Last weekend I spent the day in New York. I’ve always felt silly for never getting myself there and I still feel silly that I was only able to spend a measly seven hours walking around.
The trip was through a service that Mt. Holyoke offers to students and alumni, where everyone is dropped off at the MET in the morning. The ride was tiresome and I slept most of the way. On 5th avenue, I walked into the met with my pencil, journal, a tweed jacket and an orange. The place was loaded with obnoxious tourists, flooding into the Hellenic and ancient Egyptian exhibitions. I made my way to the European paintings and saw many familiar sights: paintings by Batoni, David, Daumier, and Poussin. I really took to Marie-Denise Villers’ Young woman drawing (pictured.)
I went on to the exhibit on Gustave Courbet, and was finally able to see the works I’ve been studying up close. The trip felt more of a reward than a learning experience, as I was so familiar with the paintings I was drawn to. I didn’t feel like lingering, as is hard when there’s a current of people pulling you from room to room. I can say that connected with a few paintings: In memory of my feeling (Frank O’Hara) by Jasper Johns, Death of Socrates by David, Arbuit Macht Frei by Frank Stella, and Modigliani’s Italian Woman. (I put up another image by Frank Stella because I could not find a good image of the painting I saw.)
After a great deal of time in the MET I went to Times Square and Rockefeller plaza just so other people wouldn’t say “You didn’t see a,b,d,x,y,z?!”
I didn’t take very many pictures. I saw a group of activists protesting outside of a Madison Ave. diamond and jewelry store, advocating for divestment from Israel. That has been a hot topic at my school so I thought it was funny to see it there, in front of a small business. It’s interesting to me that so many Americans are pumping up Anti-Islamic sentiment while Left-leaning American activists are thinking Anti-Zionist. But maybe I’ll write more on that later.
I had lunch and went to central park. Then I went to the Guggenheim to see Cai Guo-Qiang’s show. They had low lighting in the atrium and the place was packed. It was like a tornado of hot bodies moving up toward the ceiling. Many of the pieces were installed so that the audience was forced to walk with the pieces, only inches from them. The staff looked severely stressed, twitching ever time a thoughtless patron came within centimeters of bumping into a piece. I believe one’s body should be calm when viewing art, so the mind can get excited, but it was impossible. I was sweaty and needed water at each water fountain I passed.
I went a nearby bar and had cocktails until I was ready to go home.
0 Responses to “Big day in New York”