Where High Gets Low.
The Met recently launched a contest called It’s Time We Met, in which the museum asked visitors to submit photos of themselves interacting with the collection. Well, my partner-in-crime El Celso has done ‘em one better. He has video. And it stars me.
Get ready for the most action-packed five minutes of your lives. Then let me know where I should go to accept my Oscar. Or, barring that, my gift bag…
xox,
C.
Detail from Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, ca. 1944, by Francis Bacon, at the Met. (Photo by C-M.)
Congrats to Vidalia for winning the C-Mon Giveaway Extravaganza, S.F. Street Art Edition!
Rogues’ Gallery: The Secret History of the Moguls and the Money That Made the Metropolitan Museum by Michael Gross.
This dishy page-turner chronicles more than a century’s worth of rich-people scoop and intrigue at the Met (including an entertaining account of how the venerable institution was built upon the private collection of a fake general with a warehouse full of pillaged Cypriot artifacts). I’m still reading the sucker, which checks in at 486 pages, but thus far one of my favorite quotes comes from a museum annual report that details what went down the first day the museum opened its doors to the unclean masses on Sunday in 1889:
Many visitors took the liberty of handling every object within reach; some went to the length of marring, scratching, and breaking articles unprotected by glass; a few proved to be pickpockets, and other brought with them peculiar habits, which were repulsive and unclean.
Roxy Paine’s Maelstrom. (Photo by C-M.)
Kick ass! Of the installations I’ve seen on the roof of the Met in recent summers, Roxy Paine’s post-apocalyptic naturescape has got to be the most mind-blowing: a writhing mass of stainless steel roots and branches that emerge from the drainpipes, ready to take its revenge on humanity — kinda like a Robo-Everglades. I’d seen Paine’s lovely heavy metal trees before, in an installation two years ago at Madison Square Park. But Maelstrom, which occupies the entire roof of the museum — and which requires the visitor to duck and climb around its branches — channels a Mother Earth that is ready to rip our guts out.
I couldn’t get enough of it. And apparently neither can the neighborhood wildlife: the guards told us that the installation is visited every morning by a local hawk, who was perched on one of the sculpture’s uppermost branches when we arrived. (See a photo after the jump.) Get there first thing in the morning, and you might see the bird yourself. But, what ever you do, don’t miss this exhibit.
Maelstrom is up through October 25.
Click on images to supersize. Continue reading ‘Urban jungle: Roxy Paine at the Met.’
Detail from Self-portrait in Straw Hat, 1887, by Vincent Van Gogh at the Met. (Photo by C-M.)
Golden Showers, Met Museum-style: Venus and Cupid, by Lorenzo Lotto, late 1520s. Part of the exhibit, Art and Love in Renaissance Italy, up through Feb. 16. (Surreptitious camphone picture by C-M.)
Sweet like candy: Balloon Dog Yellow by Jeff Koons. (Photos by C-M.)
There are days a girl wants art that’s big and shiny, art that can be admired while sipping a frozen margarita and getting a tan. Until some Caribbean resort decides to do a sculptural installation (probably not that far off), there is always the roof of the Met, where you can currently catch the sight of some over-sized pieces by Jeff Koons. (I admit: I dig the balloon dog.) It’s good clean fun, in an Ibiza foam party kind of way.
The show is up until October 26th.
Click on images to supersize. More after the jump.
