Sunday, November 20, 2011

The Guggenheim

We took a nice, cold, late-afternoon walk through Central Park over to the Guggenheim.


A statue in the community garden by our apartment.

Most trees have shed their brilliant trappings, but the ginko leaves have ripened to a beautiful deep yellow.

About November! It is cold. These Bean Boot are awesome, and I've been wearing them every day since my Mom sent them to me. They're waterproof, snowproof, incredibly comfortable, and lined with shearling!

A huddle on the Great Hill.

Two other cold-weather essentials: Knitted touch-screen compatible gloves, and Burt's Bees tinted lip balm. I can keep these Target gloves on when I use my iPhone, due to the special thread used on the tips of the pointer finger and thumb. And the minty, soothing beeswax balm in Raisin keeps my lips from turning into the hue's namesake. An equation we have learned: cold=dry.


The Guggenheim was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, and critics have complained that the museum is actually more about the building than the art housed within it. I have to agree. It was an interesting experience to meander slowly up the spiral ramp within it to the top, but the sparse collection of moden and postmodern paintings was a bit underwhelming.

There were a lot of white blank spaces--and a collection of canvases painted white, like that one in the SF MoMA.

The central installation is a collection of Maurizio Cattelan sculptures from throughout his career, hung down through the middle of the building. Note the giant-headed Picasso in his signature striped shirt.

My general reaction to the installation, which was fraught with taxidermied dogs.

My favorite thing in the museum: A small Kandinsky called "Far Away (Fern)." There was no photography allowed in the galleries, so this image is from the Flikr stream of WavesDream.




Harlem Meer on the walk back home.

2 comments:

  1. I went to the Guggenheim when I was there (the one art museum we chose to see in our jam-packed two-day New York experience) and all I remember was wanting to skateboard down it (and I do NOT skateboard). Much wasted space, to be sure.

    p.s.
    Thems are nice boots.

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  2. Love the boots! And Devin's thoughts on the white-walled art. The building looks like something out of The Jetsons though. Oh, and thanks for not showing us the taxidermied pups.

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