Brooklyn Roof: A Retrospective

Art & Looking

I’ve been thinking a lot about art the last few weeks, after traveling to Europe and seeing all kinds of breathtaking art, from vistas to paintings, sculpture to architecture.

So it was with all kinds of pleasure I hit up two museums here in New York City.  One of them, the Whitney Museum of American Art, had an exhibit by Charles Burchfield that I really enjoyed.

His art was bold and stunning.  A lot of the time, especially at the MoMA, I just walk through the galleries and not really feeling it.  I’m finding my groove, and Charles Burchfield fits quite nicely in it.

What’s your groove?  I like bold paintings that have a surreal touch, like these and Vincent Van Gogh’s work.  In fact, this next painting reminds me of Van Gogh:

There’s nothing like watching a master at work, to evoke an incredible sense of FEELING about a place versus a photograph or a book.

Then there is real life art, the soft curve of a woman’s neck or the strong lines of a male figure.  Sculpture tries to capture this, but there’s nothing like sitting in a busy plaza, piazza, square, or intersection and watching life imitate art.

New York City

As you walk the streets of the City, people pass by you; a older man in khaki pants and a fast walk, a little girl with colorful clothes running and skipping, a shapely woman in revealing evening clothes, a man in uniform, with kind eyes; you also pass by them, and you are a smiling man walking with slow appreciation, thinking fast sad thoughts.

These thoughts also walk a City of their own, a City full with possibilities, dripping with potentials.  One step, a loud step on a metal door (that leads downward under a Chinese restaurant, where bright rows of dingy shelves hold chickens and white packages) is all it takes.  Another step takes you on the stairs (serious, gravelly steps that shoulder many burdens and work tirelessly through the night) into the subway and into other places with their own metal doors in the ground and more thoughts.

Everything and nothing is possible, you will not get laid but you will sleep with someone every night even though you are alone.  Your mind will be full but you will feel empty.  Taking another step down the street towards the bar, subway behind you, your mind reels at the dizzying skyscrapers of human thought, only to be brought back to earth by a pint of organic beer and pizza.

Writing back and forth with strangers in the night, communicating in the space around you that there are two, three, four people and they are talking, but they do not know each other, and will never know each other, yet they know each other in a way that nobody else ever will–for they shared that moment together.

Jumping off the building of thought and landing on the pavement below never felt so good, and the ride on the subway, shaking with everyone else with each brake, playing solitaire and being solitary, I joined the City and the city joined me.