NYC Day 36: In Which I Go In Search of Frank Lloyd Wright

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Yesterday I decided it was time I took a long, detailed look at the major Frank Lloyd Wright at 150: Unpacking the Archive, exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. Wright was one of the most influential American architects of the last century.

Frank Lloyd Wright (born Frank Lincoln Wright, June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was an American architect, interior designer, writer, and educator, who designed more than 1,000 structures, 532 of which were completed. Wright believed in designing structures that were in harmony with humanity and its environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture. This philosophy was best exemplified by the Fallingwater house (1935), which has been called "the best all-time work of American architecture". [Source: Wikipedia...]

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I have had an interest in architecture for many years, and the more I travel the more I like to seek out great examples of the profession. Having said that, I have little interest in the smooth modern glass and steel buildings that are dominating the New York City skyline more and more as this century progresses. My favorite buildings, whether cloud busting skyscrapers or four and five storey walk-ups, tend to be survivors from the past two centuries. They invariably have features and facades that stop you in your tracks, and force you to pause and examine, and marvel at the skills of the masons, engineers, steel workers, and other tradespeople who laboured to construct these beautiful buildings. So it was with much interest that I devoted a couple of hours to Frank Lloyd Wright.

The exhibition presents hundreds of drawings, models, film, letters, documents and other memorabilia from the vast FLW archives that are now in the possession and care of the museum. And when I write vast, I mean vast:

Unpacking the Archive refers to the monumental task of moving across the country 55,000 drawings, 300,000 sheets of correspondence, 125,000 photographs, and 2,700 manuscripts, as well as models, films, and building fragments. It also refers to the work of interpretation and the close examination of projects that in some cases have received little attention. [Source: Info panel at the exhibition]

Above: A longitudinal section in ink and pencil for the Imperial Hotel, Tokyo, and below a detailed image for the peaked roof seen in the image above.

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As you might imagine, with so much material to select from, to say the current exhibition barely scratches the surface of Wright's massive archive is to state the bleeding obvious. The curators probably had no choice other than to present some of the better known works from among a collection that may stretch back to the beginning of Wright's architectural career. A period of some 70 years.

I was particularly interested in his initial concept for one of his most famous buildings, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum on Fifth Avenue. Early sketches show a building similar in design to the building as it stands today, but instead of rising to the equivalent of a six storey building, the early drawings show one that might rise as high as nine or ten storeys.

Above and Below: Early design concepts for the Guggenheim Museum.

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Always one to think big, in 1956 Wright presented a concept drawing that was eight feet high! Executed in colored pencils and gold ink on tracing paper, Wright was proposing to build the Illinois, a 'mile-high' skyscraper on the lakefront at Chicago. His initial concept may not have been much more than a clever marketing exercise by Wright for his architectural practice, but it go plenty of attention when he unveiled his drawings and ideas back in 1956/'57.

Above: This image does not do the concept of a mile-high building any justice whatsoever. Try to imagine the picture being eight feet high, 

Above: other design ideas for Wright's mile-high Illinois building.

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I very much appreciated the chance to examine the many drawings and renderings (such as the 'mile-high' building), at the exhibition. Modern architects use state of the art software to design their buildings which also allows them to spit out drawings and renderings with a few clicks of a mouse button. What gets lost in that process are the beautifully hand drawn designs one sees in Unpacking the Archive. While many of these drawings were almost certainly made by Wright's assistants, they stand as beautiful works of art in the own right.

Above and detail below: Marin County Civic Center and Fairgrounds, San Rafael, California (1957). 

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There is much to enjoy at Frank Lloyd Wright at 150: Unpacking the Archive, even if you only have a passing interest in architecture. Children will enjoy looking at the models, while adults will gain a greater appreciation for Frank Lloyd Wright, and hopefully for all architects who design the homes and buildings we almost certainly could not live without in the 21st century.

IF YOU GO
Now through until October 1, 2017
Tickets: Adults $25; Seniors $18; Students $14 (under 16, free)
Exhibition free with museum entry
11 West 53rd Street, Manhattan
Open seven days a week.
MoMA Online... 

More Information
Frank Lloyd Wright at Wikipedia...

Above: Detail of building model for St. Mark's Tower, New York.

Below: unidentified building model. 

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Friday 21, July | Expenses $23.00 ($29.05)

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

NYC Days 31 & 32: In Which I Visit The Age of Empires, Eat, Walk, and Do Little

Click on images to view full sized. 

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ONE MONTH DOWN, TWO TO GO
Wow, Time flies when you're having fun, as the hackneyed cliche has it, and I have certainly enjoyed my first month in New York City. I seem to have settled into a relaxing daily routine that rarely sees me leave the apartment before 11:00am. Why rush? Especially when often I don't return to the comfort of my accommodations until eight to ten hours later. I generally have one or two main events in mind for the day, but I am just as happy to ignore both of them and sit and watch the daily life of the city unfold around me as I follow my whims, wander down unfamiliar streets, or explore buildings or stores for the first time.

 Images from the Age of Empires exhibition

For example, after visiting the Met Museum yesterday to take in the Age Of Empires exhibition, a strolled across Central Park making a bee-line for A.G.Kitchen, a restaurant at 269 Columbus Avenue, which Google in its listing describes as a "Latin American Restaurant" whose "Neuvo Latino cooking and creative burgers are the attractions at this light-filled, modern eatery." The restaurant has been on my dining 'radar' ever since it popped up on my Twitter feed with images of some of the delicious looking meals produced by its creative chefs.

I thought I might spook the greeter at the door by telling him, "There's no pressure, but I've travelled all the way from Australia to eat here tonight!" However, like the true New Yorker he was, he just took my statement in his stride, laughed, and repeated. "No Pressure!"

That Juicest Lucy Inside Out burger from A.G. Kitchen

I thoroughly enjoyed my burger and fries meal, which had been given the odd title, Juiciest Lucy Inside Out burger. The 'inside out' part referred to the cheese which had been inserted and cooked inside the beef patty. It added a lovely soft, creamy texture to the burger which I might just have to sample again before I leave New York.

From A.G. Kitchen I walked over to Riverside Park, which borders the Hudson River for many miles. I thought I could pick up an M5 bus on Riverside Drive that would take me back uptown, but I had miscalculated the point at which the bus route turned on to the drive, so it being a lovely evening I decided to walk for a while until I found an M5 bus stop.

During my stroll, I encountered an older woman working alone in a section of garden in Riverside Park, and stopped for a brief chat. It turned out that she was one of the thousands of volunteers who have dedicated themselves to maintaining and improving hundreds of city parks across New York City. Without these amazing volunteers, the city's Parks Department would have a much harder time keeping up with the massive amount of work needed to keep New York's parks looking so clean and beautiful.

I was about to leave the park in search of a bus stop when I noticed a large structure towering over the landscape a little farther up the road. Never one to miss an opportunity to discover something new -- or at least new to me -- I continued walking until I reached the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument that stands in the park right at Riverside Drive and West 89th Street on the Upper West Side. According to Wikipedia: The Soldiers' and Sailors' Memorial Monument ... commemorates Union Army soldiers and sailors who served in the American Civil War. The monument was completed in 1902.

Imagine my surprise and delight on reaching the monument, to find a gaggle of actors in period costumes that looked like they had been transported straight out of the pages of Alexandre Dumas's book, The Three Musketeers.

Part of the audience enjoying a performance of The Three Musketeers by members of Hudson Warehouse.

Oh. Wait. In a way they had been transported from the pages of that book, because I had just stumbled into the middle of Susan Lee's adaptation of The Three Musketeers, which was being performed by the Hudson Warehouse theatre company.

From the Hudson Warehouse website, the group's Mission Statement:

"Hudson Warehouse's mission is to provide quality, exciting, innovative, and affordable classical theatre to the community. The Warehouse believes theater is a "ware" and essential for daily life. To this end, the Warehouse doesn't sell tickets, but has a "pay what you can" policy because the arts should be affordable to everyone. Those unable to pay are still welcome because the Warehouse believes everyone deserves to have the theater experience, because theater is so essential to what makes us human."

I stopped for a break and joined 50 or 60 local residents who were already watching the performance, but since I had arrived late and missed most of the play, I continued my walk after ten minutes or so in search of the ever elusive M5 bus. I did learn however, that the play will be performed this week across four more nights from Thursday 20 to Sunday 23, starting at 6:30pm.

According to the poster I found pinned to a nearby fence, the Hudson Warehouse actors are also staging a series of performances of Shakespeare's Henry V, from July 27 to August 20 at the same location. Although the poster fails to mention performance times and days, I did learn that performances are staged Thursday to Sunday evenings from 6:30pm.

And that, dear reader, is how I spent Day 31 in the Big Apple.

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Sunday 16, July | Expenses $41.75 ($53.40)

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On Day 32, Monday, I stayed in all day and frittered away the hours in inconsequential ways that are of no interested to anyone but myself. That this days' expenses were more than yesterday's can be put down to a fine Chimichanga and beer meal at the Refried Beans Mexican Grill at 591 Fort Washington Avenue, and a spot of grocery shopping at the Associated Supermarket store across the street.

Above: Corn chips and spicy dip to get started.

My very tasty chimichanga with beans and rice.

Some very famous Mexican artists are featured on this wall.

More Information
The Met Museum...
A.G. Kitchen...
Riverside Park...
Hudson Warehouse... 
Refried Beans Mexican Grill...

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Monday 17, July | Expenses $53.10 ($67.00)

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

NYC Day 28: In Which I Venture Across the East River to the Brooklyn Museum

Brooklyn Museum (click on images to view full sized)

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NEW YORK CITY: LOVE IT, OR LEAVE IT
You have to love New York City, because if you don't you are going to hate it. Take the weather for example. Yesterday had to have been one of the hottest and most humid of the summer so far. The forecast temperature was 93F, but once the oppressive humidity is taken into account -- and yesterday the humidity was oppressive -- the 'feels like' temperature, as they refer to it here -- makes the temperature feel much higher. This awful heat and humidity combination is another good reason not to venture down into the subway system if at all possible (see yesterday's post), since the temperature down there has to be at least ten degrees higher. And it definitely feels like it is 20 degrees hotter.

However, here we are today, and the temperature is at least 20 degrees cooler with a light but steady rain failing over the city, or at least over Manhattan. While the cooler temperature and the rain brings some relief to the city's eight million residents and tens of thousands of visitors, that relief is only temporary. In fact, brief as this respite from the heat will be, the light showers now covering the city's sun baked streets and buildings will only serve to increase the humidity once the water begins to evaporate, and thus the whole cycle of heat, humidity, and rain continues over and over again.

Nevertheless, as I wrote yesterday, Every cloud has a silver lining, and I had no intention of  letting a 20 degree drop in temperature go to waste. Heck, I was even prepared to brave the subway system on the basis that the temperature underground would have reflected to some extent the cooler weather outside, and happily that proved to be the case. It was therefore time to get off the island of Manhattan, and head to Brooklyn.

Above and Below: It all seems a bit fetishistic to me, but the exhibition featured numerous examples of clothing taken from Georgia O'Keeffe's wardrobe.

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In four previous extended visits to New York, I had never made it to the Brooklyn Museum, and today was the day I chose to change that sorry fact -- and I am delighted I did. Where the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum, and many other similar institutions on Manhattan, are constantly packed with visitors, crowding and jockeying for prime selfie positions, the few people I saw at the Brooklyn Museum were quiet, reserved, and very well behaved.

And while the Brooklyn Museum's collection may not be as extensive as that of say, the Met Museum, there is more than enough to justify a visit to this wonderful location. The lack of crowds also seemed to cause visitors to slow down and savor the collection rather than feel they had to rush through rooms whose walls were crowded with works of art. The pace of discovery was certainly far more relaxed and reflective at the Brooklyn Museum than I have ever found it to be at the Met or MoMA.

Above and Below: Ram's Head... Full picture, info panel and detail.

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The big show now on at the Brooklyn Museum is the Georgia O'Keeffe: Living Modern exhibition which finishes July 23, 2017, so if you are going to see it, you need to be quick.

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986) is one of the iconic figures in modern American Art, celebrated for her early abstractions, and paintings of flowers and animal bones. Yet even though her paintings are familiar classics of twentieth-century Art, and the circumstances of her life are well known, there is still much to discover about how she created her identity beyond the studio.

This exhibition takes a new look at how O'Keeffe integrated the modernity of her art and her life, exploring how she used clothing and the way she posed for the camera to shape her public persona. Though she dressed for personal comfort and ease, her wardrobe played a meaningful role in her aesthetic universe; she understood how clothes helped create and reinforce her image as an independent woman and artist.

Above: Brooklyn Bridge, 1949.

Above: The Mountain, New Mexico, 1931.

Above: Black Place II, 1944.

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Rejecting the staid Victorian world into which she was born, O'Keeffe absorbed the progressive principles of the Arts and Crafts Movement, which promoted the idea that everything a person made or chose to live with--art, clothing, home decor--should reflect a unified and visually pleasing aesthetic. Even the smallest acts of daily life, she liked to say, should be done beautifully, a philosophy reinforced by her study and appreciation for the arts and cultures of Japan and China. {Source: Exhibition brochure]

I enjoyed the exhibition as far as it went, but I would have liked to have seen more paintings and fewer photographs, of which there were many, and all of which seemed to feature O'Keeffe sporting her signature black and white ensembles. She certainly knew what her 'brand' was, and she rarely deviated from it throughout her professional life.

O'Keeffe is surely best known for her 1920s and '30s paintings that feature either the sun dried skulls of dead cattle, or the large, detailed images of flowers (and sometimes both themes combined together in unusual ways). Over the years that I have been familiar with her work, I have been happy to accept the idea that many of these paintings had other symbolic meanings, most of which had to do with sex and sexuality.

So it was informative to read that these theories had been promoted by Alfred Stieglitz (O'Keeffe's longtime friend, partner and husband). Stieglitz ...

...interpreted her art as having strong sexual and anatomical connotations, claiming her images were expressions of an essential and uniquely feminine artistic sensibility. O'Keeffe spent years denying these eroticized readings of her painting as well as the qualification of her identity as an artist with the word woman. In an interview in the 1960s, she offered a different account of how she came to paint her big flowers:

In the twenties, huge buildings seemed to be going up overnight in New York. At that time I saw a painting by Fantin-Lator, a still life of flowers I found very beautiful, but I realized were I to paint the flowers so small, no one would look at them because I was unknown. so I thought I'll make them look big like the huge buildings going up. People will be startled; they'll have to look at them -- and they did. 

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Personally, I'm happy to accept O'Keeffe's explanation at face value, However, the subconscious mind is an amazing thing, and maybe it's a reflection of my own subconscious that I too can see the same things that Alfred Stieglitz saw in her work. Or maybe I just spend too much time thinking about the female anatomy in general! I suspect too, that Sigmund Freud would have been very interested in exploring O'Keeffe's subconscious on seeing these same works.

IF YOU GO
Brooklyn Museum
Georgia O'Keeffe: Living Modern
Now through July 23, 2017
Tickets: (suggested admission) $10 - $16; Members & ages 19 and under, Free.
Exhibitions: $6 - $20; Children under 12 free.
Hours: Wednesday to Sunday, 11 am - 6 pm (except Thursday open until 10 pm)
Closed Mondays and Tuesdays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years's Day.

Note: The museum brochure clearly states the hours noted above. However, I was there on a Friday when the museum was open until 8:00pm, though I suspect this may be for the summer months only. Note too, that the museum offers free admission to all on the first Saturday of each month. See you there ;-)

Above and Below: Hilda Belcher's portrait of a young Georgia O'Keeffe, and info panel. 



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Friday 14, July | Expenses $37.75 ($48.25)
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Any questions or suggestions? How about complaints or compliments? Let me know via the comments box below.

Back In The U.S., Back In The U.S.S.A.

Above: The Met Breuer on Madison Avenue

My apologies to Lennon & McCartney for stealing their song title and hacking it to suit my purposes, but here I am again, three days into a three month extended stay in America -- most of which I will spend in New York City. The trip from Australia to New York went smoothly enough, but after 32 hours of air travel, extended transit stops and time spent traveling between accommodations and airports, you can be sure I was more than happy to collapse into bed once I arrived at the Washington Heights apartment at which I will be staying.

I spent the first day close to home base, and did little more than walk to a local AT&T store where I swapped my Australian SIM card for an AT&T GoPhone SIM ($54.43). This gives me unlimited data (6Gb high speed/shaped after that), as well as unlimited local and international phone calls each month.

I had dinner (quesadilla and a beer; $22.00) at my local 'go to' nosh house, the Hudson View Restaurant at the corner of 181st and Fort Washington Avenue, before finishing my day with some grocery shopping ($78.17) at Frank's Gourmet Market on W 187th street -- though I'm not too sure about the 'Gourmet' designation. Now that I think of it, the Hudson View does not exactly live up to its name either, but I guess that's marketing for you.

Marsden Hartley’s Maine @ The Met Breuer
The following day, Sunday, after buying an MTA Pass ($121.00) giving me unlimited travel for the next 30 days, I rode an M4 bus as far as East 75th street, and went to the Met Breuer to see the Marsden Hartley exhibition that finished that same day. It was a large collection from this American artist who spent his final years in his home state, Maine -- hence the title of the show, Marsden Hartley's Maine.

The exhibition featured many oil paintings and a smattering of other media from this local artist. I myself had never heard of Hartley until I read about him on the Met Museum website in preparation for this visit. For the most part I found his work engaging, with its strong masculine themes, bold and colorful flourishes, and dark, foreboding land and seascapes.

Here are a few images from the exhibition and the location:

Entrance and ticketing counter

Marsden Hartley's Maine (Note: exhibition now closed)

Above: The Lighthouse; Marsden Hartley

Above: Canuck Yankee Lumberjack at Old Orchard Beach, Maine

Above: Flaming American (Swim Champ); Marsden Hartley.

Above: Lobster Fishermen

Knotting Rope; Marsden Hartley.

Above: Information panels.

 

Above: The Wave; Marsden Hartley

The Met Breuer
Corner E 75th & Madison Avenue
*Prices: Students, $12; Senior $17; Adult $25 ; children under 12 free
*Suggested prices only.

Dear Reader, you may notice strange formatting for this and subsequent blog posts. Sadly, using my aging iPad 2 to update this blog is not turning out to be the exciting and innovative experience I was hoping it would be. However, under the circumstances, right now it is the best I can do.