6/4/13 – Rugby and Shopping Time!

Today we went to the Australia Bar and watched the Western Force play the Rebels. No Kurtley Beal playing for the Victorians and WF still lost – enough said. On the way home we made ourselves feel better by going shopping at the Bloomingdale sales. Wohoo! 20% off the already discounted items. Bought some Vera Wang flats and DKNY sandals but couldn’t stuff my foot into a pair of Tory Burch ballet flats. Ducked up to Eileen Fisher – lost track of time purchasing some cool outfits – left Peter waiting way too long!!    

5/4/13 – Inventing Abstraction @MoMA

This morning, after the gym, we took the 4/5/6 subway from 86th and Lex to 51st and Lex and walked back from there a short way to MoMA. As we walked to the subway today we took as many shots as we could of the spring flowers. The Callery Pear trees that line the many streets on the East Side are in full bloom.

They are particularly pretty as there are no leaves yet, just the blossom on a black branch. The garden beds around many of the curb side trees are planted with tulips, hydrangeas, pansies, daffodils and hyacinths or a mixture of these. What a glorious sight and smell. Shame – that the dogs that pee on them are having such a great time altering the smell! 

No photos of the exhibition allowed - so have some flowers instead.

 

Today at MoMA we took in the ‘Inventing Abstraction’ exhibition. Picasso was strongly of the view that there can be no such thing as ‘abstract’ art as all things – art, inventions or ideas - are and must be based on something!

But if you believe the curators of the ‘Inventing Abstraction’ exhibition there came a time in history, prompted by the evolution of film and photography, that allowed for a cross fertilisation of artistic mediums and an escape from pictorial art to truly ‘abstract’ (non-pictorial) arts of all kinds.  For example we saw musical works by Schoenberg and Wagner that had no fixed ‘form’ at all but was simply sound arranged to convey emotion.

These works so inspired the artist Kandinsky he went home and painted what he was feeling – this was abstract art at its birth. Kandinsky was excited about the future of this medium and others soon followed. There followed a synthesis of artistic disciplines. 

Francois Kupka, a Czech painter and graphic artist, has been credited with the first abstract painting - ‘Noctune’ (1911). Since that time key exponents of abstract art created hubs of creativity and the movement quickly spread. Artists such as Picabia, Stieglitz, Delaunay, Terk, Picasso, Kandinsky, Leger, Arp, Apollinaire, Larionov and Goncharova all made major contributions to the collection of work. The legacy of abstract art is that expression is no longer tethered to fixed form or meanings.

Upon reflection – I think I am with Picasso.

Note – it was nice to see Brancusi’s ‘Endless Column’ again – so good to have seen it first in Perth!

4/4/13 – Bill Brandt @ MoMA

It was such a lovely day today that we walked through the park and down to MoMA. The sky was blue and the light just wonderful for photos – we spent a bit of time in the southern end of the Park taking photos of the Dairy and surrounding areas. The Dairy has an interesting ‘back story’ (as folks say around here). It its inception, the southern portion of Central Park was considered by the designers (Olmsted and Vaux) as the Children’s District.

This was because it was the first area of the park that would be reached by families traveling from the heart of the city, most of which still lay below 38th St. At that time, one of the critical needs of children was for fresh milk.  Unfortunately, a series of scandals and cholera outbreaks placed the dairy production of the city under a cloud of suspicion. To lift suspicion and fulfil the dairy needs of the people, the city provided place where families could find a ready supply of fresh milk when traveling to the park. 

Thus, the dairy was built. The building itself, designed by Vaux and erected in 1870, is a whimsical combination of architectural styles that has been characterized as Victorian Gothic. Half of the Dairy consists of a roofed open gallery, or loggia, made of wood with geometric gingerbread borders. The other half is a granite structure with window treatments and gambrel roof that resembles nothing so much as a country church. The loggia was designed to catch the cool summer breezes that blow across the Pond and to retain as much warmth from the winter sunlight as was possible.

When it was built the dairy was designed to provide a view of the Pond, but now it gives visitors a lovely view of the Wollman Rink, framed by the skyscrapers in the background. Today, the Dairy serves as a general visitor center and provides the public with information on the design of Central Park, current park events and programs. A new feature is an interactive touch-screen kiosk providing general information about the park.

It was specially designed with children in mind, but the information is valuable to all. In addition, The Dairy serves as the official Central Park gift store with maps, guides, history books, and a line of mugs, key chains, T-shirts, and caps especially designed for the Central Park Conservancy. 

Fascinating as this area of the Park is, it was not what we were actually trying to see today, so eventually we managed to leave the Park and wander down 6^th Avenue to the 53^rd Street and the entrance to MoMA.   We got there in time to join up with one of the Gallery Conversations tours, this one looking at the work of the (born German but now regarded as English) photographer Bill Brandt.

Brandt has had several photo exhibitions at MoMA over the years and this one focused on the aspects of light and shade in his work. Despite his German name and heritage, Bill spent most of his life in Britain and documented life there from the 1930s to 1960s. There were works capturing some fascinating landscapes and urban scenes particularly during the war years when he was commissioned by the Ministry of Information to make a photographic record of the blackout. ‘A Night in London’ 1941 was especially evocative of this fearful time in British history.

But my favourites were the photos he took and developed (he always did all of his own printing and developing) in his early days when he was not commissioned, not confronting, not adversarial, not creating propaganda but just passively observing the world; seeing the English way of life through the eyes of an outsider, especially one paying close attention to the often unseen life of the working class. These photos were taken to please only himself and his creativity but they became, in the end, the subject of his first published book: ‘The English at Home'.

This critically acclaimed work documented all aspects of English life. It captured the aristocracy on their country estates, as well as their domestic staff and parlour maids going about their daily duties. One girl in particular caught his eye and shutter. Sometimes his work was reminiscent of Millet's 'The Angelus' where the workers toiled in the fields. While others captured the fish market or the Welsh coal mines during the depression. And they were exceptional. 

 

After the war, Brandt left the countryside and went indoors where he concentrated on portraiture. He did a fascinating series on famous artists and celebrities in the hope of capturing the essence of their creativity. He was keen to investigate if one can actually see creativity. It certainly does exist … but is it something that cannot be captured by the camera?

Towards the end of his life Brandt focused on the female nude. And as his work gained a public profile and photography was now a legitimate form of art he now signed his work.

On the way home our Afro-American cab driver commented that ‘the last two weeks had been quiet but today is crazy’. His theory was now that Passover is over things are back to crazy … not one mention of Easter. And then it struck us that in direct contrast to Australia where we have hot crossed buns and eggs in the shops for months leading up to the holiday. There was virtually nothing here on NYC. No hype, no holiday and no mention of Easter in the media. Just the word 'holiday'. Was America being politically correct or has Christianity been replaced? 

3/4/13 - Women in Pop Art @ MoMA

Last night we decided to dedicate this week to visiting MoMA. I had already experienced some degree of insight into my feelings about the wonderful and confronting world of modern art during my visits to MoMa, first with Hans and Sue and then again with Bo and Kristie. But for Peter it was all new, so we decided to start with a guided tour.

The tour we took today was about ‘Women in Pop Art’. The guide started with Willem de Kooning’s 1950 – 1952 ‘Woman 1’.  At the time he created this work, de Kooning was a hugely popular artist, but this work took him, his like-minded artists and us on a journey into the brand new world of abstract expressionism. The figure departs from the usual portrayal of feminine form and is an amalgam of female archetypes. Many of the gallery’s young female followers are drawn to and admire its power. It was the start of our tour today because of its links with 1950’s pinup girls.

  

Next was New Yorker Roy Lichtenstein’s 1961 ‘Girl with a Ball’ using his bold colours and ‘ben-day dots’ he explored themes like commercialism and pop art. This led nicely on to a series of paintings

of Marilyn, a favourite amongst pop artists in the 60s particularly after her suicide in 1962.  

James Rosenquist’s 1962 ‘Marilyn Munroe 1’ connected the ‘commercial icon’ status of both Coca-Cola and Marilyn … in the process telling us something about the dehumanising effects of the modern consumerist society.

From here we moved on to Andy Warhol’s famous 1962 ‘Gold Marilyn’ in which he took a 1953 publicity still photograph of Marilyn made for the movie ‘Niagara’ and garishly made up her face and placed it on a gold background thus undermining her star status and making her, like the subjects of many of his other famous works, just another infinitely reproducible image.

Marisol Escobar’s highly suggestive use of a Coke bottle in the 1962 piece ‘Love’ was confronting and her 1967 ‘LBJ’, showing President Johnson as a ‘blockhead’ was biting. Does the LBJ’s body coffin represent the way in which he became President (the assignation of JFK) or is it a protest about the Vietnam War? And why are his wife and daughters offered up to us as fragile little ‘bird like’ characters out of his open palm?

Finally we moved on to consider Tom Wesselmann’s iconic 1966 ‘Mouth 7’, a work which shows only a mouth, where the lips are full and the mouth is open. It drew many comments about the role of women in history and how, in the 1960s, they were emerging not just as sex symbols but as sexual beings in their own right. Many earlier works had been a man’s view of women and their sexuality. By the 1960’s, with the onset of the woman’s liberation movement and the ready availability of the contraceptive pill the ‘times they were a changing’ for women. It took me back to discussions with my grandmother in the 1960’s about why her mail was addressed to ‘Mrs Matthew Clifford Williamson’ and the battles I had with Scotch College in the early 2000s when they refused to send our mail addressed to anyone other than Mr and Mrs Peter Sinden!    

2/4/13 - Back to Chores

Now that all of our guests have left and it is time to get back to the gym, do the shopping and clean the flat. Ho! Hum!

1/4/13 – Baseball Season Opening Game – Yankees v Red Sox

When we returned home last night after farewelling Bo and Kristie, we decided to cheer ourselves up by going online and getting some tickets to the Opening Day of the baseball season at Yankee Stadium - Yankees v Boston Red Sox. We had seen the new stadium from the river during our cruise with Hans and Sue, so we were keen to see it up close.

After a fun subway ride up to the Bronx with thousands of other Yankees fans, we finally found ourselves standing before one of NYC’s (if not the whole of the US) greatest sports stadia. The Yankees have a long and colourful history and all up have won 27 World Series Championships (by ‘World Series’ they mean US National League Championships) and wherever you look it is possible to see that proud record literally written into the walls of their home ground. 

The new stadium, which was built across the street from the old 1923 stadium, opened in 2009. In order to pay homage to Yankee history, its design incorporates many of the 1923 design features including the 11,000 pieces of Indiana limestone in the exterior façade and the stadium’s name in V cut gold leaf lettering. It faced many controversies during its construction including its location and the record breaking $1.5 billion price tag.

Today it is fondly referred to as ‘the house that George built’ – as owner of the franchise George Steinbrenner had to build it himself since the NYC government under Mayor Bloomberg pulled out of former Mayor Giuliani’s offer to publically fund the construction of new stadia for both the Mets and the Yankees.

The old Yankees stadium was often referred to as ‘The House That Babe Built’ and so, as baseball is filled with superstitions and ‘good luck’ rituals, the ground-breaking ceremony for the new stadium was arranged to take place on the 58^th anniversary of Babe Ruth’s death. 

Wikipedia tells us that during its construction, a worker (who was an avid Boston Red Sox fan) buried a replica jersey of the Red Sox player David Ortiz under the visitor’s dugout with the objective of placing a ‘hex’ on the Yankees, much like the ‘Curse of the Bambino’ that had plagued the Red Sox lever since they misguidedly traded a young Babe Ruth to the Yankees in 1920.  But the planned ‘hex’ obviously didn’t work, since the Yankees won the 2009 World Series, in their first year in the new stadium. 

 

Today the ground looked resplendent with the patterns of freshly mown grass cut and rolled from different directions contrasting with the recently wet skinned infield and flags from all of the teams in the league posted around the roof of the stadium flapping in the light breeze. The roof features a replica of the frieze that was a trademark of the old stadium and the wall beyond the bleachers is ‘cut out’ to reveal the subway trains as they pass by, just as was the case in the original Yankee Stadium.

The new electronic scoreboard (which was until recently the largest such scoreboard in the world) stands proudly in the centre of the outfield bleachers, but there is also a manually operated auxiliary scoreboard that is built into the left and right field fences, in the same locations as these had existed in the old stadium. 

 

The atmosphere inside the stadium was electric and it was kind of unnerving that everyone was happy – a very unusual for a crowd of new Yorkers. We marvelled at the ‘Great Hall’ – a concourse with a seven story high ceiling built between the exterior façade and the interior of the stadium between Gates 4-6 and in which hangs (in pride of place) the 20 banners of past and present Yankees legends. 

We walked on to our seats and on the way bought ourselves some Yankees caps, some beers and a hot dog with mustard and relish.

We could have had a bucket of sliders (bucket filled with mini hamburgers – and they looked good – but we went for the traditional fare instead), took our seats and waited for the game to begin. And then we saw Donald Trump.

The pre-game entertainment was quite emotional with first responders from Sandy Hook standing to attention in front of the Marines unfurling yet another huge US flag as the anthem was being sung. By the time these preliminaries were finally finished we were well and truly ready for the call ‘play ball’, as were the players and the more than 50,000 fans who sat all around us.       

In the sixth innings Peter decided to visit the Yankees Museum, which features a wonderful collection of memorabilia including the ‘ball wall’, tributes to the legends of the game including Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series and the Yankees retired numbers. Unfortunately he missed the seventh innings tradition of the game stopping and everyone standing to sing the words to ‘Take Me Out to the Ballgame’.

This song is a 1908 Tin Pan Alley classic written by Jack Norworth and Albert von Tilzer. It was a common feature of vaudeville acts back in the day. Surprisingly it wasn’t until 1934 that it was first played at a high school game in Los Angeles (and at a league game the year after). 

Today it is the unofficial 7th innings anthem of baseball everywhere in the US and was voted as one of the ‘American Songs of the 20th Century’. For many Americans the singing of this song is one of the ‘rituals of summer’.

I was intrigued to note that the song makes reference to the ubiquitous packets of caramel covered popcorn and peanuts (called ‘Crackerjacks’) that are traditionally sold and consumed at all ballgames. In the song the brand name is sung with a pause in the middle of the first word: ‘Cra…..cker Jack’ and that’s exactly how the vendors call it as they wander around the stadium selling the product today!

We knew baseball was popular in the US, but until this day we didn’t we realise how important this game is to the American way of life. This is a game whose influence extends well beyond the game itself. Indeed passionate involvement in the game and lifelong support of a [particular team appears to be fundamental to the formation of many people’s identity.

With ‘good ol’ traditional family values’ it has becomes a vehicle through which many men bond with their sons and boys learn what it means to be faithful to something for life.

It, more than any other game we’ve seen, crosses the boundaries of race and ethnicity and bonds America and its families.

The men sitting around us that we talked to all had happy memories of times with their fathers and stories of great plays they had seen when their dads had taken them to games. And many were repeating that cycle with their sons today. Sport in America is still very much a man’s game.

Final score Yankees 2 - Red Sox 8.

Also unbeknown to us was the fact that baseball season Opening Day also marks the time of the year when every ‘tradie’ in NYC (and I am willing to bet all of America) changes hats. This is but one example of a secret ritual in this wonderful city. It has taken us up until now to realise that there are certain days when an email must go out to all the locals indicating a change in the dress code. Today it was Yankee caps – obligatory for workmen and optional but highly recommended for anyone else, especially if you’re wearing jeans. The next part of this ritual involves giving sideways glances to those who obviously did not get ‘the email’.

This makes the ongoing game of spot the tourist (which is usually decided by which direction they are looking – New Yorkers are looking up and down to check what labels others have on whereas tourists are always looking from side to side or at maps or cameras) even more fun.

Note – for the first time in 30 years I didn’t play an April Fools trick on Peter today. In fact I had more fun watching him anticipate when the action might be happening!

31/3/13 – Chocolate, Beer and Safe Journey Home on Easter Sunday

This morning we met up at Max Brenner’s Chocolate Factory (which, despite anything anyone may tell you to the contrary is very near to Union Square but nowhere near the Flat Iron Building) for a Farewell Breakfast. The boys had savouries (bacon and eggs) and the girls had sweets (chocolate crepes with strawberries and chocolate sauce).

Upon completion of our ‘food mission’ we went for a walk around Greenwich Village. I was impressed to discover how much Bo and Kristie already knew about the area. Apparently they had already come down here a few times (in the early mornings when they couldn’t sleep) and had really enjoyed the Village ‘scene’. It was very sad to realise that, just as Bo had managed to become acclimatised to ‘NY time’ and thus felt fully recovered from his jet lag, it was time for he and Kristie to depart back to Oz and work and family.

We took great care in selecting an appropriate place for Farewell Drinks – the big screen TV of the Australia Bar on 38^th did the trick! We had a beer, watched the rugby/footy/league – all playing at once on different screens (as you do) and then we sent them on their way to catch the plane home. We very much enjoyed our week with them and hope that they had a memorable 10^th Wedding Anniversary! 

It is amazing to think that this whole big adventure was born of a frivolous conversation I had with Bo last year under the stars in the desert outside of Kalgoorlie. Kristie had always wanted to see New York. It is always good to dream. But it is even better when your dreams come true! Safe journey home you two and look after Australia until we get back.