Category: New York

The first four days of this American adventure have already flown by, and I am already sitting on a train riding in the sunset taking me to Washington, DC.

NYC has been, unsurprisingly, an amazing first stop and the time there has literally flown by: I definitely got a lot done, but a lot is still left for next time (which can’t come soon enough).

This morning I was very happy to meet my friend Sara – also visiting NYC from London – for an interesting breakfast at Má Pêche, a cute little Asian-inspired restaurant in the basement of a downtown hotel that makes some pretty lovely matcha pancakes.

Before it was time to catch my train, I did manage to squeeze in one more museum visit. I headed out to Brooklyn to  check out the Georgia O’Keeffe exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum (something I had originally missed, and only found out by accident yesterday as I was writing my previous post 🙂 ).

The exhibition features a number of her artworks spanning her entire career, but what is particularly interesting is the focus on the development of the image (and brand) of O’Keeffee the artist.

Many of those black and white outfits that are typically associated with her (thanks also to the many photo portraits that her partner, the photographer Alfred Stieglitz, took of her) were on display, together also with the more “relaxed” denims she started wearing when she moved to New Mexico in the late forties.

It was particularly nice to see again some of her later works from this period in New Mexico, inspired by the deep connection she felt with the flat-topped mount Pedernal (apparently she once said that she believed that if she painted Pedernal Mountain enough times that God would give it to her). Here I particularly love how the flatness and uniformity of the desert landscape blurs often the difference between depiction of real objects and pure abstraction.

The rest of the Brooklyn Museums exhibit and permanent collection (including quite a lot of amazing pieces of furniture, particularly the art deco stuff) were equally impressive, and I am quite happy I took the time to come visit.

The first train ride (for this trip)

A couple of years ago I rode on the Pacific Surfliner from LA to San Diego (and back), so I am not a total stranger to the little oddities of Amtrak.

To cover the roughly 350km between New York and Washington, DC one can either spend a little over 3 hours on the National Express service , or opt for the super-modern, fast service of the Acela Express, which for roughly 3 times the price of the National Express will get you to DC in 2 hours and 54 minutes… I think someone should explain the concept of “fast train” to the Americans 🙂

While I think this trip is probably more enjoyable in the fall, with the shifting colors of the trees alongside the track, I must admit that particularly the last bit with the train practically hoovering over the waters of Chesapeake Bay as the sunset was turning everything around red made the arrival into DC quite special.

For the past 10+ years I have been spending the large part of my time on the road, travelling to many amazing places around the world and enjoying every new discovery.

At the same time, one of the things I like the most about travelling for work is the possibility of returning regularly to cities and places that are extra special to me. It takes away the “fear of missing out” and the stress of having to see “everything” and replaces it with a nice sense of “home away from home”. I love the feeling of knowing my way around the city and having my special spots to rediscover every time. This is particularly the case for many museums, from the Musee d’Orsay in Paris to the Tretyakov gallery in Moscow. Here the anticipation of new discoveries is replaced by the kind of warm feeling one gets right before seeing an old friend again after some time you have been apart. By now, I often remember in which room certain artworks I am more fond of are located, and the walk around the museum is a build up to that last corner before I turn into the room and the “old friend” will be there, almost waiting for me to come say hi. At the same time, I also cherish the feeling of rediscovering painting I had forgotten about, but that when they appear generate the same kind of happiness as the first time I got to see them.

While I have only been to NYC on quick trips a couple of times before, the city is fairly easy to navigate and I can fake the “being a local” enough not to be harassed by the guys selling bus tours around the city. Yesterday I took the chance to go back to a couple of museums I had visited in the past, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the Guggenheim.

While I do spend a lot of time in art museums, I am not exactly an “art expert” and my connection with these artworks is more intimate and spiritual, often more related to how the specific combination of shapes and colours makes me feel rather than who the artist or the subject is, or whether the piece was meant to have a special message.

Here are a few of my favourite pieces from yesterday’s visits, from Kandinsky to Delauney, Marc and Severini.

Having spent the previous 10+ hours sleeping, I woke up on the morning of May 1st ready for yet another great day around NYC.

After spending the fairly grey morning meeting a few friends downtown, I was ready to hit another great art museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, an incredible institution housed in a building designed by Renzo Piano in the Meat Packing district.

Currently the main event at the Whitney is the Biennale, which had a few interesting pieces but to be very honest was not exactly my cup of tea.

The exhibition drawing from the Whitney’s collection gave me however the opportunity to see works from a few familiar artists like Edward Hopper, Jasper Johns and Georgia O’Keeffe, but also get a glimpse into the production of some interesting African-American artists like Jacob Lawrence, whose dark and heavy paintings from the War Series, depicting his experience in the US Army during WWII, reminded me of the oppressive, claustrophobic feelings generated in the paintings from WWI veterans like  Otto Dix and George Grosz I have seen in European museums in the past. I was also happy to see again works of another great African-American artist, Archibald Motley, whose amazing work I had had a chance to see at LACMA in Los Angeles a couple of years ago (but back then I had forgotten to write down his name, so I had been left wondering until now 🙂 ).

The Whitney is also well-positioned to enjoy the High-Line, an amazing urban re-qualification project that has turned an old train line into an elevated garden and promenade that locals and visitors love to enjoy on a sunny spring day.

Odd sightings of the day

I am not much of a celebrity stalker and when I do see one I typically tend to leave them alone. It was however a bit funny walking down the West village on my way to the Whitney to run into Matthew Perry (Friends’ Chandler)… He was having a conversation with a woman who seemed to be giving him a hard time about something, so not exactly a good idea to interrupt them to ask for a selfie 🙂 .

At Whitney I then ran into Italian footballer Andrea Pirlo… But considering I haven’t watched an entire football game since 2012 I really could not be bothered with him either.

 

Saturday night I was pretty proud of myself for managing to stay awake until 10pm, and I was looking forward to a good full night sleep… It did work out, to a point, but at 5,30 am the following day I was wide awake anyway.

Considering the museums would not open until 11am and that my hotel (which btw turned out to be very comfortable and reasonably priced) is just a couple of blocks away from Central Park, I eventually had the radical idea of making the best of the situation and go for a run in this epic location. While I typically prefer to run in the evening and I did not push myself particularly hard, it turned out to be quite an enjoyable experience, and a good preparation for a respectable serving of blueberry pancakes for breakfast.

Odd sightings of the day

Apparently the NYPD is expanding its vehicle fleet with a “European touch”.

While this is definitely cute and modern, I wonder what this does to the NYPD image we have grown accustomed to thanks to many movies and TV shows.

To be very honest, I’d love to see a movie with a massive car chasing scene (Blues Brothers style) featuring a bunch of these 🙂

Getting on with the day

On the agenda for this first full day I had a couple of smaller museums: the Frick Collection and the Neue Gallerie.

The Frick collection is a former mansion of an old American industrialist with a passion for European old masters. The house is actually quite interesting, as many of the rooms have been decorated in a style you would most typically associate with an 18th century French palace. From my perspective, the highlight of the visit was the large number of paintings by Turner, including an interesting exhibitions of a series of views of ports from various parts of Europe.

But for a massive fan of the Viennese Secession the Neue Gallerie was most definitely the highlight of my day. Their collection of paintings and drawings by Klimt, Kokoschka and Schiele is impressive and well worth a visit on their own, but the famous portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer makes the experience incredible. While the intricate golden decorations are certainly mesmerizing, what I personally find amazing of this painting is Klimt rendered the colour and texture of the model’s skin: it looks almost like porcelain, with imperceptible shifts in tone and shades that can only be truly enjoyed in person (even high-res pictures of this painting fail to reflect accurately this amazing detail). The visit was also made if possible even more enjoyable by a very complete exhibition of the works of Alexei Jawlensky, a Russian-born Expressionist and one of the leading figures of the Blue Rider movement together with Kandinsky.

After spending the big part of the day feeding the eyes and the mind, I then thought it would be a good idea to also feed my belly and headed down to the East Village to sample some amazing South American food at the Arepa Factory. I must say it was very hard resisting the temptation of ordering a second one 🙂 .

 

Party Party (??)

At that point, I figured I’d head back to base to rest a bit before finding something fun to do in the evening… What a rookie mistake: the quick little nap at 6pm ended up lasting until 4am, the true revenge of the jetlag I was so quick to deem defeated (not to mention that the longer-than-expected break put me off my blogging schedule, as I was planning of writing this post then… Guess I’ll need to figure out a way to catch up soon 🙂 ).

 

It was definitely not a “cold and wet December day” when I landed at Newark airport… Having left 5 degrees and rain in Copenhagen just a few hours earlier, the 28 degrees C that met me in New York were even a bit too much for my taste… Luckily the wind made the heat a bit more bearable, and already the day after the temperature was a lot more pleasant (says the only guy who was walking around wearing just a shirt with rolled-up sleeves while everybody else was in winter jackets).

As my flight arrived around lunchtime, the obvious thing to do after dropping off my bags at my hotel was to get right onto the first item on my to-do list: the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

This is one of those massive complexes with a collection of pretty much everything which alone would justify a 3-day trip to NYC, so even though this place is open until 9pm on Saturday I had to make some though choices, so I headed straight to the section holding the Modern and Contemporary Art collection, where my eyes could feast on the impressive variety of artworks on display, and enjoy the inner peace that looking at of some of my favourite artists, including Degas and Seurat, always brings to me and that makes this type of experiences enjoyable and slightly addictive.

Before closing time forced me out of the Met, I also managed to see the exhibitions showcasing Irving Penn‘s incredible career.

Having spent 4 hours in this amazing museum and having only seen about 1/6 of they have to offer, I really hope to get a chance for a second visit before it’s time to head off to Washington on Wednesday. 🙂