney Collection.

 

 

The slide show below features toys, games, costumes, and even a wagon wheel, all part of the exhibit.  The exhibit is just the right size for a little mental health break–to my taste, much easier to take in and be delighted by than the real thing.

 

 

Whale and whale of a good time

This afternoon, I saw the Whale at Playwrights New Horizons.  It continues to be the best theater in town for my taste.  I’d say don’t wait around, run go see this play.

 

The play is a slow build, carefully constructing a tight, small world, that begins to resonate wider and wider.  By the end, I was moved to tears.  You know I see a lot of theater.  I can’t remember the last time I cried at a show.  When it was over, the audience sat in complete, absolute, almost terrified silence.  Again rare for me, I wanted to see it all over again from the beginning.

Now, this isn’t an easy play, nor an uplifting one.  It’s got references to the whale and Jonah and the whale and Ahab.  It has characters that may make you uncomfortable.  It is defined by acts of love, well, Acts of Love, that are neither expected, nor simply understood.

If you are up for a challenge, I think you’ll be glad you saw it, and I want to talk with you about it afterwards.

The Met Museum once again comes through with a whale of a good time.  This time with its “Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop” exhibit.

 Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop

Now the smaller exhibit of photos manipulated by Photoshop is also interesting, but go see the warhorses by Gustave LeGray, Henry Peach Robinson, and Edward Steichen.  In person, you can really see the manipulation, which is missing from a PowerPoint slide.  I finally get why Fading Away was so challenging.

Henry Peach Robinson, Fading Away, 1858

Of course, there are the Surrealist and Postmodernist greatest hits, too.  Weegee gets his day in the Met sun (nice to see him other places besides the International Center for Photography). 

I was “turned on” by Grete Stern’s Dream #1: Electrical Appliances for the Home from 1948.  The whole dream series was new to me.

 

 

 

 

I do have a personal connection with the “Novelties and Amusements” theme of the show.  I was visited by a spirit when I had my photograph made in Gettysburg, PA.  Of course, it was no novelty, no mere amusement.  Well, she was my Muse for writing a paper, so I guess, in a way, it was a-muse-ment.

Ah, beauty

I’ve just returned from a curator led tour at the Met of the clay models of Bernini.  However anxious and stressed I was before encountering Bernini, I feel like I’ve just returned from a beach vacation.

 Bernini: Sculpting in Clay

No wonder.  Art in Bernini’s age was meant to elevate the soul, to raise our spirits, to inspire us to greatness.  Even these clay models work magic.

This early, less-than-lifesized marble by Bernini and his father opens the show.

Bacchanal: A Faun Teased by Children

I really appreciated being able to get very close to the work, to see the deft textural changes, the little jokes like the angel sticking his tongue out at the faun.

Bacchanal: A Faun Teased by Children

These works, like so much great art, tell us to slow down, look.  The curator did a fantastic job of pointing out the artist’s hand–literally.  Here a thumb stroke, there he used a tool to create the smile, look how he rolled up clay to make the fingers.

Look for the life-sized head of the old man.  Bernini really could breath life into stone.  I wish I could show you an image.  You’ll just have to go to the show.

If it’s possible, I fell even more in love with Bernini.  His work is so seductive anyway, but to get an intimate experience with how he crafted the full scale sculptures makes me feel like I was there with him.  Even rough, the sculptures are astonishing in emotion, power, and visual expression.  This show is a visceral experience.

And for me a calming one.  I hope I can hang on to it.  Fortunately, for now, Bernini is only a few blocks away.