Art, clothes, food .....

The Met

Art, clothes and food - this is what my last few days in New York were about.  I met up with Diane at her lovely friend's house in East Manhattan on Friday night and had a brilliant time seeing New York with two semi-natives.  On Friday night, we went to a superb restaurant in SoHo that was owned by one of Diane's friends.  We happened to be dining just a few tables away from Val Kilmer and 'Lloyd' from Entourage (they weren't together though). 

 Manhattan skyline from the top of The Met

On Saturday morning, we were up early for a big day of art and clothes.  Over a breakfast of bagels with cream cheese and salmon, we devised our plan of attack for our ambitious day.  Our first stop was The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met), where we decided to focus our attention on the two temporary exhibits - 'The Amerian Woman' and 'Picasso'.  The first exhibit was stunning, each circular room was styled for each decade since the early 1800s and the clothes of the time were modelled - absolutely beautiful clothes.  The only disappointing part was that once we reached the 1960s, it just stopped!  The next display panel read 'The American Woman - 1960 to 2010'.  It seemed to end rather abruptly.  But, we were happy with the final room, which held a huge audiovisual display of the American woman during that time period, with Lenny Kravitz's American Woman playing in the background.  The 'Picasso' exhibit was interesting and very crowded.  Here, I surprised myself - I found that I could appreciate but didn't really enjoy his more famous Cubist paintings.  My favourite were the Cubist pencil sketches and some of his works from his blue period.  We finished our time at The Met with a look at the Manhattan skyline from the roof top, where a fabulous bamboo sculpture is displayed.

Bamboo sculpture on the roof

Our planned to see just several exhibits seemed to work at The Met, so we tackled the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) with the same strategy.  Over lunch, we devised our plan - head straight to the paintings and sculptures on Level 4 (I was desperate to see Jackson Pollack's work) and then up to the Henri Cartier Besson photography exhibition.  Pollack didn't disappoint, I also enjoyed Jasper John's work, I loved the look of the painting on top of newspaper collage.  The photography exhibition was wonderful, there were so many photographs on display.  How he managed to capture people's faces in such crucial moments is amazing but what is even more amazing is how Cartier Besson managed to get into those situations in the first place - there were many photos from China in the 1940s and 1950s.  Perhaps the most surprising part of our trip to MoMA was the spontaneous visit to the Marina Abramovic exhibition.  I won't lie - we were intrigued by the sign warning visitors of the nudity they would encounter.  I had never seen any live exhibitions before and this was a pretty intriguing and at times, confronting exhibition.  It was downright weird.  All her original stuff (I can't quite bring myself to call it 'art') was performed and videoed in the 1950s and it was being shown here but also recreated, hence the nudity.  For example, there were two naked women standing face to face, very close.  Visitors had to squeeze between them.  Odd.  Then there was a naked woman lying down on her back with a skeleton on top of her.  And videos of men and women slamming into each other and into walls.  Art?  Depends what you think art is, I guess.

Church in the middle of Fifth Avenue

After a heavy dose of art, we headed to Fifth Avenue for some retail therapy.  Luckily we both don't like shopping, so it was only a short time before we were ready to search for the nearest bar - it was wine o'clock.  We had dinner at Ilili with some of Diane's wonderful friends, where we gorged ourselves on Lebanese food.  After my few days with Diane, my wallet is a little lighter whilst my bags and myself are a little heavier.  No more art, clothes or food for me for a while!