Musings from the God of Cities

(click here for close up)

continuing my wanderings through the non-grimy non-underbelly of well-established-places-to-see-art-in-new-york, i give you pictures from moma, the museum of modern art.

last christmas, the manpanion gave me a gift that truly keeps on giving: a membership to moma. admission costs $20, and membership is $75, so if you're the type that goes to museums pretty often, it's quite the bargain. my membership runs out pretty soon, so i've been to the museum like 4 times in thepast 4 months. here are some highlights of what i saw during one of those trips:

paintings and drawings:













i especially liked these picasso drawings. he starte doff with the one drawing, and then kept adding to it, evolving the bull as he went.

sculpturey things:














since it was nice out, i ventured into the outdoor sculpture garden:






i also saw some video-art like...



...this video of a dead rabbit rotting...




alongside this video of a plate of fruit rotting.


though, my favorite was this video of david beckham sleeping.

the day i took most of these pictures was the same day they had a member's preview of a new exhibit moma is having called "safe: design takes on risk" which i found to be both interesting and thorougly silly. but like they used to say on "reading rainbow," 'you don't take my word for it...'














this banana bunker (which you can buy) was possibly the most ridiculous object they had in the exhibit, if not the whole museum. frankly, i'd rather have a banana phone.


this camera tree was linked up to another 'tree' that had a bunch of t.v.s on it, each of which showed what the cameras were recording:

i recently saw a ton of kickass art at three of the best, new yorkiest places at which to do so: sotheby's auction house, the metropolitan museum of art, and the museum of modern art.

my first stop was the modern and impressionist art auction at sotheby's auction house. what a lot of people don't know or think about is that auctions such as the ones that sotheby's are free and open to the public. you can go see museum-quality paintings and sculptures that very few people have ever seen and will ever see again. in fact, that's where i saw picasso's 'boy with pipe' which wound up becoming the world's most expensive painting.

anywho, let's pop a cork in the chatter and look at some art from sotheby's...


ernst barlach's der sinnende ii (the thinker ii)


giorgio de chirico's ettore e andromaca


giacomo manzu's madre con bambino (mother with child)


fernand leger's oiseau dans le paysage (which, if i remember my high school french correctly means birds in the coutryside) this piece reminded me of an episode of 'just say julie' where julie brown has a model, lake arrowhead, on the show. julie asks lake what she learned in modeling school. lake tells julie about how she learned to tell if something was a painting or a sculpture. julie shows lake a painting with sculptural elements (which is to say, tons of crap) prodtruding from it and asks her what it is. lake is confused because, "it's flat like a painting, but sticks out... like a sculpture!" she keeps repeating this, getting increasingly flustered until her pea-sized brain explodes out of her head. ah, they just don't make t.v. like that anymore.
end: interlude.


picasso's painting of his wife, olga kokhlova. i a little bit love this excerpt from the catalogue: "This picture is one of the most serene renderings of Olga from this period, and it captures the relative peace that defined her life with the artist in the months after the birth of their son, Paulo, earlier in 1921. In the year that followed the completion of this painting, Olga's preference for a stable domestic life began to conflict with her husband's more social predilections, and by the end of 1922 Picasso's depictions of Olga lost their tenderness and serenity. Those characteristics, however, are epitomized and preserved in this picture."


conrad felixmuller's clemens braun


victor brauner's dancing girl


portrait de femme by henri matisse


bernard buffet's autoportrait


tsuguharu foujita's la religieuse


nu adosse ii by tamara de lempicka


jean-pierre cassigneul's la robe grise


renoir's le dejeuner a berneval

some warhols:






a basquiat:


my favorite pieces were (from least to most favorite):


richard prince's mountain nurse


tamara de lempicka's suzanne au bain

and my absolute favorite,

damian hirst's the most beautiful thing in the world, which was made with the wings of like a quadrillion real butterfly wings. from the catalogue: "Composed of butterfly wings and self-proclaiming its superlative beauty, The Most Beautiful Thing in the World recalls the ever revolving cycle of life and death. Each earthly wing is an individually chosen portion of the artist's design, and an image of heavenly beauty results along with a lasting impression of symphonic awe." nice.

stay tuned for posts with pictures from the MET and MOMA.

ROSE: i had a nanny once. she was my best friend. i would tell her all my secrets. she treated me as if I were her own kid. excuse me (runs off crying).

DORTHY: does anyone here not think she's talking about a goat?

ALL: (shaking their heads 'no')

a few years ago my sister in law E and i once had a conversation about how she was worried about her son (my nephew,) K. she was worried that K didn’t like the same toys that his classmates did. “they all play with power rangers and pokemon, but K’s just not interested in that kind of stuff. he’s just happy drawing, making his own toys, or playing with objects he finds around the house.” i asked E why she was concerned since she said that K was happy. “well,” she replied, “i just don’t want him to be… weird.” i bristled a bit at the notion that not being like every other consumer kid and liking only what is popular was a bad thing. “but E,” i said, trying to give her an out, “someone has to be weird.” E just looked at me, and said, “yeah, but i don’t want that someone to be my son.” this made me sad because i was worried that E’s and my brother’s love of convention and maintaining the status quo would crush K’s burgeoning artistically-flavored, independent mind. but then today i got a wonderful little present which gave me some hope for K's future. E sent me a picture of K in the Halloween costume he designed and made by himself (with a bit of help from my brother) this year:



maybe he’s gonna be alright after all...

i was watching made, and the wannabe girl was talking to the her school's alpha girl about some ridiculous thing that her made coach was making her do, and the alpha says, "ugh, that is so remdial!" man, if that's not the world's most perfect insult, i don't know what is.