A Step in the Right Direction

Nowadays, with the availability of cheap and frequent flights, all types of people have the opportunity to travel. And of course, with the all too common, excessively long delays and unavoidable layovers, travelers spend more time in airports than ever. The San Francisco art community has capitalized on these fortunes and misfortunes, by bringing art to the airport - art to the masses. The San Francisco International Airport is the first airport to be accredited by the American Association of Museums, housing exhibitions loaned from other institutions as well as exhibits planned specifically for the airport. Statistics show that some 10% of people passing through the airport actually stop to take a look at the works on display, which are changed and rotated on a regular basis so as not to bore frequent flyers. In a given year well over 350,000 people take note of the eclectic art displayed in the airport! That means that each year there are 300,000 more art viewers at the airport than at the average museum!*

For those of you who don't know, my life goal is to make art available and accessible, physically, psychologically, and intellectually, to people from all backgrounds. Thus, in my mind there is nothing greater than public art that engages people, capturing their attention by provoking thought and raising questions, in the way the art at the San Francisco airport does.

The existence of programs like the S.F. airport-museum program is particularly important at this period given that traditional museums, much like churches, synagogues, and temples, no longer work for most people. More explicitly, the main goal of such institutions has always been to add meaning to people's lives, however I speculate that for most they no longer do so for two main reasons: 1) People have found other outlets to stimulate them and produce meaning in their lives, even if those outlets are sometimes bunk, i.e.: television. 2) People want instant gratification; in a fast paced society, people don't have time to visit an institution that only has one function, nor do they have the attention span necessary to do the research that makes the tool, be it prayer or art, function.

Given these pending problems, here are a few key questions we must address in order to fulfill people's needs as we enter this new stage in human development: how do we produce bite-size (not in the physical sense) art that isn't dumbed down? In other words, how do we make art accessible to people, including people with no art historical knowledge, without sugar coating it or diminishing its multitude of dimensions? How do we provide people with the opportunity, and perhaps even encourage people, to engage with art on a regular basis and how do we make such art understandable? What is the best forum through which to do this?

Off the top of my head I can think of several important artists who have used public art to engaged large numbers of people, making them conscious, aware of their daily routines / existences and asking them important question about society at large.

Take Richard Serra and his Tilted Arc (1981), which was commissioned by the U.S.'s General Services Administration Arts-in-Architecture program. Titled Arc was designed by Sera in 1981 and placed outside of Federal Plaza that year. The work called attention to the space in which it laid, a place that thousands of people passed through daily, without ever thinking about or noticing - in other words, regular passersby took the space fore granted.

However, once the piece was put in place, people finally began to notice the space it occupied! In fact, it caused such a ruckus that after a long and heated public debate Titled Arc was taken down because it was so disruptive! Some people feared that it was a terrorist threat because bombs directed at the federal building could be thrown over it; it prohibited others from taking public transport at night because they worried about the invisibility of people on the other side who could potentially mug, or harm them. It caused people to question their notions of security, of familiarity, and it forced people to live with a greater sense of awareness, to live more conscientiously, more alertly. Additionally, it became a target for urination, which brought up questions about homelessness, about poverty, and how on both governmental and grassroots level poverty related issues must be dealt with. And of course, the fact that this mammoth, shield-like work that was ultimately disruptive and upsetting, was installed in Federal Plaza, undoubtedly calls attention to the role of the government as both protective and at times oppressive.

In one concise sentence, Tilted Arc, changed the entire environment of Federal Plaza, forcing people, both consciously and unconsciously, to question and make meaning of societal issues they had once overlooking and parts of their lives that had simply become routine.

I don't know if you'd consider this attempt at capturing people's minds, guiding people to think about meaningful and important aspects of life and society, successful given that Tilted Arc's presence in the public sphere elicited frustration, annoyance, and even anger, but at least it made big a enough stink to bring art into the public sphere!

1. Richard Serra, Tilted Arc, 1981. Steel. Federal Plaza, NYC. Dismantled in 1989.

* To read more about SFO museum project, check out an article called "Flying Through San Francisco? Stop to Enjoy the Art," on the NPR website.

Paris

As you know from the post about my Louvre experience, I visited Paris last week! Oh how I absolutely love Paris! (Mom, I imagine that statement being read in Eloise’s tone of voice.) The weather was perfect, art was available in full glory, and my hostess, Miriam Dreiblatt, my sister’s best friend, was wonderfully hospitable! With that said, I spent very little time outdoors, and even less time in Miriam’s apartment, because I visited museums for the entire duration of their open hours, from the moment I arrived until the moment I left! (Yes, I went directly from the airport to the Louvre on Monday and directly from the Pompidou to the airport on Wednesday. No, I didn’t even do any shopping, at all, didn’t even go into a single store!)

As I mentioned, first stop was the Louvre, which was overwhelming in a wonderful way, of course. I gave you a pretty thorough idea of my Louvre experience in my previous post, however there is one other notable event that I’d like to share. Because it’s protocol, I of course went to see the infamously mobbed Mona Lisa. Despite the buzz that she projected, which was most likely just the bustle of of masses of tourists whispering and taking pictures, she, like the Vitruvian Man who I saw at the Accademia in Venice in January, could not sing nor dance, which was slightly disappointing. However, this is not a sad story because while what seemed to be the rest of the world was busy snapping away at Mona Lisa’s missing eyebrows, I found Ingres’ The Grand Odalisque, (the painting on which the Gorilla Girls' ad is based,) in a room with David’s Intervention of the Sabine Women and his Oath of the Horatii, which were situated across from Girodet’s The Rest of Endymion, not far from Gericault’s Raft of the Medusa, Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People, Gros’ The Pest House of Jaffa, and multiple portraits of Napoleon rendered by Gericault, just to name drop a few. (By the way, if any of those paintings don’t ring a bell, I urge you to Wiki them immediately, or email me for a personal 18th/19th century European art history lesson. While, I may be a bigger fan of modern and contemporary art, and while I certainly spent more time looking at Soulages' work than all of the rest of the works I listed put together, the art historian in me couldn’t help but be outrageously excited to see so many of the western cannon’s most famous, influential works all at once!

From the Louvre I walked through the gardens of the Tuileries, where I stopped beside the Henry Moore sculpture in the photo above, to enjoy the warm, fresh air, (a forshpeis, as they say in Yiddish, for the many public art works that I am looking forward to seeing in NYC this spring,) and then ended my day at the Musee de l'Orangerie, a spectacular museum with unusually large amounts of natural light, and perfect artificial lighting as well. (Lighting plays a crucial role in how I experience all spaces, from galleries to bathrooms. Sometimes I wish we could light up the world solely with candles, millions of them, because candle light surely produces the best atmosphere, or vibes if you will.)

Unfortunately, several of the Musee de l'Orangerie's galleries were closed for reinstallation, but I got to see Monet's water lilies and had that been it, dyanu, because the deep purples and oranges, which I've never before seen in other versions of the lilies, were breathtakingly beautiful. (As you can see, I am getting ready for Passover, where we sing a song called Dyanu, which essentially means "would have been enough".) BUT, the water lilies are not all that I saw! I also saw Paul Guillaume's collection, which is housed by the museum. Paul Giullaume was an early 20th century collector who amassed an extraordinary modern art collection during his forty year life. The collection now includes works by Renoir, Monet, Cezanne, Rousseau, Matisse, Picasso, and Modigliani, just to name a few. My favorite work was Modigliani's Paul Guillaume, Novo Pilota (1915), because it reminds me of home since a reproduction of it hangs on Alexander's wall, as it is one of his favorites. Plus, beside the portrait of Guillaume, there was a Modigliani portrait called Antonia (1915), and she looked a bit like me, so I felt as though Alexander and I were temporarily reunited. (Oops, sorry for going cheeseball on you for a second there.)

After the Musee de l'Orangerie, I met Miriam at a super cool Parisian cafe-bar, and then we headed back to her house to have dinner with her host family, which was a treat, as all too often vacations become filled with touristy activities like visits to the Louvre, and meeting the residents, who give life to the culture, gets overlooked.

The next day I woke up bright and early and visited five museums! First stop: Musee D'Orsay. I arbitrarily decided to go on a guided tour of the highlights of the impressionist collection, which was a positive experience on a couple levels. 1) I met two lovely guys from Singapore, (who in what seems to be typical fashion at this point, asked to take a picture with me). 2) I learned about the history of the building that houses the collection: it was a former railroad station... 3) I found that I knew just about everything that the docent shared with us in her two hour tour, which was super exciting because it is really a testament to how much I learned in the two impressionism classes I took during my college career. 4) Afterward, when I walked around the museum on my own, I was able to contemplate the art historical narrative created by the docent, admiring certain aspects of her tour and critiquing others. I imagined which pieces I would have added or subtracted from the tour had I been the docent, and ultimately I came up with my own narrative on the story of impressionism, which I would in fact like to share with you however, for the sake of holding you attention I will do so another time...

Off to the Rodin Museum! We're all familiar with Rodin's most famous work, The Thinker (1902), but thanks to my visit to the Rodin Museum, I've seen every possible permutation of the work. The Thinker was originally meant to depict Dante in front of the Gates of Hell, from his "The Inferno." The number one thing the work is intended to represent is the importance of intellect, however from a quick glimpse at the work it seems to be more representative of the pain caused by intellect - you know, a visual representation of the opposite of "stupidity is bliss." Regardless, The Thinker is surely not up there on the list of the darkest of Rodin's works - for something extremely disturbing Google The Cry (c. late 19th century). The collection is housed in a old, almost decaying, mansion that has a musty smell and feels like a brightly lit haunted house spooked by Rodin's beautifully rendered, contorted, disturbed, and disturbing figures. The whole scene was inspiring and I actually sat and sketched for over an hour and then wondered the gardens for another hour and took photos, (on an archaic disposable camera, since my digital ran out of battery on the first day). (Oh and Ramon, if you are out there reading this, I found a very special bronze Gaunyin from China, she was seated with a child on her knees - when I have my pictures developed I will send a photo of her to you.)

The next museum I visited was Musee du Quai Branly, which is absolutely one of the weirdest museums in that it looks like a combination between a jungle and a kids museums, which ironically are the two stereotypes about "primitive," or indigenous, art and cultures that the museum tries to fight. The spiral structure of the museum is reminiscent of the Guggenheim in NYC, except instead of the empty space in the center there is an exposed bunker that houses all of the works which aren't formally on display. The outside of the building is quite interesting, as it is a "living wall" that was designed and planted by Gilles Clément and Patrick Blanc. (When I get my disposable camera back I will upload a photo of this...) I enjoyed viewing the art, particularly because I studied African art for two semesters in college, but I think I'm a little jaded because I can see similar art objects at Alexander's house whenever I want since his father collects art of pre-modern cultures. (Visit his family's collection website at: www.tomkinscollection.org) However, one installation called The River (2010) by Charles Sandison is worthy of mention. The River is a video projection on the path through the museum, containing an assortment of words whose connections I could not determine. Sandison is a post-minimalist, conceptual artist whose works always incorporate words - as he says, "Words are very important, they seem to have a life and history... I precieve them as living entities." I personally enjoyed watching people interact with the projected words as they wooshed accross the floor in an unfamiliar way. Some people didn't want to step on the words at all as if it was sacreligous to do so, others deliberately stepped on particular words... Feel free to watch this YouTube clip to get the feeling:

Following the Musee du Quai Branly, I walked beneath the Eiffel Tower to the Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. (Unfortunately I couldn't go to the top because the wait was over an hour, however I did take a photograph of a person standing on a ridiculous Eiffel Tower veiw-simulator billboard thing, which again, I will post when I get my disposable camera developed. As you can imagine, that was a very funny sight.) Sadly a large part of their perminant collection was closed for rennovations, however I had the honor of seeing ceramics created by Matisse and the other fauvists, who I didn't even know produced ceramics! My favorite part of the museum was a corner made up of two pure white walls, covered in a Malevich collage - the instillation is called The Last Futurist Exhibtion, (1985). My articulation will not do justice to the instillation, and Google failed to come up with a colored photograph, so you'll just have to wait patiently until I develop my pictures to catch a glimpse of the awesome scene. (Ugh, what did you people do before the age of digital photography, with its instant gratification properties?)

At the Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, I took the time to watch short video art films, (I don't think that's what they called,) which is something I never do, largely because of my ignorance regarding this medium. However, I was inspired to watch the videos during this particular museum visit because they were set up in a cool, accessible way: they had several videos playing in different parts of one huge, dark room, and surrounding each television were comfortable chairs to rest on, (a huge draw after all of the walking I'd done,) and smaller screens showing interviews with the artists for the purpose of shedding insight on the works. I saw two impactful (is that a word?) videos, both of which were so disturbing that I could not stand to watch any others. The first was Paul McCarthy's Wild Gone Girls (2003), an extremely graphic scene of girls slashing and delapitating each other during a sailing party gone terribly wrong. The editing of the work is meant to mimic the dicy editing of a Girls Gone Wild film, and the narrative is supposed to make you consider the effects that violence and mutilation, both real and simulated, have on the viewer. (To watch the video, visit this link: www.dangerousminds.net/index.php/site/tag/Paul-McCarthy/ ) The second video I watched was El Gringo by Francis Alys (2003). In this video, Alys essentially disappears, as the camera becomes the protagonist, serving as both a shield and a weapon against a group of wild dogs that attack him upon provokation. The intersting part of this video is that he deos something that simply could not be done using any other medium - as he says, the camera offers him a "filter," "justification," "sense of protection" in the heat of the dangerous situation. (To watch the video, visit this link: www.lumeneclipse.com/gallery/04/alys/index.html )

I probably could have stayed at the Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris for another several hours - I just loved the way the light shined through the giant windows, illuminating the front rooms and providing a view of the building's age old facade filled with skateboarders and graffiti, (an interplay that I'd consider to be art, in and of itself) - but unfortunately the museum was closing and I therefore was unable to visit the temporary exhibitions.

For what it's worth, the Palais d'Tokyo is just accross the street from the Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, and it is open until midnight... So, I headed over there to find nothing more than a monsterously industrial, terribly uninviting warehouse of a space, containing nothing interesting. In fact, I'd argue that even the most massive works or art, like the beloved Richard Serra's, aren't large enough to fill the space in any meaningful way.

Finally through with my full day of museum visits, I met up with Miriam for falafel in Le Marais, a delicious treat I'd been waiting for since the moment I booked my flight to Paris. After scarfing down the best shwarma of my life, Miriam and I wondered the streets until we stumbled upon an olive oil tasting, which we decided to partake in. The whole thing was in French, but Miriam kindly translated for me, providing me with what I imagine was a bit of her own sarcastic and humerous take on what the very serious Frenchman was saying as he discussed olive oil, and perhaps pitched his products, for nearly two hours.

That brings me to Wednesday. So tired from my jam-packed museum day, I actually permitted myself to sleep in, (and by that I mean I slept until about 9:30,) something I haven't done since arriving in Europe. When I woke up, Miriam and I walked to a hair salon where I got my hair cut, very short! I'm still abivilent about my haircut and as I told Alexander last night, "I will not set foot in another hair salon for the rest of my life." Well, maybe that's extreme, but seriously I've never actually loved any haircut I've ever gotten! Hm, maybe it's just that I don't like change all together... Anyway, here is a picture - you can decide for youselves if my new do works in my favor or not. (Please don't share your opinion in the comment section of my blog.)

After my haircut I ventured to the Pompidou. The first exhibition I saw at the Pompidou was the Lucian Freud (grandson of Sigmund Freud) retrospective. Freud's works are mostly portraits of wrinkly, saggy, and fat people, and not particularly picturesque views from his studio windows. Needless to say, I didn't like the works very much, but I did think what Freud had to say on the subject was interesting: "...I wish my portraits to be of the people, not like them. Not having a look of the sitter, being them. I didn't want to get just a... mimic, but to portray them, like an actor. As far as I'm concerned the paint is the person. I want it to work for me as flesh does."

Next I saw the feature exhibition called Elles@CentrePompidou: Women Artists in the Collections of the National Modern Art Museum. The exhibition was broken up into seven sections: Pioneer, Free Fire, Body Slogan, The Activist Body, A Room of One's Own, Wordworks, and Immaterials. (To learn more about each specific section visit this link: centrepompidou.fr/Pompidou/Manifs.nsf/0/44638F832F0AFABFC12575290030CF0D?OpenDocument&sessionM=2.2.1&L=2 .) Interestingly, there was not one single piece in the entire exhibition that was asthetically beautiful. The works were all either conceptual or graphically violent, sexual, or just downright disturbing. While I think it's admirable that such a large, world-renouned cultural institution has devoted almost all of their gallery space to presenting the work of women artists, I read a great quote by artist Judy Chicago in December's issue of ARTnews, that articulates the problematics of this exhibition perfectly: "...[women artists] are still fit into a meta-male narrative. One of our goals is to integrate women's history into the mainstream, so it is no longer a separate, minor phenomenon. There is still an institutional lag and an insistence on a male Eurocentric narrative. We are trying to change the future: to get girls and boys to realize that women's art is not an exception - it's a normal part of history." And by creating an exhibition fully devoted to feminist art, as apposed to merely featuring women's art within the galleries that house the perminent collection, we are yet again setting women apart from mainstream history.

After the Pompidou I visited Brancusi's studio, as reinvented by Renzo Piano. Not much to say about that experience, as I really rushed through it in an effort to make it to the airport on time for my flight. So, after breathing my last breath of big city air, I hopped onto the metro, to get to the bus, which took me to the plane, that took me to a second bus, which left me to take the vaperetto back to my house where Max Teicher, who had come all the way from Berlin, was awaiting my arrival, just in time to close one adventure's book, and open another...

1. Me in front of the Louvre.

2. Henry Moore, Reclining Figure, 1951. Garden of the Tuileries, Paris.

3. Amedeo Modigliani,
Paul Guillaume, Novo Pilota, 1915.
 Oil on cardboard mounted on cradled plywood. Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris.

4. Me with my new friends from Singapore in front of the Musee D’Orsay. (Pending)

5. Me in front of The Thinker in the garden of the Rodin Museum. (Pending)

6. Me in the reflection of Musee du quai Branly’s “living wall.” (Pending)

7. Man on Eiffel tower view simulator thing – LOL. (Pending)

8. Kazimer Malevich, Last futurist Exhibition, 1915. (Pending)

9. My new haircut.

10. Lucian Freud, Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, 1995. Oil on Canvas. Private Collection. (In 2008, this painting set a new world record price for a work by a living artist, selling at a Christie’s auction for over 33 million dollars.)

Hidden Treasures

In the depths of the Louvre, besides the great masterworks of Medieval and Renaissance Italian artists, I came upon a modern gem. The piece’s contrasting tones are stark and reminiscent of Malevich’s Black Square (1915) dressed up for Halloween, and the work clashes terrible with the beige walls on which it has been implanted. Regardless, the very fact that this ultra contemporary delight has been thrown into the mix of Madonnas and child, robed men, and mythical scenarios, all adorned in ostentatious gold frames, (ha, maybe they’re actually the ones on their way to the Halloween party,) makes the work standout. Perhaps in the same way the less than mediocre babaganoush I had when I first arrived in Paris was one of he best things I’ve tasted in the past 2.5 months, given every other morsel I’ve put in my mouth has been Italian.The work is by Pierre Soulages, who is supposedly having a retrospective at the Pompidou, which I somehow could not find when I was there, and is called Peinture (2000).

Soulages chose to place this work in the Louvre's Salon Carre because, as he says, the Salon Carre “brings together paintings that represent a significant point in the development of Western painting…” In particular, he situated his piece beside a work he admires, Paolo Uccello’s La Bataille de San Romano (1438), because La Bataille de San Romano refers to an outside narrative, whereas Peinture is about the relationship between the spectator and the painting, and thus the two works are entirely different and there’s no competition between them.

Despite the fact that Soulages claims that the works are entirely different, I can’t help but see a number of connections. Firstly, darkness is a key feature of both works. While sitting in the Louvre, I made a friend named Mathildes who studied Soulages work for her PhD dissertation; she told me that Soulages rarely uses color in his work, because he is interested in the way the light of a space interacts with the darkness of his canvas. Likewise, La Bastalle de San Romano has a dark tone. Unfortunately I cannot seem to find any information on whether this is in fact a night scene, however the work depicts a battle between Florence and Siena that occurred in the 1400’s. In both cases, the darkness of the backgrounds is emphasized by the presence of pigments with reflective qualities: gold in Uccello’s work, and white in Soulages’.

The second connection may well be a conspiracy theory born from my unruly mind as it sat before the two works for nearly two hours, or perhaps the influence of too much ARTnews with all of their forensic cases... However, many modern artists abstract familiar forms by reducing them to their most essential features, and call me crazy, but the more I look at Soulages' work the more I see an abstracted version of the very same scene, or perhaps the very next scene, depicted by Uccello. Perhaps Soulages represents Uccello’s knights / soldiers with all of their accoutrements for war through his messy white lines, after all life, and certainly war, are undoubtedly messy. In other words, maybe Uccello’s perfectly clear warriors are headed into the dark, chaos of war represented in Soulages' abstract work. In fact, the flagpoles in Uccello’s work and the horizontal lines of Soulages’ even flow seamlessly into one another, creating a bridge between the two.

Coincidental? Maybe… Interesting nonetheless? I hope…

More to come on my Parisian art escapades soon!

1. Kazamir Malevich, Black Square, 1915, Oil on Canvas. State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.

2. Pierre Soulages, Peinture, 2000. Musee du Louvre, Paris.

3. Paolo Uccello, The Battle of San Romano, c. 1455, wood panel. Musee du Louvre, Paris.

4. Photograph of Soulages’ and Uccello’s works beside each other in the Salon Carre.

Traveling

I know I’m always making excuses for my lack of updates, but this time I actually have a good one. My boyfriend, Alexander, was in town! He got here on the 20^th, his birthday, and we spent three days in Venice, two in Milan, and three in Florence. The week was the best of my life, though naturally too short…

The first few moments were surreal. 56 days had passed since Alexander and I had last seen each other and when I surprised him at the airport, part of me felt like no time had passed at all, while the other part felt like it had been forever. But enough with the sentimental, cliche stuff, since I already gave you a full dose of that in my last post…

Onto the art we saw and some of the fun, and funny, experiences we had during our travels!

Here in Venice we visited Palazzo Grassi and Punta Della Dogana, the Francois Pinault Foundation museums / two of my favorite museums in the world! I was excited to take Alexander to the museums because I’ve already been to both several times, analyzed the works, and learned enough to give him guided tours. Though I focused my academic studies primarily on modern art, my love for Palazzo Grassi and Punta Della Dogana have gotten my contemporary art juices flowing as of late. In my typical fashion I cannot select just one favorite work from the collections, however a piece that stands out in my mind is Takashi Murakami’s Kawaii! (2002). Kawaii is the Japanese word for “cute,” however according to Japanese culture, these flowers are not cute at all because it is considered quite rude to show your open mouth, as the Kawaii flowers do. As such, Murakami’s intention here, as is the case in many of his works, is to question the Japanese fetish with cutesy, kitschy things. He has suggested that this strange obsession stems from the emasculation of the Japanese people and their culture during WWII. When I told this to Alexander, he noted that paradoxically Japanese business is still very connected to the Samurai mentality, or code; for example, Honda didn’t trash talk Toyota when they were having issues recently, though of course in the U.S. Ford and G.M. had no problem doing so.

On a side note, over the past few weeks I’ve learned a lot about Murakami, and I really wish I could rewind a year or so and revisit his massive retrospective that was held at the Brooklyn museum, which I found interesting though I didn’t fully appreciate it at the time. Does anyone have thoughts about the exhibition or about Murakami in general? I know his work is controversial in terms of it’s relationship to consumer culture, sexuality, etc…

Anyway, in Venice we also visited the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, obviously, and while I worked, Alexander wandered the museum and enjoyed coffee with my lovely coworkers, which made me happy because one of the things I love most about Alexander is that he always makes an effort to connect with my friends…

The Milan segment of our journey began in a (mildly) unpleasant way: first Alexander and I walked to the train station in the rain – Alexander doesn’t like walking, or rain. Our train was delayed. The four-star Splendido Hotel, which we booked online and was supposedly located in the city’s center, turned out to be a negative-four-star dump, two miles from the city, which Alexander and I dubbed the Splendoodoo. The distress caused by the situation led Alexander and I to cab our way to the Four-Seasons where we sat in silence drinking our ten-euro coffee for the next several hours. That’s when our fairy godmother arrived on the scene, i.e. the phone, to save the day, or perhaps the trip – within moments we booked a new room in a chic, “design hotel” called the Straf, which was just steps from the Duomo. Unfortunately, while the grand hotel switch turned on the lights in our new room, the lights were turned off at Santa Maria delle Grazie, disabling us from seeing Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper, for which I had booked a reservation three weeks ago. The experience was reminiscent of my having missed the Sistine Chapel in Rome, so I cried for a few minutes and then went to relish in the comforts of the Straf and prepare for one of many delicious dinners.

Milan day two: We woke up and went to Novecento, Milan’s Civic Museum of Contemporary Art, however upon our arrival we found out that the museum will be closed for renovations until 2011, or 2012, which seemed nothing less than fitting, given my range of recent art viewing failures. Without skipping a beat we hit the Duomo, and though the outside is astoundingly detailed and gorgeous, the inside is not nearly as impressive as Venice’s fully mosaic-ed, golden interior. Regardless, Alexander and I enjoyed hypothesizing about how people were able to build such a colossal structure, over 500 years ago.

Next we went to the Steve McCurry exhibition, which was beautiful and moving, but also a painful reminder of all of the injustice in our world. With exception to the famous picture of the Afghan girl that was on the cover of National Geographic, (who by the way was found and photographed again just a few years ago,) I hadn’t seen any other works by McCurry. Aesthetically speaking the works are just beautiful – vibrant colors and handsome people – in fact, based on a quick glance at his lighthearted works, I’d venture to call him The Sartorialist of the developing world (See www.thesartorialist.blogspot.com .) However, as Alexander and I proceeded deeper into the exhibition it became clear that McCurry’s works are in fact quite heavy, as their content often relates to the effects of war and the oppression of children. Below I've posted McCurry's photograph of a Peruvian boy that I found just heart wrenching and continued to think about for the rest of the trip. There were no text panels discussing the content of the photos, however the curators did post the Declaration of the Rights of the Child as devised by the U.N. in the 1959. Seeing McCurry’s photos alongside the Declaration reminded me of the amazing animated shorts Seth did on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the rights of minority children, for the Human Rights Action Center and UNICEF respectively, which you can check out on his website at www.sethbrau.com.

A couple of food related pit stops later, we ventured on to the Triennale Design Museum. Though their permanent collection was entirely uninteresting to us, (and in fact featured many things that Alexander and I personally own, like an espresso maker I just bought for him and Mitch and my Persol sunglasses,) the institution was housing a Roy Lichtenstein retrospective, which was quite comprehensive and very well curated. When I say well curated, I mean that the organization of the works and text panels spark a sense of curiosity in the viewers that create excitement to enter the next room and continue to learn more about the artist and works on display… Though Lichtenstein’s most famous works, like Whaam! (1963) and Drowning Girl (1963) were not on display, there were several works from his Brushstroke series, which I love because of their ability to combine two of my favorite, though they are nearly opposite, movements, Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art. To the left you can see a picture I took of Naomi last summer, in front of Brushstroke (1996-2003), which stands outside of the Hirschhorn Museum of Art in Washington D.C.

After the Triennale, we headed back to the hotel for the Louis Vuitton fashion week party, which was hosted by our hotel! There we drank lots of champagne and observed Milanese hipsters at their finest. Interestingly, many of the men were dressed as women, and women as men, (Alexander called this “tranny-chic,” which I thought was very funny,) and lots of people brought their dogs as accessories.

Off to Florence!

In Florence we stayed with good family friends Amy and Richie at their beautiful apartment. In addition to hospitably opening their home to us, they also helped us find fun things to do, and took us out to dinner, both nights of our stay, to two delicious restaurants… So thank you, thank you, thank you Amy and Richie for your generosity.

We devoted our first day in Florence to wandering the city, which in and of itself was a beautiful experience. The second day, we visited Palazzo Strozzi where we saw the Gerhard Richter and Giorgio De Chirico exhibitions. The Gerhard Richter exhibition was fabulous and deserves its very own post, which is coming soon. The De Chirico exhibition was only okay, though perhaps I’m biased because my favorite De Chirico is at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. Additionally, Palazzo Strozzi’s De Chirico exhibition was cluttered up with Max Ernst works, (Max Ernst and the rest of the Surrealists were heavily influenced by De Chirico,) and I don’t like Ernst’s work at all, though the PGC owns dozens because, as I previously mentioned, he was, for a period, married to Peggy.

Next we headed to the Boboli Gardens, which were utterly stunning – the weather was beautiful, the trees were budding, and from the top there was a beautiful vista of the entirety of Florence. We proceeded to visit the Duomo, of course, and then headed home to prepare for dinner and a night of dancing at the Michael Jackson tribute night of a local discotechque.

On our final day, we went to the Accademia to see Michelangelo’s David (1501-1504), which we thought was displayed alongside Robert Mapplethorpe’s photos, but unfortunately, or should I at this point say expectantly, that exhibition had already been taken down and we thus saw nothing more than the exhibition catalogue at the museum’s gift shop. With that said, I was very moved when I saw David in the flesh, or maybe I should say in the stone, because it is a sculpture that I have seen, or has at least been referenced in every single art history class I have taken.

On that note, I’ll leave you with this funny little photo-log of “David’s visit to the U.S.” To wonderful adventures and good health! Enjoy!

1. Takashi Murakami, Kawaii, 2002. Acrylic on canvas mounted on board. François Pinault Collection, Venice.

2. Alexander on the train to Milan, smiling excitedly about having been forced by me to walk in the rain for thirty minute carrying both of our suitcases. Thanks for being the best boyfriend / friend ever.

3. Alexander and me in front of Milan’s Duomo.

4. Steve McCurry, Afghan Girl, 1884.

5. Steve McCurry, Young Boy in Peru, 2004.

6. Naomi in front of Lichtenstein’s Brushstroke outside of the Hirschhorn Museum in D.C. in 2009.

7. Alexander and me in our room at the Straf just after the Louis Vuitton Fashion Week party in Milan.

8. Me in the courtyard of Palazzo Strozzi.

9. Me at the top of the Boboli Gardens.

10. Michelangelo’s David after his trip to the U.S.