Zooming through the Met.

We were on holiday. And when I'm on holiday I completely reject any attempts to make plans that require sticking to a schedule and a time. So, Marlon spent a day drifting around Manhattan with Richard and I. First we hit the AIGA: the professional association for design where there was an exhibit of new design and on the second floor, Milton Glaser's work. There were also some very comfortable couches there, so we ended up having one of those long talks about dreams and hopes.

Then the plan was to spend several hours in the Met. But lunch, chatting and drifting got in the way, so we arrived at the Met with an hour and change to spare.

One of my favourite places at the Met is the Temple of Dendur. the temple is housed in a huge glass conservatory, and it's surrounded by water. Harry and Sally dreevayed through it in "when Harry Met Sally", and I visit that room everytime I go to the Met. The problem is, I never make it to anywhere else in the museum. Museum back always prevails, and that feeling of needing to escape no matter what! takes over.

So on this trip, I zoomed Richard and Marlon through the Temple room (made easier by the fact that most of it was protected by velvet ropes - there must have been a party planned for that night) and headed over to the Modern art section. To get there, where passed Roman history, as well as an incredible room displaying the art of Oceania - really spectacular. And of course, the Modern Art didn't disappoint. My favourites were the collection of Georgia O'Keefes (which, till then, I'd only seen in books) as well as some sensational Warhols.

MOMA POP ART

Tom Wesselmann, Still Life #30, April 1963. Oil, enamel and synthetic polymer paint on composition board with collage of printed advertisements, plastic flowers, refrigerator door, plastic replicas of 7-Up bottles, glazed and framed color reproduction, and stamped metal.(moma)



Marisol, LBJ 1967
Moma Teen Audio on the piece. Hear what patrons think of LBJ.



Lichtenstein found sources for many of his early paintings in comic books. The source for this work is "Run for Love!" published by DC Comics in 1962. In the original illustration, the drowning girl's boyfriend appears in the background, clinging to a capsized boat. Lichtenstein cropped the image dramatically, showing the girl alone, encircled by a threatening wave. He shortened the caption from "I don't care if I have a cramp!" to the ambiguous "I don't care!" and changed the boyfriend's name she calls out from Mal to Brad. In addition to appropriating the melodramatic content of comics, Lichtenstein manually simulated the Benday dots used in the mechanical reproduction of images. (moma)



When Warhol first exhibited these thirty–two canvases in 1962, each one simultaneously hung from the wall like a painting and rested on a shelf like groceries in a store. The number of canvases corresponds to the varieties of soup then sold by the Campbell Soup Company. Warhol assigned a different flavor to each painting, referring to a product list supplied by Campbell's. There is no evidence that Warhol envisioned the canvases in a particular sequence. Here, they are arranged in rows that reflect the chronological order in which they were introduced, beginning with "Tomato" in the upper left, which debuted in 1897. (moma)