Times SquareNew York City, the largest melting pot of world. When Rosa Luxemburg first arrived to Berlin, she expressed her impression : "Berlin macht auf mich im allgemeinen den widrigsten Eindruck: kalt, geschmacklos, massiv...(Berlin in general made the most adverse impression on me: cold, tasteless, massive...)" (Frederik Hetmann, Rosa L.) Well, I would not play Rosa in the heart of capitalism sure! I just recalled the lines she dropped to Leon Jogiches when I was climbing the stairs of Times Square subway station. New York in general made me the most adverse impression: cold-it was still raining in the mid June-, massive-it is a daily miracle how things work with 15 million people-, and very nice.
View from Central ParkI made my way to 5th Avenue, my destination was Metropolitan Museum of Arts. The skyscrapers rise the all way long. Trump tower, Tiffany & Co., and the others. I noticed also penthouses nicely decorated with small trees and flowers. Even the huge Central Park seems like a small oasis between the stone towers. Towers of an empire : "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.(from Ron Suskind, New York Times)"
Metropolitan Museum of ArtsAfter having a quick lunch I continued walking in the Central Park. And I reached Metropolitan Museum. The recommended entrence fee is 20 $. The box officer kindly informed me one can pay less or more if he or she prefers. The tariff is determined by the visitor.
I was-again(!)-lucky, I could meet Picasso in NY. The Seated Harlequin (1901) was on the publicity poster of the exhibition and it was a tribute from Picasso to the suicide of his friend Carles Casagemas. Picasso used harlequin figure in his several works in different forms to express different scenes. The Seated Harlequin was one of the most impressive to me. Jacqueline with a Ruff (1963) and Man with a Ruff (1963) were two lovely lithos of him, not only because they were made with a new lithography technique of Picasso but each were carved as a resembler of me and my honeybee, respectively!
The other temporary exhibitions on were :"An Italian Journey: Drawings from the Tobey Collection, Correggio to Tiepolo", "Leon Levinstein's New York Photographs 1950-1980" and "American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity". Jacopo Ligozzi's illustration of an Ottoman soldier with a lion was a nice piece of An Italian Journey. The micro cosmos of NY streets cannot be expressed better than as expressed in Leon Levinstein's photos. Well, in 30 years the main change might be the walking speed of the people. A street scene from 60's, Woman in Blonde Wig and Tight Dress was my favorite. And American Woman... As shown on TV.
Guggenheim Museum at NY should be seen (http://www.guggenheim.org/). Besides the collection of Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, Camille Pissarro, Pierre Auguste Renoir, and Vincent van Gogh, museum hosts exhibitions of contemporary art. From the collection Le Palais Ducal vu de Saint-Georges Majeur (Claude Monet, 1908) was a special one for me. The foggy image of the Palazzo Ducale (Venice/Italy) seems to me reflected from the 4 elements. The reflections on the bright blue water, the yellowish palace rising from the earth, the colors of sunset on the palace like flames of fire, and not only the sky but the whole image is very hollow like spread on air. The on going temporary exhibition was Haunted: Contemporary Photography/Video/Performance. Self-potrait of GillianWearing at 3 years old was challenging; could we look from the eyes of a kid or do we remember the human with all adult-like insticts and feelings when we were a kid? Stillness from Tacita Dean is a video performance. One passes through the silent scenes while walking among the projected videos. Even the visitor's shaddow falls on projections, the video goes on. The visitor just passes, without being able to change anything.
I was looking for Audrey Hepburn. With her smoky eyes, a last farewell look to her lover at Grand Central Terminal. Without loosing time I made my connection to Chappaqua.
Scarsdale
I had to make a choice between a piano concert from the students of a music school and Scarsdale Fine Arts Festival. Hoping to compansate the missed concert at Musikfest Berlin (2-21 September 2010), I prefered hanging around Scarsdale. I really enjoyed the enviroment. I chose a nice pottery for myself and a litho print of two koi fish from a Japanese artist for my honeybee. She told me "koi" means love and happiness in Japanese. I couldn't find a better new-home-present for him!
Delaware River
I was encouraged to do some outdoor sports. Although Delaware River was a good place for rafting beginners, we managed to sit on a rock with an innocent rapid.
Historic Hudson Valley doesn't only offer visitors many opportunities to enjoy nature (http://www.hudsonvalley.org/). Union Church of Pocantico Hills is dedicated to the memory of Abbey Aldrich Rockefeller. This little country church has stained glass windows from Marc Chagall and a Rose window from Henri Matisse. The Rose Window is the last work of Matisse. The Rockefeller estate at Kykuit hosts a selection of art collection. Especially the tapestries of Picasso paintings are very nice pieces of the collection.
I was lucky with Miss Liberty. I did not reserve my ticket online thus I could skip the long queue of the visitors with pre-booked tickets. To keep in mind; one should do reservation extra for the crone tours. I heard from a security guard at the Liberty Island, visiting the crone is possible now. It was closed for a long time after 9/11 but the main concern is now not a terror attack. The lady is not designed for touristic tours inside her. It is the Statue of Liberty! The maintanence of the construction is not easy. So, they accept only limited number of visitors per annum. On the pedal of the new Colossus, the masterpiece of F. Bartholdi, these lines were written:
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
-Emma Lazarus, 1883
A restaurant at Little Korea
I made a stop at Little Korea by the Empire State Building. Traditional rice with eggs and octupus is served with 7 different appetizer and fruit afterwards. It was yummy and costed only 9 $-quite cheap for that meal around 5th Avenue. If you want to have coffee from the coffe-automat but if your Korean is not sufficient don't worry. The shop keeper kindly helps you.
View from top of the Empire State Building
Greenwich Village is suppose to be the bohemian part of Manhattan with artist residents and alternative life styles. But I was a bit disappointed when I saw it turned out to be a very fashionable place with expensive designers shops.
Since I am in NY, I made the effort of reading a work from an American author, Paul Auster. At least he is living in Brooklyn... In the Country of Last Things (1987) is a futurist nightmare. The narrator Anna Blume tells about her arrival to the city in chaos (it is not mentioned but I imagined that city as NY) and her adventures when she was looking for her lost brother. The fiction is structured around the last things; the last hand written book, the last unborn baby, the last help of a friend, the last hope to find a brother. Every "last thing" turns into a faded memory.
By chance I found an old book In Someone's Shadow from Rod McKuen, poet from California... We know his A man alone from Frank Sinatra. Reading the poems was different to me than listenning them as songs...
New York city has many universities and scientific institutions. I had the chance to visit two of them: Columbia University is the oldest institution of higher education of New York. It was founded in 1754 and started with a church and theology institute. Now it is one of the most respectable universities of the world (http://www.columbia.edu/). The Stoony Brook University (http://www.stonybrook.edu/) was founded in 1957 on Long Island, east of Manhattan. It is very close to Brookhaven National Labs. It has many departments for undergraduate and graduate studies and the campus is very nice.
If I can make it there
I'll make it anywhere
It's up to you
New York, New York...
I was-again(!)-lucky, I could meet Picasso in NY. The Seated Harlequin (1901) was on the publicity poster of the exhibition and it was a tribute from Picasso to the suicide of his friend Carles Casagemas. Picasso used harlequin figure in his several works in different forms to express different scenes. The Seated Harlequin was one of the most impressive to me. Jacqueline with a Ruff (1963) and Man with a Ruff (1963) were two lovely lithos of him, not only because they were made with a new lithography technique of Picasso but each were carved as a resembler of me and my honeybee, respectively!
The other temporary exhibitions on were :"An Italian Journey: Drawings from the Tobey Collection, Correggio to Tiepolo", "Leon Levinstein's New York Photographs 1950-1980" and "American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity". Jacopo Ligozzi's illustration of an Ottoman soldier with a lion was a nice piece of An Italian Journey. The micro cosmos of NY streets cannot be expressed better than as expressed in Leon Levinstein's photos. Well, in 30 years the main change might be the walking speed of the people. A street scene from 60's, Woman in Blonde Wig and Tight Dress was my favorite. And American Woman... As shown on TV.
Guggenheim Museum at NY should be seen (http://www.guggenheim.org/). Besides the collection of Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, Camille Pissarro, Pierre Auguste Renoir, and Vincent van Gogh, museum hosts exhibitions of contemporary art. From the collection Le Palais Ducal vu de Saint-Georges Majeur (Claude Monet, 1908) was a special one for me. The foggy image of the Palazzo Ducale (Venice/Italy) seems to me reflected from the 4 elements. The reflections on the bright blue water, the yellowish palace rising from the earth, the colors of sunset on the palace like flames of fire, and not only the sky but the whole image is very hollow like spread on air. The on going temporary exhibition was Haunted: Contemporary Photography/Video/Performance. Self-potrait of GillianWearing at 3 years old was challenging; could we look from the eyes of a kid or do we remember the human with all adult-like insticts and feelings when we were a kid? Stillness from Tacita Dean is a video performance. One passes through the silent scenes while walking among the projected videos. Even the visitor's shaddow falls on projections, the video goes on. The visitor just passes, without being able to change anything.
I was looking for Audrey Hepburn. With her smoky eyes, a last farewell look to her lover at Grand Central Terminal. Without loosing time I made my connection to Chappaqua.
ScarsdaleI had to make a choice between a piano concert from the students of a music school and Scarsdale Fine Arts Festival. Hoping to compansate the missed concert at Musikfest Berlin (2-21 September 2010), I prefered hanging around Scarsdale. I really enjoyed the enviroment. I chose a nice pottery for myself and a litho print of two koi fish from a Japanese artist for my honeybee. She told me "koi" means love and happiness in Japanese. I couldn't find a better new-home-present for him!
Delaware RiverI was encouraged to do some outdoor sports. Although Delaware River was a good place for rafting beginners, we managed to sit on a rock with an innocent rapid.
Historic Hudson Valley doesn't only offer visitors many opportunities to enjoy nature (http://www.hudsonvalley.org/). Union Church of Pocantico Hills is dedicated to the memory of Abbey Aldrich Rockefeller. This little country church has stained glass windows from Marc Chagall and a Rose window from Henri Matisse. The Rose Window is the last work of Matisse. The Rockefeller estate at Kykuit hosts a selection of art collection. Especially the tapestries of Picasso paintings are very nice pieces of the collection.
I was lucky with Miss Liberty. I did not reserve my ticket online thus I could skip the long queue of the visitors with pre-booked tickets. To keep in mind; one should do reservation extra for the crone tours. I heard from a security guard at the Liberty Island, visiting the crone is possible now. It was closed for a long time after 9/11 but the main concern is now not a terror attack. The lady is not designed for touristic tours inside her. It is the Statue of Liberty! The maintanence of the construction is not easy. So, they accept only limited number of visitors per annum. On the pedal of the new Colossus, the masterpiece of F. Bartholdi, these lines were written:
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
-Emma Lazarus, 1883
A restaurant at Little KoreaI made a stop at Little Korea by the Empire State Building. Traditional rice with eggs and octupus is served with 7 different appetizer and fruit afterwards. It was yummy and costed only 9 $-quite cheap for that meal around 5th Avenue. If you want to have coffee from the coffe-automat but if your Korean is not sufficient don't worry. The shop keeper kindly helps you.
View from top of the Empire State BuildingGreenwich Village is suppose to be the bohemian part of Manhattan with artist residents and alternative life styles. But I was a bit disappointed when I saw it turned out to be a very fashionable place with expensive designers shops.
Since I am in NY, I made the effort of reading a work from an American author, Paul Auster. At least he is living in Brooklyn... In the Country of Last Things (1987) is a futurist nightmare. The narrator Anna Blume tells about her arrival to the city in chaos (it is not mentioned but I imagined that city as NY) and her adventures when she was looking for her lost brother. The fiction is structured around the last things; the last hand written book, the last unborn baby, the last help of a friend, the last hope to find a brother. Every "last thing" turns into a faded memory.
By chance I found an old book In Someone's Shadow from Rod McKuen, poet from California... We know his A man alone from Frank Sinatra. Reading the poems was different to me than listenning them as songs...
New York city has many universities and scientific institutions. I had the chance to visit two of them: Columbia University is the oldest institution of higher education of New York. It was founded in 1754 and started with a church and theology institute. Now it is one of the most respectable universities of the world (http://www.columbia.edu/). The Stoony Brook University (http://www.stonybrook.edu/) was founded in 1957 on Long Island, east of Manhattan. It is very close to Brookhaven National Labs. It has many departments for undergraduate and graduate studies and the campus is very nice.
If I can make it there
I'll make it anywhere
It's up to you
New York, New York...
Frank Sinatra (lyrics:F. Ebb, J. Kander)
Very nice entry, my kitty!
ReplyDeleteThe Man with a Ruff reminds me of Quixote and Cervantes :-)
It's a pity that US-Americans seem to have forgotten those words under the Statue of Liberty.