NYC Day 55: In Which I Am Once Again Spoilt For Choice in The Big Apple

Dive Bomber and Tank (1940), by Jose Clemente Orozco

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I had eight events listed as potential activities for this day, and one of them was not a return to the Museum of Modern Art, but there I was, being drawn back to that venerable institution on 54th Street once again. This post features works from the Mexican Modernists room.

MEXICAN MODERNISM
After the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920), the new government of Mexico instituted a program to celebrate the nation's indigenous heritage and recent history. Artists were central to this initiative, designing and creating large-scale murals that often monumentalize their subjects, portraying both recognizable historical figures and common peasants and workers as symbols of strength in the face of adversity.

Through the support of the Museum of Modern Art's cofounder Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, Diego Rivera and Jose Clemente Orozco were invited to New York in 1931 and 1940, respectively, to make frescoes in work spaces provided by the Museum. Also in New York, in 1936, David Alfaro Siqueiros, interested in innovative materials and techniques, founded the Siqueiros Experimental Workshop, whose membership included Jackson Pollock. Driving these artists, as Siqueiros explained, was the imperative to create "a fighting educative art for all."

Above: full painting, and below, a detail from Ethnography (1939), by David Alfaro Siqueiros 

DAVID ALFARO SIQUEIROS (1883-1949)
Of Los tres grandes (The Big Three) Mexican muralists, Siqueiros was the youngest and the most politically radical. His artistic career was repeatedly interrupted by his fervent political activity and frequent imprisonment. Siqueiros believed that revolutionary art called for revolutionary techniques and materials. Collective Suicide features several innovative techniques the artist explored as part of the Siqueiros Experimental Workshop he founded in New York in 1936. He airbrushed paint across the top third of the panel and used stencils to depict the army of invading seventeenth-century Spanish conquistadors on horseback (lower right) and Chichimec Indians leaping to their deaths to avoid subjugation (left). The swirling vortexes are pools of fast-drying commercial lacquer typically used on cars. A member of the workshop later recalled that they applied this paint "in thin glazes or built it up into thick gobs. We poured it, dripped it, splattered it,  and hurled it at the picture surface." Siqueiros's radical experiments proved influential for Abstract Expressionist artist Jackson Pollock, in particular, who was a member of the workshop.

Above: Full painting, and below, details of David Alfaro Siqueiros's, Collective Suicide (1936).

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Above: Jose Clemente Orozco's, Zapatistas (1931) 

DIEGO RIVERA (1886-1957)
Dedicated to the slain revolutionary hero Emiliano Zapata (1879-1919) and the campesinos, or peasant farm workers, who followed him, this fresco is a copy of a detail from a larger mural cycle Rivera made in Cuernavaca, Mexico, a few years earlier. It is one of eight "portable" frescoes Rivera produced expressly for his solo exhibition at MoMA in 1931. In a studio the Museum provided him above its galleries, he worked around the clock for a month to produce frescoes that, unlike traditional frescoes, were intended to be transportable. The works demonstrate Rivera's mastery of the medium and were a critical and popular success. During its five-week run, the exhibition broke Museum attendance records and led to important public commissions from the Ford and Rockefeller families.

Above: The full painting, Agrarian Leader Zapata (1931), and below, a detail from the work.

FRIDA KAHLO (1907-1954)
Kahlo collected eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Mexican retablos -- small paintings on metal made as Catholic devotional objects -- and adopted the medium as her own. In this fantastical family tree, Kahlo depicted herself as a fetus in utero and as a child inside her childhood home. While Kahlo celebrated Mexican culture by evoking its traditions in her art and wearing elaborate traditional attire, this painting is as much a tribute to her European and Jewish heritage. On the right is her German-born Jewish father and his parents, symbolized by the sea, and on the left her Mexican mother and her parents, symbolized by the land and a faintly rendered map of Mexico that appears above her grandparents' heads. Kahlo made this painting shortly after Hitler passed the Nuremberg Laws, forbidding interracial marriage. While the painting adopts the format of genealogical charts used by the Nazis to advocate racial purity, Kahlo uses it subversively to affirm her mixed origins.

My Grandparents, My Parents, and I (Family Tree), 1936, by Frida Kahlo

Fulang-Chang and I depicts Kahlo with one of her pet monkeys, interpreted by many as surrogates for the children she and Diego Rivera were unable to conceive. The painting was included in the first major exhibition of her work, held at Julien Levy Gallery in New York in 1938. In the essay that accompanied the show, the Surrealist leader André Breton described Kahlo's work as "a ribbon around a bomb" and hailed her as a self-created Surrealist painter. Although she appreciated his enthusiasm for her work, Kahlo did not agree with his assessment: "They thought I was a Surrealist but I wasn't. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality." Kahlo later gave this painting to her close friend Mary Sklar, attaching a mirror to it so that, if Sklar chose, the two friends could be together.

Fulang-Chang and I (1937, assembled after 1939)

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Wednesday 9, August | Expenses $27.05 ($34.30)

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Note: All biographical and interpretive information in this post is sourced from the Mexican Modernism room at the Museum of Modern Art.

Any questions, comments or suggestions? How about complaints or compliments? Let me know via the comments box below.

NYC Day 54: In Which I Go in Search of Pre-Revolutionary America

Three views of the Morris-Jumel Mansion
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It may surprise you, dear reader, that in amongst the soaring skyscrapers that dot the New York City skyline, there are to be found numerous buildings and homes that reach back to before the American Revolution. I know that may seem preposterous; that a city as dynamic and as ever changing as New York City, somehow retains vestiges of it's revolutionary past.

One of those buildings is the Morris-Jumel Mansion, located on an acre or two of land in upper Manhattan, overlooking the East River (at 65 Jumel Terrace). I mention the acreage specifically because the former estate on which the mansion now stands once stretched across Manhattan from the Hudson River to the East River, and from approximately 168th Street down to 158th.

The Mansion today is part of the Jumel Terrace Historic District, a small historic district in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan.

It consists of 50 residential rowhouses built between 1890 and 1902, and one apartment building constructed in 1909, as the heirs of Eliza Jumel sold off the land of the former Roger Morris estate. The buildings are primarily wood or brick rowhouses in the Queen Anne, Romanesque and Neo-Renaissance styles. {Wikipedia...] 

An information sheet at the Mansion provides additional information:

The Morris-Jumel Mansion, Manhattan's only remaining Colonial residence, is unique in its combination of architectural and historical significance. Built as a summer "villa" in 1765 by the British Colonel Roger Morris and his American wife Mary Philipse, it originally commanded extensive views in all directions: of New York harbor and Staten Island to the south; of the Hudson and Harlem rivers to the west and east; and of Westchester county to the north.

Colonel Morris was the son of the famous architect Roger Morris, a fact which may explain the extremely innovative features of the Mansion such as the gigantic portico, unprecedented in American architecture, and the rear wing which was the first octagon built in the Colonies.

Above: Interior of the octagonal Drawing Room, and below items within the room,

 A painting of Aaron Burr, by George Hans Eric Maunsbach

Empire Sofa, c.1825

Painting of Eliza Jumel by an unknown artist.

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The house's situation and large size made it ideal as military headquarters during the Revolution, and it was occupied successively by Washington, General Sir Henry Clinton, and the Hessian General Baron Von Knyphausen. As the Morrises were loyal to Britain during the Revolution, their property was seized and sold after its conclusion. In 1790 Washington returned for a cabinet dinner at which he entertained Jefferson, Adams, Madison, Hamilton, and Colonel Knox, among others.

The later history of the house centers on the Jumels, Stephen Jumel was a wealthy French emigre who married, in 1804, his beautiful and brilliant mistress, Eliza Bowen. They bought the Mansion in 1810. In 1815 they sailed to France, and offered Napoleon safe passage to New York after Waterloo. although he eventually declined the offer, they did acquire from his family many important Napoleonic relics - some of which can be seen in the blue bedroom on the second floor. Stephen died in 1832 and Eliza married the ex-Vice-President, Aaron Burr in the front parlor a year later. On her death in 1865 she was considers one of the wealthiest women in America.

Above and Below: The kitchen situated in the basement.

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It should be said that today the Mansion is in dire need of an extensive (and no doubt expensive) upgrade of its exterior facade. The staff member I was taking to described a complicated arrangement with a government heritage department which divides responsibility for the buildings maintenance thus: the non-profit group managing the site is only able to renovate and fix the interior of the building, while the government agency is responsible for the exterior. This has led to a situation in which the interior is progressively being upgraded, while the exterior of the building appears run down, and in desperate need of maintenance, including and a fresh paint job.

I don't know how many of the fittings and items of furniture currently on display in the Morris-Jumel Mansion are original to the building, but as a 'work in progress', it was sobering to walk in the footsteps of George Washington, and some of the other leaders of the American Revolution for an hour or so, and to try and imagine the scenes playing out inside the Mansion more than 200 years ago..

Above and Below: A series of photos representing Washington's War Room.

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A special bonus for visitors who make the trip uptown to see the Morris-Jumel Mansion is the chance to walk along one of the most unique streets in the whole of New York City; and that is the incredible time warp that is Sylvan Terrace.

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Sylvan Terrace, located where West 161st Street would normally be, was originally the carriage drive of the Morris estate. In 1882-83 twenty wooden houses, designed by Gilbert R. Robinson Jr., were constructed on the drive. Initially rented out to laborers and working class civil servants, the houses were restored in 1979-81. They are now some of the few remaining framed house in in Manhattan. {Wikipedia...]

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Tuesday 8, August | Expenses $86.80 ($110.25)

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Any questions, comments or suggestions? How about complaints or compliments? Let me know via the comments box below.

NYC Day 53: In Which I Give Thanks For a Rainy Day Monday

The cover of my edition of The Bell Jar

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Unusually for New York City, it rained all day today. Unusual, because generally the storm clouds and the rain that accompanies them generally move on after a few hours, leaving the streets of the city washed relatively clean for a day or two, before they are once again covered with a layer - or layers - of the daily grime that never seems to get completely washed away, no matter how severe the downpour.

To be honest, I was grateful for the excuse the rain gave me to stay in. In fact, I did not step foot outside the apartment all day. I did consider going out for dinner, but in the end I couldn't be bothered making the effort to do even that. So I cooked my own (spaghetti, garnished with spiced Moroccan olives, and spaghetti sauce straight out of a jar).

I spent the day updating this blog, and reading. I finished my 29th* book for the year, Sylvia Plath's only full length novel, The Bell Jar. My delight in the book was tempered by the knowledge that Plath took her own life at the age of 31, and that with this final act, the literary world will never know just how many other great novels she may have written if she had chosen to live.

Sylvia Plath (October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963) was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. Born in Boston, she studied at Smith College and Newnham College at the University of Cambridge before receiving acclaim as a poet and writer. She was married to fellow poet Ted Hughes from 1956 until they separated in September 1962. They lived together in the United States and then in England and had two children, Frieda and Nicholas. Plath was clinically depressed for most of her adult life, and was treated multiple times with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). She committed suicide in 1963. Plath is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for two of her published collections, The Colossus and Other Poems and Ariel, and The Bell Jar, a semi-autobiographical novel published shortly before her death. In 1982, she won a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for The Collected Poems. [Source: Wikipedia...]

What a brilliant tour de force of a debut novel The Bell Jar is. The book is essentially a memoir of the first 20 years of her life. So personal is her writing, that it was not meant to be published in America until Plath's mother had herself passed away, which given her mothers relatively young age, would have potentially been many years after Sylvia had died. In the end, the book had become so popular in Britain (where Plath was living at the time), that when illegally imported copies of the book began turning up in the US, following Plath's death, the publishers had no choice but to release the book there, or face the prospect that some other publisher would do so.

One of the few available photos of Sylva Plath

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The Bell Jar is one of those books that seems to be name-checked by many other writers and artists, and it was way past time I got around to reading it. The book is beautifully written, with her prose reflecting her other great skill as a poet.

Plath spent a month in New York City when she was 19 as part of a placement with a women's magazine. She writes extensively about this period in The Bell Jar, and the following quotes, which capture aspects of New York perfectly, come from this time.

I have written in previous posts about the drenching downpours of rain that hit New York City from time to time, but none of my descriptions come close to this passage from Sylvia Plath:

"When we came out of the sunnily lit interior of the Ladies' Day offices, the streets were gray and fuming with rain. It wasn't the nice kind of rain that rinses you clean, but the sort of rain I imagine they must have in Brazil. It flew straight down from the sky in drops the size of coffee saucers and hit the hot sidewalks with a hiss that sent clouds of steam writhing up from the gleaming, dark concrete."

Or this spot on observation about another of my persistent complaints regarding the city's summer heat:

"I didn't realize Lenny's place had been air-conditioned until I wavered out onto the pavement. The tropical, stale heat the sidewalks had been sucking up all day hit me in the face like a last insult."

Noting that she had been the same weight for ten or more years, Plath writes that she had no problem eating as much as she liked compared to her associates:

"I made a point of eating so fast I never kept the other people waiting who generally ordered only chef's salad and grapefruit juice because they were trying to reduce. Almost everybody I met in New York was trying to reduce."

After a wild night out with fellow interns, Plath and one of the other females throw up in a taxi on the way back to the hotel, causing Plath to observe:

"There is nothing like puking with somebody to make you into old friends."

Like Jean Rhys's book, Wide Sargasso Sea, this book too is a real 'keeper'. Not only will I make a point of reading it again, but I will also seek out copies of her collected poems when I next visit Strand Books or the Housing Works Book Store.

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Monday 7, August | Expenses $00.00

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*29th book. With regard to counting the number of books I am reading: I began the year with a self-imposed 52-Book-Year Challenge, the goal of which is to read an average of one book per week during 2017. Hence, Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, is book 29.

Any questions, comments or suggestions? How about complaints or compliments? Let me know via the comments box below.