Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC

Posted on March 19, 2014 by borysSNORC

My museum snobbery started somewhere in the early 90s, after a visit to the Queensland Art Gallery and seeing a particularly enormous and delightful canvas, depicting a bright yellow Monaro with big fat tyres and black racing stripes, fancifully entitled: “Bitch Magnet”. If smartphones had been invented then I would have taken an obligatory picture of the abomination, but seeing that they weren’t and the internet was yet to be used for anything at all back then, I am failing in my duty to have a representation of it here for your edification. Unfortunately the QAG has always seemed a little lacking to someone with an interest in ancient and medieval history, and as these things go, if you’re interested in seeing culturally significant works more than 200 years old, then the QAC is not for you. We have a bit of a dearth of that sort of thing in Queensland, which is why so many of us plan trips interstate whenever there is an exhibition travelling to one of the souther galleries that isn’t coming our way. I know many people who have coincided ‘work’ trips or family obligation trips with travelling exhibits of the Old Masters or the Renaissance Paintings exhibit in Canberra at the National Gallery. And when we do get something fabulous, like the Afghan Treasure… we are all over that like fat kids on cupcakes, starving little culture vultures that Brisbanites are.

Unfortunately (nah, I can’t back that up) my museum snobbery was only solidified by travelling to some of the most renown galleries throughout Europe in my early 20s in London, Paris, Madrid, Rome, Florence, Venice, Istanbul, Vienna etc. where I had the opportunity to see many important and famous works of art. Then I went and made things even worse by doing a degree in Visual Arts. And another one in literature and history. Oh well, so be it. But I have digressed before I even began!

Today, I made a pilgrimage to the Metropolitan Museum of Art – somewhere that has been on my ‘to do’ list my entire life, and it does not disappoint. Around every corner is another stunning gallery filled with famous and familiar names, another unbelievable artefact to examine and contemplate, another unexpected delight. Whether you are into Byzantine mosaic, Asian isomorphic representations, Egyptology, Limoge enamelware, 14th century tapestry, medieval armour, American painting, early modern decorative arts, Renaissance sacredotal painting… it doesn’t matter, they have a bit of everything. I think I spent the entire day stumbling around picking my jaw up off the floor as I wandered past all these names from my text books – Vermeer, Millet, Rubens, Rembrandt, Monet, Manet, Cezanne, Gaughin, Van Gogh, Van Eyck, Rodin, Bruegel, Holbein, Surat, Tiepolo, Lotto, and Unknown (OMG, that Unknown artist dude is crazy talented!). I was just in seventh heaven.

We started off in the impressionist gallery as Mr K has a fondness for Van Gogh that I knew nothing about and ran into all the big names from the period just sitting there on the walls, looking all innocuous and marvellous and alarmingly expensive.

There are two entire rooms filled with Degas paintings of his ballet dancers, his bathing nudes and his sculptures. Any one of these pieces would be a major draw card or centre piece for any gallery in the world, and here they have too many to count! It’s unbelievable and wonderful and perhaps even a little overwhelming, it becomes hard to comprehend exactly what you are looking at, when the normally unique and exclusive, is so almost so plentiful as to be appear nearly commonplace… slight weirdness there.

Predictably I spent quite a bit of time wandering around the Medieval European galleries and took so many photos with my proper camera that I will have to sort when I get back, but a small sample of items I snapped with the iPhone mostly include owls, heraldry, memento mori and some pelican paraphernalia.

Heraldic horse pendants.
Ivory casket, 11th century carved with warriors and dancers.
Another 11th century artefact of an obscure little bed described as the ‘Baby Jesus’ bed’ however no other details were available. Very curious thing.
A later period carved ivory rosary and detail.

Brooch of gold and precious stones, late 16th century.
Brass bowl depicting a pelican in her piety, 14th century.

Then there were the hunting tapestries. I walked into a room and saw these on my left and nearly fell over. I’ve seen it so many times in so many books… just stunning.

Obscure detail of a painted altarpiece – I liked his hat. 🙂 Have a snap of the whole work and the info on it (but that is trapped on CF card until I get home).

I spent quite a bit of time wandering through the arms and armour display and took incalculable photos of the armour, details of each, photos of rapiers, firearms, crossbows and lord knows what else. These are just some happy snaps of some 16th century armour.

I thought this was really interesting, it is apparently a Medieval recreation of Roman armour and would have been used for reenactment or dramatic purposes. Very cool.

I took many, many photos of the firearms and crossbows which I will have to post to the Lochac firearms guild FB page when I get home.
This is a 15th century Italian pietre dure table made for the Farnese family, and a detailed shot of the inlaid stone work.

An or nue piece that was stunning in real life, but this picture isn’t as finely focused as I am hoping my other images of it are.
And a French Limoge enamelled casket from the 13th century.Seriously, these were just a few of the amazing things I saw today and managed to grab happy snaps on my phone of them.

Some more paintings – Salome with John the Baptist’s head (will edit in artist later), a Tiepolo and a Van Eyck altarpiece.

I loved this depiction of the Saints in Adoration of the Holy Trinity, by an unknown spanish painter of the 15th century. It shows all the saints lined up in neat rows and the Trinity in the top centre of the piece and dead centre is HELL… dum, dum, da! Complete with evil hellfish/beast/leviathan thing. Love it!

Then I wandered around the corner and found a beautiful, and very famous, Cranach. And a couple of Vermeers, one of which is an Allegory for Catholicism I think. Then a lovely Venus and Cupid done by Rubens, and a couple of Rembrandts, one of which is a self portrait… just so many amazing and famous works everywhere you turned.

This was pretty incredible, there is a section downstairs under the European Painting gallery that houses entire rooms laid out with Louis XIV furniture and is quite reminiscent of the sort of thing you see in Versaille or the Shonnbrun or other great castles in Europe.

And after that it was time to hit the gift shop and hightail out of there, for today at least. My sticker was tattered and well used, as were my feet. Everyone else seemed to deposit theirs on a board on their way out each day… so much for the cool little fold over tin tokens that were iconic of the MET for many years.

And the best bit about the MET is, I am here all week and I haven’t even touched the Egyptian, Asian, Classical, American Painters or oh, so many different galleries to get through yet! I think this might well be the only reason I needed to come to New York.

I Climbed the Statue of Liberty!!

Posted on March 19, 2014 by borysSNORC

OMG. What a huge day. Those of you who know me are probably aware that since my last car accident in Nov 2007 I have had a big problem with stairs. They kinda make me throw up from time to time… :S

The physios at the Pain Management Clinic at the Wesley put it down to maladaptive muscle behaviour, but both last two orthopaedic surgeons that I saw noted I had a ‘bony protuberance’ that was dragging along the back of my oesophagus and triggering a gag reflex which, you know, frequently results in throwing up at inopportune moments. But fuck it! Mr K bought tickets to get up into the crown of the Statue of Liberty for today and I was going to give it my best – I even had a baggie in my pocket, in case I did chuck! But, I didn’t need it! I’m impressed, don’t know if anyone else is.

We set off early this morning for Times Square to pick up a New York Pass (look it up if you want, it gets you into everything and then some) and stopped ever so briefly by the Disney Store in Times Square for old times sake, and then we head off down town by Subway to South Ferry near Battery Park. The ferries going to Liberty Island and Ellis Island are run by the National Parks dudes (the same mob who run the trips out to Alcatraz Island by the looks of it), and we took the Miss New Jersey ferry over to Liberty Island.

It should be noted that it was bloody freezing cold this morning too… I had four layers of clothing on and was still cold, I think the apparent temperature was about -4C. Shit, I hate our stinking hot tropical summers, but this crap is so much worse. Anyway, we got out on the water and you can imagine the wind chill etc made that extra special, and we walked around the base of the famous Statue of Liberty and planning on climbing up the inside of a freezing cold copper statue. Whose idea was this? On the way, I took a few nice shots of the statue, and even took an artsy up-skirt one. 😉

Then we got to stand in some queues, for at least 30 minutes, while we waited to be security screened… again. They had already screened us before allowing us to board the ferry, but here we were being screened again. I wonder at the security measures, I am pretty sure anyone intent on doing damage will find a way to do it anyway. But we get in eventually (after putting our stuff in a locker secured by finger print scan!) and make our way up to the top of the Pedestal level, which is open to the public. Approximately 11,000 people a day visit the Statue of Liberty and everyone of those can come to this level – there is even a lift that makes this far. However, if you want to go up to the crown to see what it is like inside the Statue and check out the view over Manhattan from up there, you need to be super organized and apply for tickets months in advance.

So we get inside and see all of the cool. All of it very cool except this torturous looking construction going right up the centre which is a double-helix spiral staircase which we were going to be climbing.

The framework and copper that makes up the entire statue. We got to feel the metal that the statue is constructed from, and it is roughly copper the thickness of two pennies, so not very thick and quite flexible considering what it is and what it is all holding up.

This is what the little windows in the crown look like on the viewing deck at the top and some views out the windows:

I’m just bombarding this post with pictures really, because out of the 11,000 visitors that make it out to Liberty Island every day, less than 300 tickets are issued for people to go into the crown and that is simply because there just is no space for bulk people to process through the tiny staircases – that’s 4 million visitors each year and only about 100,000 get to go to the top. Add to that, the fact that the statue was closed from Sept 2001 until it reopened in 2009, and then was closed again in 2011 for some time for renovations, so a lot of people who have visited New York in the last decade haven’t even had a chance to get in to see this.

Last time I remember going up or down such tiny stair cases would have to be in the Underground City of Derinkydu in Kapadokya, or going up into the cuppola above St Peter’s in Rome. It was tight and tiny and if you were over 6′ tall, you would have had to hunch to make it up. The steps were not a standard step height, they were so steep that I decided to come down, backwards like you would down a ladder, and the stairway was so narrow, my jacket was catching on the hand rails all the time… I found myself not so much walking up the steps but sort of holding on facing out and crab walking my way up step by step. There are five platforms where you can stop and have a break (and in my case let a noisy family of four go past us), and if it weren’t for that I don’t think I could have made it (at each of the platforms, you can simply walk around to the other side of the spiral staircase and hop in the ‘going down’ side of the stairs if you need to pike out). Crazy steps… all 182 of them.

And I made it to the top without throwing up! So proud of myself. Though I am very likely going to pay for this tomorrow.

St Patrick’s Day in New York

Posted on March 18, 2014 by borysSNORC

Woke up on our last morning in Washington to a winter wonderland in the middle of Spring… a blanket of white snow at least six inches deep and freezing cold. We got ourselves sorted and called a cab and waited and waited and waited. Argh. Hate it when things don’t quite go to plan. Thankfully we had heaps of time up our sleeves having set the alarms for 5:30am when we had a 7:30am train. Eventually the guy turned up, and he tried to rip us off but whatever, Mr K dealt with him and we got to the station on time. Forgot how convenient wheels on your luggage are when you’re carrying stuff because you don’t want to drag your baggage through snow!

Our train trip was like flying through a blizzard, with snow flurries outside and a landscape that was entirely draped in white. We had a few delays though, thanks to 1) losing power?!, 2) having to move slower than normal due to snowy conditions, and 3) the doors freezing shut and passengers being unable to disembark/enter from certain carriages! No shit. I thought that was hilarious. 🙂

Anyway, we got to New York and pulled into Penn Station without too much ado, however these delays meant instead of arriving before the St Patrick’s Day Parades, we arrived just as they were kicking off. The cab taking us to the hotel had to take the long way around due to all the road closures.

We got to the hotel and checked in – staying at the iconic Waldorf Astoria bitches! Yep, we’re all class. 😛 And then hightailed it out onto the streets to catch some of this parade in action.

In New Orleans for Mardi Gras there were floats and then marching bands and then floats and then more marching bands… here we saw marching bands, and marching Irish clubs, marching bands and marchign cops, marching bands and marching firemen, marching bands and marching marines… and NO FLOATS!

Not only that, but there were no beads! And no one flashing their boobs to get beads! I don’t know what sort of parade you call this New York, but we were singularly unimpressed. What’s that you say? Oh, it’s celebrating a religious holiday… whoops, my mistake. That explains the lack of beads, boobs and floats. Doesn’t really explain the drunken locals spilling out of all the local Irish pubs though 🙂 There were plenty of people in a party mood, and plenty decked out in lots of green and shamrocks and Irish flags and ‘kiss me I’m Irish’ pins and t-shirt. Was all good fun acually.

Ah well, the lack of floats and beads all became a moot point as we eventually decided it was way too bloody cold to be outdoors watching the bagpipes and high school marching bands slowly file past (all 250,000 participants!), so we moved our St Patrick’s Day celebrations indoors to Connolly’s Pub for a quiet (yeah, right!) pint.

All up an exhausting, exciting and awesome day. We are settling into the Waldorf-Astoria nicely and looking forward to our stay here in New York – so much to see and do, I literally do no know where to start! – and because we are all class, we had a quintessentially American dinner in our room this evening, and ordered in some McDonalds… complete with St Patrick’s Day Shamrock Shakes! 😀

Washington Positives and Minusives

Posted on March 18, 2014 by borysSNORC

Quite frequently when I travel I like to make notes about a place, listing off the cool things and the not so cool things about a place. Mostly I do this because it doesn’t take much to leave you with an overall positive or negative impression of somewhere… obviously the longer you stay, the better the odds you will come away with a balanced view – but it’s not unheard of, for one arsehole cabbie or one day of bad weather to totally colour someone’s view of a place or an event. So I try to look at the good and the bad and find a fair perspective.

Things we didn’t like about Washington DC

The weather is unpredictable, no humidity so I’m desiccating like coconut… one day 19C next 2C and snowing. Wind chill just cuts right through you. And did I mention the SNOW! Apparently quite unusual for mid-March; I am prepared to admit that it gave the city a very charming aspect in the dawns early light… but I strongly doubt it is any one’s idea of fun to be heaving around luggage, catching cabs and heading for train stations in the snow. Urgh!
Beggars…’Excuse me. Can you buy me some food?’. *pause* ‘Who did you vote for in the last election?’. ‘Oh, I doesn’t vote.’ So how exactly is the fact that you have no social safety net, my fucking problem? Fuck off.
The train stations on the Metro are rather poorly lit but it seems to be compensated for with a strong police presence in most areas at night.
Have run into a few arrogant people here, the coffee shop crowd pushing into queues, and the inconsiderate arsehat who literally pushed my elbow off the armrest at the theatre when he sat down – twice!
Bit too much ‘America, fuck yeah’, sepo bullshit going on.

Beggars INSIDE a restaurant harassing patrons.

Things we liked about Washington

Tonnes of interesting things to see and do, museums and monuments with plenty of history; theatre and sporting events for entertainment.
Amazing architecture, we just don’t build shit like this back home. Ever.
The layout of the city is relatively easy to get around.
The level of conversation here is considerably elevated from the South… people are talking about LGBT reforms, the differences between working for government vs. NGOs, Obamacare is being constantly debated as the March 31st cut off looms. People seem more engaged.
All the public bathrooms were very clean and well maintained, I have NEVER seen this in any other city, we didn’t have to go hunting for a McDonalds toilet even once!
The public transport is quick and clean and efficient… weird fare calculations though (go less distance, but change lines and get charged more?).
Luke’s Lobsters… best lobster bisque EVER.
Cab drivers have (mostly) been quite nice, and all the cabs are clean and smoke free.
ALL the attractions are FREE. Unheard of! Museums, monuments, memorials, all of it is free to enter. You’re not even bombarded with ‘suggested donations’ and donations boxes are actually hard to find in most places.
Loved the place we stayed in Capital Hill, quaint little street and a little basement suite to ourselves. Highly recommend it.

Arlington

Posted on March 16, 2014 by borysSNORC

We took a train out to Arlington Cemetery today to see the famous rows of headstones marking fallen American soldiers. I have visited many cemeteries and burial sites over the years – the Gallipoli Penninsula, the Catacombs under Paris, the crypts under St Paul’s in London and St Peter’s in Rome, the ossuaries in Meteora, the Jewish cemeteries in Prague, the unmarked graves outside Dachau… but there is something about this place that has really gotten to me.

Arlington is a cemetery which revels and praises and celebrates the American military tradition. It starts with the voice-over on the tour bus, which takes you through seemingly endless lines of headstones standing to attention in rows of military precision, and gives you get a sense of ‘America. How fucking awesome are we?’ in this place which ostensibly exists to honour those fallen in combat. This is a place of recognition of the ‘supreme sacrifice’ these servicemen and women made for their country, but it is somehow glorified in a manner that is quite unseemly.

We were dropped off at John F Kennedy’s final resting space and found his plaque, modest and well kept, beside that of his wife, Jaqueline Onassis Kennedy. Sadly they are accompanied with plaques for their two children as well; burning beside an eternal flame lit by Jacqueline herself. The bus driver having explained very matter of factly that ‘the other assassinated Kennedy was over thatta way’ was nonchalant about the tragedy that is a political assassination – it seems part of the American imagination, just another reality of American political life. It is almost unthinkable to an Australian that we would see a politician assassinated – we are far more likely to throw an egg at them, print something horrid about them in a newspaper or yell at them in public… but kill them for what they do, and what they believe in, and what they are attempting to achieve? It just does not exist in our national vocabulary. Thankfully.

We saw the tomb of the Unknown Soldier and waited around to see the Changing of the Guard. Dress Marines looking snappy, moving economically and with such utmost precision all of which gave tell of their practice and dedication. The Sargent marched out slow time and addressed us, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, may I have your attention, please. The ceremony you are about to see has been carried out to honor those soldier who are known, but to God…’ but what he might have more accurately said would be ‘The show you are about to see has been carried out to remind you why America is what it is…’ for it felt the entire ritual is designed as part of a longstanding and far reaching nationalistic propaganda campaign. It is the first and probably will be the last time I will see so many Americans all in one space and remaining silent after having been told to be so. All those who witnessed the Changing of the Guard, stood with caps in hand and/or hand on heart, and solemnly contemplating the lost men and women from the various campaigns who are there represented in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers.

As the ritual progressed, we could not help but gain the impression that America revels and celebrates its military history – and in a costly twist of fate, has somehow failed to learn anything from the same; for they continue to embroil themselves in wars, military conflicts and engagements around the world, causing the deaths of yet more young service men and women.

Yesterday, we walked through the hallowed halls of so many monuments built to so many great men whose ideologies is engraved deep in granite and bronze for the world to see. And it seems to us as visitors that America was formed on fine ideals, ideals that were as relevant at the formation of their country as they are now, and ideals which every American appears to hold dear (some of them a little too dear), but they have become ideals which are no longer apparently in their political system, they legal system, or their collective American conscious. They are ideals to which lip service is paid, but none appear to aspire to anymore.

Franklin D. Roosevelt –
“The test of our progress is not whether we add to the abundance of those who have much. It is whether we provide enough to those who have little.”

“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it comes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism – ownership of government by an individual, by a group,”

“No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country”

Thomas Jefferson –
“If once the people become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions.”

“Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms (of government) those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny”

“We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”

“Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.”

“It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God.”

Abraham Lincoln –
“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”

“Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.”

These, and other fine sentiments from some of the greatest minds of their generations appear to be at the core of what Americans hold dear, but from a foreigners point of view, it is just that – an appearance. For here, it feels like not enough people care for their neighbours, not enough people care if there is quality education for all, not enough people care if everyone is able to access equal and affordable health care, not enough people care if every man gets paid a decent wage… they have developed the theory, taught the theory, bought the theory and think they are living the theory, yet they have all but failed in putting the theory into practice. Maybe it was working in Roosevelt’s time or Lincoln’s time, but it sure isn’t working anymore.

The American political system is broken, and the people here seem either not invested enough, or not educated enough, to attempt to fix it. They’ve drunk the Kool Aid and they think it tastes fine, but it’s slowly poisoning them and they don’t realise it yet, but they have have set a course that will see their own demise. This modern version of America does not govern for its people, it is not a government that serves its citizens. And what became really apparent at Arlington today is that the military might that America wields as the self proclaimed ‘Leaders of the Free World’ is complicit in oppressing the American people as much they think it is protecting them. The tour guide tells us proudly that they have a whole new Section 60 worked out for the already killed and the veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars… THE VAST NUMBER OF DEAD SOLDIERS RESULTANT FROM A DECLARATION OF WAR BASED ON MISINFORMATION AND LIES IS NOT SOMETHING TO BE PROUD OF! Somewhere along the line, America has gone off the rails… and one day ‘we the people’ will discover that America is not all it is cracked up to be, and I for one don’t really want to be around when the ensuing ego driven tantrum thrown by the world’s formerly largest, nuclear superpower goes down.