RAIN

It was raining when we awoke In NYC this morning.  It was raining when I went out for coffee next door.  The rain continued steadily throughout the day.  By late evening, it was a downpour.  For us Californians, it was a treat to feel the moisture in the air; to feel the skin absorb it.  We only wished we could have brought it home with us.

A lazy morning and a late start from our hotel room...

Still dry, before leaving...

Armed with a comfortably-sized umbrella, we walked the ten blocks or so from our hotel on Lexington to the Pierpoint Morgan Library and Museum further south on Madison.  Our intention was to spend a short while there and move on to other things, but the Morgan proved too beguiling for us to follow our plan.  We stayed there for the rest of the day.

Our original intention had been to see the Barbizon landscape show.  We had somehow overlooked the simultaneous exhibition of Cy Twombly's"Treatise on the Veil (second version)" but, on arrival, made that our first stop.

Nearly thirty-three length and of substantial height, this monster is a gasp-inducing vision as you step into the gallery.  Inspired by a piece of musique concrète, it features a series of scribbled "musical" notations following the length of the huge painting, left to right, against a textured grey background, marking intervals of time without apparent beginning or end.  We started with the twelve collaged and sketchily notated drawings Twombly made as he prepared for the first, six-panel version of this monumental work, finding in each of them the fascinating spectacle of the artist's mind at work.  (The musical inspiration, by the way, featured the prolonged sound of a piece of material, the "veil," being ripped apart.  Don't ask.  It's way too complicated to explore the detail here!)

No photos. by the way, in the exhibition spaces at the Morgan.  One wonders why.  They allow photos (without flash) in the library.  Is it because, as one reader suggests in yesterday's comments, they want to sell catalogues?  The images I use were pirated from books and postcards and frankly, in a couple of instances, snapped before the guard stepped in to inform us that, in this gallery, no pictures were allowed.  My readership is small enough for me not to feel guilty about this.  Here's a mostly legal partial image of the Twombly from outside the gallery...

Across from the Twombly installation, a gallery was offering the exhibition of the "Crusader Bible: A Gothic Manuscript..."

... and we thought to step in quickly to get a sense of it.  Silly us!  One manuscript page and we were captivated by these incredible paintings in small scale, filled with color and action, biblical stories of power and gore, love and friendship, royal pageantry and costume, ancient warfare interpreted with medieval weaponry and armor.  Unbelievable how the artist(s) crammed in so much action, so many battling figures, men and horses into so small a space.  How they framed the epic narratives in such compelling visual terms...



Contemporary visual novelists might well study these with envy for their sheer length and complexity.

We were entranced.  It was lunch time before we were able to tear ourselves away, and we found a table in Morgan's great, light-filled atrium designed by Renzo Piano...

... currently enhanced by an amazing installation of films of color and mobile glass panels designed by the American artist Spencer Finch...

... and inspired by the Medieval "Book of Hours"--the kind of colorful manuscript illustration in which we had just now been immersed.

Artsy selfie, in Morgan Atrium, b.g. model of the Libraropi

A very pleasant lunch, then, in this open space... and on into the dark splendor of J. P. Morgan's opulent personal study, where the corporate titan presumably oversaw the inner workings of his business and entertained the occasional privileged guest, surrounded by priceless works of art from ages past...

Talk about the 1 percent!  The wealth of this one man is unimaginable, the breadth and depth of his collections vast beyond comprehension.  Leaving his private study, we went on into the library and were stunned (once again, because we had been here before) by the books and manuscripts...

... the ancient relics and inscriptions, jewelry and art objects of all kinds.

Dizzying.  In one case, Ellie was thrilled to find a signed letter from FDR to an Arthur Spingarn...

her grandfather, great grandfather, grand uncle...? who was at one time president of the NAACP.

Then, finally, mid-afternoon, we found the exhibit we had originally come to see, "The Untamed Landscape: Théodore Rousseau and the Path to Barbizon."

It's a wonderful display of drawings and small paintings by an artist who clearly bridged the gap between Romantic landscape and the later Impressionists.  A refreshing look at the work of a man who was so much in tune with nature that he claimed to hear "the voices of the trees," and was possessed of such meticulous skill in rendering both the detail of their physical presence, their natural beauty, and the sense of awe that they inspire.  We have lost so much of our contact with the natural environment these days, it is inspiring to be reminded of its importance in our human lives.

A stop at the Morgan's gift shop, where we were parted from a bit of our cash reserves, and a walk back through the rain to our hotel, where we managed a half-hour's rest.  Then out into the rain again for a walk across town to the theater district and dinner at a small, crowded French restaurant I had found online.  Country French, not haute cuisine French. But very pleasant.  Totally edible...

We had booked tickets for our show from Los Angeles a couple of months ago, and we were glad we had.

"The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" had just come across to Broadway from London's West End, where it had received rave reviews.  I discovered it by accident online and, knowing nothing about it, bought tickets.  It turned out to be perhaps the most extraordinary piece of theater I have ever seen.  It takes you literally inside the mind of a high-functioning autistic 15-year old boy who struggles to understand the people and the disturbing, fast-paced world around him; and at the same time explores the peculiar agony of those who know and love him.  The stage setting is amazing--a simple cube on a time/space axis defined by lines of nigh tech lights whose color and intensity is varied to infinite effect.  Imagine the thunderous sounds, the bewilderment of lights and motion in a London tube station brought to life inside the head, and you'll get close to the overpowering visual effects this show achieves.  This is not a review, or I'd have time and space to elaborate.  I don't.  Enough to say that the superlatives very soon run out in attempting to do justice to this mind-bending piece of theater.  Funny and tragic, both, it produces frequent sympathetic belly-laughs... and brings you close to tears.  If you get to New York, this is one that should not be missed.

The rain was bucketing down when we left the theater, but even so we ventured the walk back from Broadway across the Avenue of the Americas, Fifth Avenue, Madison and Park to Lexington--and arrived pretty much sodden at our hotel.  Another New York day...