• Picked up sign at 1211 Ave of Americas. Kinkos appears to be a front — workers in purple shirts asking customers if they need any help, but when customers say yes, the worker walks away to do something else entirely unrelated and to ask another customer if they’ve been helped yet. Sign is in good shape, but takes 15 minutes to get for no apparent reason.
• Stopped to get OJ and pastry, spilled OJ all over myself in a fit of “I’m not cool enough to not live in NYC.” Point proven.
• Dropped everything off & changed. Went to pick up shirt at dry cleaners and snacks for hotel room. Love the Amish Market down the street though it’s not exactly ordnung. Bought apples, granola, chocolate, and my favorite tea, which isn’t being sold in Austin any more.
• Met C. for lunch at a place called The Crooked Knife, which pretended to be an English pub, only it served salad. I’ve never been to an English pub that had an unfried vegetable.
• Met K. at 401 Projects to see Baryshnikov dance photos/coffee afterwards. Photos were excellent except for the 2 “recapturing the heyday of 70s video art” red pieces. Love the piece above and this, which I’d pair with a photo I have of jellyfish at Monterey Bay Aquarium like this. Not as connected to the people I knew in my 20s as K. is to them now–interesting to see them through her eyes, which didn’t experience them in the “young & stupid” years. Keep forgetting that people are still going to Burning Man en masse.
• Raced to get ready for the cocktail party. I’m always so nervous before these events–what if no one comes to the party? After enough parties, I should be over that by now, but no.
• Dinner with the entire team after with a sweet goodbye toast from my boss and her boss and tasty blood orange fizzy drink. I hope we’re done with the goodbye dinners, because I don’t think I can take another one without getting publicly sentimental/sad. Return to the hotel to find it infested with 14 year old Canadian kids on a school trip. I took that trip when I was 14. I am sentimental, while also knowing I better get some sleep tonight. Tomorrow comes earlier and earlier.

Giorgio Vasari, an Italian Mannerist, is better known for writing Le Vite, an encyclopedia of artist biographies, and then for his architecture more so than his art. He did well enough at the latter two, though, to build himself a fine house and buy a decent position in Italian society.

A surprise post from a blog I didn’t remember signing up for sent me to Colette Calascione’s website, where I encountered this:

While much of Calascione’s work is more surreal than this, I like this one, “Swimmer”, because it contains both the surrealism she employs to great effect, as well as a nod to past eras of art in the form of the Japanese print in the background.

You should go see the rest of her work and hope that she decides to do another show soon. Thanks to Meredith at Coilhouse!

I spent Thursday through Saturday in Los Angeles. I love LA. I know that might make you think less of me, the common argument being that I don’t know how shallow and insincere and vapid much of LA really is. I actually do know it and so do the people who live there. This is one of the great things that I like about it–that they know it’s all one big show.

I went over to Melrose Avenue for the first time in a long time. I had a late lunch with friends and then stopped into a few stores. The first was the super-cool, but decidedly male Munky King store for my friend to buy an Ugly Doll for her new niece. They had a lot of figurines, t-shirts that were super XL, and prints from Brian McCarty. If I had a spare $1100, I would have bought the awesome Monkey vs. Robot: The Meet and Monkey vs. Robot: They’re Late. Around the corner was the Japan LA Pop Culture Shop (myspace), where I acquired a new t-shirt for B. from Crowded Teeth. Store owner Jamie is considering selling some Gothic Lolita ensembles, which I thoroughly endorse in principle, even if the only people who can ever wear them and look decent are 5′ tall Japanese girls.

(Art: Brian McCarty’s “Monkey v. Robot”)

The Reynolds Center housing two museums, The National Portrait Gallery and Smithsonian American Art Museum, reopened July 1st and I ventured over there on a walk home from Adams Morgan to Eastern Market. To be honest, it was the promise of air conditioning and some good building design that had lured me, rather than the art itself.

I am sucker for dynamic art–art that somehow changes, either because it was designed that way or because the very act of observing or interacting with it changes it. It comes as no surprise then that my favorite piece in the building was David Hockney’s Snail Space with Vari-Lites, “Painting as Performance” (above). The room-sized view of his Mulholland drive neighborhood blown up into preposterous proportions and then painted in Day-Glo colors with a 9-minute computer program light show gazing down on it was the first piece I saw when I walked into the Lincoln Gallery of Contemporary American Art and by far the most entrancing. (The only drawback was the lack of tape on the ground marking the line that would trigger security sensors and an alert that said repeatedly, “Please step back. Security has been notified.” People were stepping too close to the work, which reached horizontally across the floor as well as vertically on the wall, so they could see the system of lights.)

While there was an entire gallery full of key pieces, including a lovely Calder scultpture, the other truly spectacular pieces were Nam June Paik’s “Megatron/Matrix” and “Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii”. There were several other extensive exhibits, including a vast collection of William Wegman pieces, featuring his beloved and popular Weimeraners. There’s an old and stuffy part of the museum too, but I skipped it in favor of checking out some of the National Portrait Gallery.

Highlights of the Gallery include the Americans Now exhibit currently open on the first floor, a Portrait Competition with an extraordinary first-prize winner (Sam and the Perfect World – above… not a photo!), and the ever-popular collection of American Presidents.

After the presidents, I stopped into the National Gallery of Art’s “Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, and the Renaissance of Venetian Painting” exhibit. I’m not much for this era of painting or content, but the exhibit had an interesting section on X-rays of the paintings, showing the underdrawings the artists did before they painted. The museum also houses one of my favorite series, Monet’s cathedrals at Rouen. The most exquisite of the series is at the Getty in Santa Monica, but the two held here are worthy enough for the time being. I’ll be back to the National Gallery to see the cathedrals again and to absorb the whole collection in bite-sized pieces.

  Recently we visited the Cezanne in Provence exhibit at the National Gallery. I like the Impressionists (what lady doesn’t) but with the exception of Large Bathers, I wasn’t very excited about the whole thing. It was crowded and after awhile all the blurriness blurred together. I did like the use of few but intense colors and the repeat paintings of the same vista. Overall, a worthy visit, but it would have been better if I’d had more time and space and a quieter setting to enjoy it.

Went to see the Hokusai exhibit at the Sackler Gallery–most favorite piece is “Thunder God”, though his later more spiritual works were also moving. I like this gallery quite a lot. It puts on thorough shows. You get a feel for the artist–enough so that you want to learn more–without it being overdone or overwhelming. My only complaint about this one was that none of the explanatory signs had Japanese translations, despite the fact that the exhibit was attended largely by Japanese people the day we were there. I think that would have been a nice touch and certainly a generous gesture to the benefactors of the exhibit.

Open until May 14.