V6.P4. ART (A LOT OF IT!)

It was a busy day and although my plans are failing these days, I always doing some great things. So, I didn't manage to ride a horse in Central Park, as to find out how to get to somewhere and get the service takes more than doing it in this busy a city. Nor could I meet Sander at Met(ropolitan Museum of Art) as we have planned. (I really am terrible at organising appointments without having my mobile around).
But I had a fabulous day anyhow.

Step 1: The Cloisters
To put it very shortly
- It's located on four acres overlooking the Hudson River in northern Manhattan's Fort Tryon Park,
- It's devoted to the art and architecture of medieval Europe,
- It incorporates elements from five medieval French cloisters, three cloisters that are reconstructed so as to feature gardens planted according to horticultural information found in medieval treatises and poetry, garden documents and herbals, and medieval works of art, such as tapestries, stained-glass windows, and column capitals. These gardens by themselves would be enough to make my day.
- It has a unicorn tapestries room (of seven south Netherlandish tapestries depicting "The Hunt of the Unicorn" - a must-see!),
- It has the first circumcision of christ, and death of Mary scenes that I've seen (both from Germany).
- It also has some wonderful early dutch wood paintings, in a far better condition than any other I have seen in the Netherlands.

I dont know how exactly they "got" these buildings, and carried over here, but I am surprised to hear that Rockefeller was thoughtful enough to buy the lands across the river as well, so as to secure the view from the museum to the otherside.

Step 2: Guggenheim Museum
This magnificent building by Frank Lloyd Wright was a response to Hilla Rebay, the art advisor to Solomon R. Guggenheim, asking the architect to design a new building to house Guggenheim's four-year-old Museum of Non-Objective Painting. She wrote: "I need a fighter, a lover of space, an agitator, a tester and a wise man... I want a temple of spirit, a monument!"

If you read the mission statement of the museum, you'll see that they are interested in partnerships, too.
Moreover, I've seen my first Mogliani, I tried to skip as many Kandinsky paintings as possible (NY is full of them!) and focus on paintings of Gaugin or on a few paintings that made me slightly more interested in the works of Chagall, Seurat, Manet and (as I would like to call her) Camille, whose lifestyles and times I've always been attracted to.

But the most interesting, the most attractive and life-changing of all was the Archadia and Anarchy Exhibition on divisionism and neo-impressionism. As you can see there were things interesting for me:


but it was not only because I have found certain surprising links between these Italian movements and the Pre-Raphaelites, but also because (oh ok. I shouldn't write this but simply upload some of these pictures here and you will understand exactly why).






If you click on them (I think/hope) you can see the information.
Otherwise trust me, I will write more about them once I find out!

And oh! I also came across someone I didn't expect at all: Jan Toroop this time as a pointilist, left-wing divisionist!


Step 3: Beethoven 9th from the NY Philharmonic at the Lincoln Center

to make it even better :)))
Although I must admit that it was not the best of the best (as one for some reason expects from everything one comes across in NY, which after a while causes an accumulation of indifference if not frustration), I enjoyed it tremendously. The orchestra was rather good, the choir was all right and the soprano was simply unbearable. Although many parents and friends of those on the stage were heavily applauding, me and the gentleman I met after the show disagreed that it was worth clapping for half an hour. I trust his judgement better, as he has been living across the Lincoln Center and went to concerts regularly and told me (besides the fact that he was a rather "within-the-enterprise lawyer" with "against-the-enterprise ideas") that he's has heard much better gatherings of musicians. As I always say, one can always meet cool people simply by smoking outside of a conference, concert and the like...

At the end of the day I had a rather adventurous way back home and probably did a few not-so-smart-and/or-safe decisions, but hey, I'm home.
and because it has already passed 4 am, that's all for now. tomorrow is the met day!