Now, when I think of New York, I think of dark figures against the light.
Category: New York
New York Rust
Feeling unlagged enough at last to post some more of my New York photos. These ones are of rust found around Manhattan and Brooklyn. (And Queens)
New York Walls
Beacon DIA
We travelled on the Hudson River line to beacon to visit DIA DIA is a non profit organisation founded in 1974, and DIA Beacon was opened in May 2003.
The trip on the train was an opportunity to escape the big city for a day, see the autumn colours in the trees, and explore upstate New York a little, as well as see the museum.
Beacon is about an hour and twenty minutes on the train from the city on the Hudson River.
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The Gallery is in a restored factory built in 1929 to print boxes for Nabisco. The restoration is wonderful, yielding huge open spaces filled with natural light. The floors in particular are beautiful. No photos were allowed so I can’t show you. However, the conversion into an exhibition space is a bit unwieldy. The galleries don’t flow, and there are other somewhat frustrating elements.
Artists on permanent exhibition include Andy Warhol. His Shadow Series occupies a large gallery and is very impressive.
Richard Serra’s Torqued Ellipses are monumental, and the patina of rust on the surface of the metal makes them appear as if they might have come from some ancient civilization, or from a post apocalyptic future. The viewer can walk inside them to find themselves enclosed within soaring steel walls curving around them.
Similarly, Michael Heizer’s huge excavations sunk into the floor of the gallery and lined with steel seem to be full of symbolic meaning.
DIA also has a gallery in Chelsea, and The New York Earth Room, by Walter de Maria. This is a loft in Wooster Street, New York City, which has been filled with earth to a depth of about 18 inches since 1977. The artist insisted that the earth be of a particular dark brown colour. It is raked and watered once a week. the room has a quiet, meditative quality, and a pleasant earthy smell.
It was a great way to spend a cold autumn day in New York!
MOMA in Queens: PS1
Today we travelled to Queens, only a couple of stops on the subway. We visited the second MOMA gallery, PS1, also called the Institute of Contemporary Art. At the moment there’s a large survey exhibition of Mike Kelleys work. Kelley worked in a diverse range of media, including drawing on paper, sculpture, performance, music, video, photography and painting.
This is the city of Kandor, from the planet Krypton, preserved at a fraction of its normal size in a bottle. (Yes, the planet Superman comes from….)
The building is a very old rambling school building, and has developed a lovely patina of age.
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The old boiler in the basement had been partly coated in gold leaf as an installation by the artist Saul Melman. It was quite beautiful.
Apparently there is a second Guggenheim, too. Maybe tomorrow?
More Subway.
I could photograph people in the subway for weeks and not become bored.
Guggenheim.
Does the architecture upstage the art? The exhibition of Christopher Wools work at the Guggenheim is perfectly suited to the space: large monochromatic canvases and works on paper and panels of text displayed on all levels of the rotunda. But for me, the building is the star. What do you think?
Grand Central Station
And a few street images……..
The High Line
I discovered an El Anatsui at the high line. For those who don’t know New York, the high line is an old freight railway track dating from the time when this part of the city was a manufacturing centre. It runs above the meat packing district and Chelsea and it has been repurposed as green space. There is a boardwalk, seating and plantings, the occasional sculpture, and a few food stalls. It is a great addition to the Manhattan west side.
This work, Broken Bridge, is made from recycled tin and mirror. The tin has been perforated and beaten, and is mostly heavily rusted.
And here is a view of the high line.
There is also a video installation on the high line. A great idea!
Brooklyn Bridge at Dusk
For these I left the shutter open for some time.
BOX OF BIRDS 