very simple

One of the few things I decided to do during this, the end of our second pandemic year, was actually go see the Jasper Johns exhibit at the Whitney. I got a membership to the museum in February 2020, the last time I went, and then, well, everything ended. So this is a tiny bit of full circle – deciding that my vaccinated and boosted self could brave Omicron for one day at a place that required vaccines, masks and social distancing to visit.

Fun Fact: Johns, who is still kicking it at 91, lives in the next town over from my parents, and my dad insists on saying “he lives right down the road”.

Also, this is some serious Americana.

(I realize I’m going to run out of these soon and I’m going to have to start just posting my backlog of random other stuff I’ve never gotten around to posting, but in the meantime, MORE ART!)

This week, I’m going a little further back in time. In the winter of 2018, the Whitney mounted a massive Warhol show that perfectly coincided with my time off from work for the holidays, so I spend a nice friday afternoon wandering among the crowds and the art (remember when we used to just wander among crowds?).

this week’s ‘art in the time before COVID-19’ is from a trip to the Museum of Modern Art immediately before we all started shutting down. The beginning of March, which was the beginning of public nervousness and social distancing, also coincided with some major art shows around the city and the opening of this fairly major show at the MoMA. My stepmom and I decided to venture out to this (rather than, say, theater, where I couldn’t at least run across the room from a coughing person), and we were some of the very few people to do so – A show like this would normally attract sold-out crowds and lines, but instead it was like a private viewing.

This was the last time I left my apartment for anything other than work (which became work-from-home a few days later) or essentials.

From the MoMA’s description of Judd’s work:

By the mid-1960s, Judd commenced his lifelong practice of using industrial materials, such as aluminum, steel, and Plexiglas, and delegating production of his work to local metal shops. With the help of these specialized fabricators, he developed a signature vocabulary of hollow, rectilinear volumes, often arranged in series. In the following years, “boxes,” “stacks,” and “progressions” continued as Judd’s principal framework to introduce different combinations of color and surface. Judd surveys the complete evolution of the artist’s career, culminating in the last decade of his life, when Judd intensified his work with color and continued to lay new ground for what ensuing generations would come to define as sculpture.

One week in to our new lives of living in social isolation, working-from-home, quarantining ourselves to protect the world from an ever more rapidly spreading pandemic, and trying to find slightly more productive things to do than just sitting on my couch and watching streaming TV all day (not having kids to wrangle right now is definitely making my individual situation much easier), I thought it was a good time to go through the massive backlog of photos I keep meaning to post and never get around to.

I thought I would start with some art from now shuttered museums around NY. First up…I went to the Vida Americana show at the Whitney in February. I don’t normally take a ton of photos of other peoples’ art, for a variety of reasons, up to and including that I can’t do the original art justice, but since no one can see the art except for online anymore, I thought i’d share the few pics I did take.

I was particularly taken with these two flower themed photos of women (the first is “Calla Lilly Vendor” by Alfredo Ramos Martinez and the second is “Flower Vendor” by Miguel Covarrubias):

next, the juxtaposition of these two images, the near painting named “Zapatistas” by Alfredo Ramos Martinez in front of an actual portrait of Zapata by Diego Rivera, was only possibly intentional given their placement on different walls.

Lastly, this is a recreation, given that the original was destroyed by Rockefeller and the actual recreation by Rivera is a mural in Mexico that cannot be moved, but it is, at minimum, a nice fuck you to see Rivera’s Rockefeller Center mural recreated in the city where Rockefeller had it smashed to pieces (the official title is “Man, Controller of the Universe”).

taken last weekend – abandoned newsstand made over into impromptu art commentary on the state of current news.

Two separate trips to the high line over the past month. First, in mid-April, some of my long-lost cousins from Israel were in town, so we spent some time together, including a trek on the high line. That was much more about spending time together than getting good photos (and wrangling ten family members on a gorgeous holiday weekend, including toddlers, will throw a wrench in ANY artistic endeavors!). Second was last weekend – the weather was supposed to be wretched, but it ended up not raining (unlike today), so I decided to take advantage of the surprise good weather and spend some time in the open air again.

The two walks were only three weeks apart, but its quite remarkable how much more green there was on the second trip – you can see the distinction from the first few photos, where the trees are barely blooming and the grasses are still mostly brown and barely grown-in, and then the latter photos, where everything is just an absolute explosion of greenery. It’s really no wonder my allergies have been completely haywire for the past few weeks.

I love walking up fifth avenue, particularly during the holidays (and yes, even with the tourists). There’s a great energy, with the people and the lights and the beautiful holiday windows that not only try to top each other, but themselves year-over-year. But I’ve been largely avoiding it this fall due to the security nightmare created by our new (ugh) president-elect, who thinks running a reality show competition for cabinet posts from a building situated on one of the busiest street corners of the world is somehow a good idea and not a sign of abject sociopathic narcissism. But I digress.

Atlas is one of the many Art Deco sculptures forming the campus of Rockefeller center.

Chalk sidewalk art with a fitting message for today. And everyday.

another ivy-covered loading dock in chelsea. also the not-so-subtly hidden studio of a fairly well known photographer.

Detail on the mechanics association building on 44th street in Manhattan. The society itself was founded in the 1700s and provides free construction trade classes among other things.

The building, according to wikipedia:

Located today at 20 West 44th Street, across from the Harvard Club of New York, the building is the fifth home of the General Society and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Originally designed by Lamb and Rich and constructed as the Berkeley School for Boys, the building was acquired by The General Society in 1899. Member and steel magnate Andrew Carnegie provided the funds to significantly expand the building in 1903. In order to accommodate more students, two wings were added to the rear and three new upper stories replaced an original fourth-floor gymnasium. The expansion was designed by Ralph S. Townsend and blends monumental Beaux Arts classicism with Renaissance elements.