We passed over the bridge, get onto fifth avenue, and soon to the left, there it was… the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Founded in 1870, revived from it’s original designs from the 1880’s by the architects Calvert Vaux and Jason Wrey Mold, it was completed in 1926, and is over two million square feet in occupation, housing the same number in pieces of art.
I saw SO many pieces at the met... it was quite a different experience than i've ever had, because the museum was devided into two main parts; ancient art downstairs, modern and contemporary art upstairs. Most of all the other museums i had seen before (besides boston) had all been modern art, but this was a chance to see all of them under one roof. They had MANY pieces of greek art, which made me smile, because i had been studying that in school. BUT, without a doubt, the BEST thing i saw was in the ittalian sculptor's side.... thats right, you guessed it, there was a Bernini!!! oh my god, i almost died. no joke. Which woulda been bad, because claire was there, and she woulda had to carry my dead body off somewhere. It was amazing; "Nymphs Teasing Satyr". It is about four feet tall, and it was done while Bernini was 16 YEARS OLD!!! it's amazing.
Upstairs, i saw an entire ROOM full of Georgia O’Keefe, and another of Picasso/Braque. most interesting, i think, was the portrait of Gertrude Stein; I was telling Claire how that when it was done, she posed for him about thirty times, but he just couldn’t get it… out of frustration, he finished the top half of the painting himself, without her posing. As a result, the face is slightly skewed, but it adds to speaking her character. After I told her, an old lady looked at me to my left, who had apparently heard everything I said, and she like… gave me an approving nod. It made me feel professional. And…. Smart. Heh.
!!! CHUCK CLOSE!! Yes, there were a few closes there; one of his oil self portraits, and one acrylic of someone else (I can’t remember the name. bite me.) The acrylic, as so often with Chuck Close paintings, looked like a large-scale photograph, until you stand about three inches away from it, when you see the –tiiiiiny- brushstroke hints. It was amazing.
We also saw a room devoted to black artists, which was actually really intriguing. A lot of the older artists actually weren’t as bitchy about human rights as some of the more contemporary ones are. (c’mon… Michael ray Charles? Great artist, but shit, is he whiny.) It was all about capturing the lifestyle of what actually WAS, and how someone should cherish what they have, instead of what they don’t have.
Anyway, that was about it. I would have liked to stay longer, but that’s what summer road trips are for, right? Eh?
While I was out there in New York, I went gallivanting off to see some Broadway shows, such as “Wicked”, “Spammalot”, and “Slava Snowshow”. All of which were amaizing, but being honest, uh…. Slava Snowshow had clowns… and that creeped me out a little. A lot, actually.