Shades Of Gray...

I had read in the New York Times that it was a great show and being a Jasper Johns fan I was looking forward to seeing it although the title of the show, Gray, didn't inspire me much especially in the middle of winter at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. As I walked to the museum surrounded by gray cold weather I started getting even less excited. Johns the bridge between pop and abstraction is well know for his flags, bulls eyes. letters, numbers, maps and cross-hatching is appealing because of his keep it simple stupid attitude towards painting. When I walked into the show it was one thing and one thing only, Gray. Why should I have thought otherwise? It is a long, gloomy show that must have been downright depressing to curate or maybe not, I mean you just make a call and say give me all of your gray art. Although all the iconographic grayness i.e. the targets, maps, crosshatching and bulls eyes all were painfully, excruciatingly to look at,especially I have seen all the same in the muted and inspiring colors of John's real palate, there were some collage pieces that were more to my liking; pieces with drawers, spoons, plates, strings and other bric and brac that broke out from the foggy backgrounds and expounded on a grayness of the painterly moment. I guess I never believed Johns to be a gray guy and so seeing this display neither negates or punctuates his talents it just plays in the gray area where nothing can be judged, it just surrounds you in inertia. Back outside on my walk back home it was drizzling and I had no umbrella, a final reward for an attendance of something that never really turns me on, grayness...

Murder At 435...

I wasn't going to write about this but after days of seeing, reading and breathing the news of the brutal bludgeoning of Dr. Kathryn Faughey at, The York, at 435 East 79th, I had to, not out of a sense of morbidity but out of being freaked out because that is where I lived for seven years before moving three months ago. To see the doorway I walked in and out of and the lackluster entranceway all over the papers, TV and anywhere else you might look (I'm sure it will be the New York magazine lead story next week) and the picture of the murdered doctor who I had seem hundreds of times but didn't know, it is just a little weird and I was just a little freaked out, so I must write. Especially since my thirteen year old daughter is totally obsessed with it because she believes it could have been her because being an elevator-phobe she had walked those steps so many times in her life. Although the stairs down to the basement were a less used path, making me think that whoever did commit this heinous crime knew the building and its escape route (could have it been a hit?). So my daughter being freaked out makes me even more freaked out and on that note I decided to call some old friends in the building and it was unanimous, freaked out, freaked out and more freaked out. And why shouldn't they be with a cadre of police and detectives marching in and out and a news truck parked permanently outside. Not to mention the quotes of the baritone doorman, Frank, saying that he was 99% sure he could recognize the guy, even though the guy is a murderer who is still on the loose and probably doesn't want anybody around that can recognize him. Frank was never a shy guy. How happy am I that I don't live there anymore? Need I answer that. But the whole sordid act and crime makes me again realize how fragile life is, that any second anything could happen and that in itself is the greatest reason to live life fully with no regrets. It also gives me pause to mourn the death of the innocent Doctor and her relatives, who did nothing to deserve this...

Discover Manhole Covers...

As I was tripping along to the Whitney. And I really was tripping, I almost took a header on Third Avenue tripped by something sticking out of a manhole cover's pick hole. I saved myself with a one hand drop and pushed myself up so I was able to catch my balance. Not as good as the Eli Manning escape in the Super Bowl but hey I'm not paid a million dollars a minute. I looked down at the manhole cover and saw something not too many people in the city notice unless they are hit in the head by one of the iron covers when they come flying off in the depths of winter. That happens because of some kind of chemical reaction that I don't really understand. Anyway, as I looked down at the culprit for my almost disaster, I saw the country of its origin cast on it, India. It seems most of the manhole covers in the world are made in that country, but yet it seemed a bit surreal to see it emblazoned on a New York City manhole. Manholes which are the entrance to all things underground are everywhere when you start noticing them. Some of them Con Ed's, some the city's, some of them cable companies. Each one of these iron circular entrances weigh about 100 pounds, which if you took everyone of the hole covers in Manhattan would probably weigh as much as the earth itself. Manhole covers are usually round and Microsoft made that question a trademark of their interview process to try to find people who think outside of the box. "Why is a manhole round?" There were many interesting answers but the most straight forward one was, 'because manholes are round.' Another interesting thing about manhole covers is that in those great cities that host a Grand Prix event the covers on the city streets which the race follows have to be welded down because they will fly off due to the aerodynamics of the cars and the speed at which they race. As I stepped onto the ramp leading into the Whitney I noticed of all things another manhole cover. I looked at it in surprise and amusement and read the inscription, "In direct line with another & the next". I didn't quite understand it but I took a picture of it anyway. Yes sometimes this is a world of strange discoveries even if those discoveries are manhole covers...

Smith Sprays Sparklers...

I did not know what to expect as I walked to meet a friend at the Gagosian Gallery on Madison Avenue to view David Smith's renditions of spray paint art, since he actually created all the pieces in the show in the 50's and 60's using the beloved graffiti elixir, acrylic spray paint that had just been invented. Yes, David Smith, the world renown sculptor could have been the first graffiti artist if he had done these on walls, sidewalks or subway trains. These works are transcendent, made way back when and still as current as tomorrow. The paintings are childlike and spiritual all at once. The large room upstairs is an ethereal holy land that you would expect to see monks walking around, saying their prayers, meditating on the meaning of life and death. All the works are dynamic in their imagery and simpleness, much like ancient cave paintings or the hand paintings of the aborigines. They are all on paper that have been spray painted over stenciled shapes and then joined and accented with splattering and small uses of brush work. The colors are simple, shadow-like with the pale off-white of the paper controlling the power of the images. They look very much like Smith's sculptures and capture the attention as well without the the three dimensionality. There are several sculptures peppered throughout the show. It is interesting to note that he was playing with this paint when he was in his 50's. He died in 1965 at the age of 59 in a car wreck in Bennington, Vermont. It would have been amazing to have seen what he would have played with in his later years. The show is curated by his daughter Candida Smith with Peter Stevens, Director of the David Smith Estate, needless to say they are more than up to the carrying out of this show. It is a show worth lingering over and as it flows through your being it will teach you more about a man's creativity and just plain creativity than any graduate art course could. I walked home with my friend musing over the Sprays of David Smith that set off sparklers in my imagination...