Arrived NYC from Barcelona on Wednesday, bought household supplies and crashed. The weather is wonderful for November, short sleeves, high 60s to low 70s, with some rain. Thursday was subway tickets (unlimited 1 week) and the Met. We selected 4-5 different galleries we’d like to see, mostly temporary exhibits (Faberge eggs, American quilts, House models from the Americas, and some jade). As we moved from gallery to gallery we had brief looks at many other things, Greek vases and sculpture, the Temple of Dendur, Egypt.
From the Met we returned to our neighborhood (E. 3rd St.) and had a late lunch at Katz’s delicatessen that resulted in our not needing dinner. It was divine pastrami, chopped liver, coleslaw and a vanilla egg cream, not to mention pickles.
Friday we went on round 2 to MOMA. I was particularly interested in the temporary exhibit on Joaquin Torres-Garcia (1874-1949) because of his overlap with the Barcelona modernists. Torres-Garcia lived the artist’s mobile life in Europe, working in Gaudi’s studio in Barcelona, spending time in Paris, and 2 years in the US. Well established by 1932, and seeing the impending possibility of war, Torres-Garcia returned to Uruguay where he began a school and taught, wrote and campaigned for art until his death in 1949. He was the first person to draw a South American’s view of the continent, America Invertida:
Much of Torres-Garcia’s work looks familiar to be because it seems to have influenced my late mother-in-law, artist Eleanor Haas.
Torres-Garcia: Eleanor Haas:
Not to brag, but here I am with a famous painting….
Here’s a short explanation of Van Gogh’s success at depicting turbulence in “Starry Night,” despite this being a thorny problem in physics.
Llywindatravels 2022 