Catching Up at MOMA
Cleo and I went to the Museum of Modern Art to see the Jeff Wall photography exhibit a couple of weeks ago. I liked its vibrancy and surreal realism (?) but didn't understand some of them. We're talking about huge blowups of exquisitely printed shots, often semi-staged (or fully? I don't know) but always grounded in the everyday.
One of the most interesting was a view of a panorama (the photo itself may have been panoramic in some sense, but the subject was a museum-type panorama with painted walls from the past -- there were stagecoaches and possibly Civil War militia men -- but also, in the nearer distance, what looked like restorers working on the walls... so... layers of reality here, replete with a strange round observatory-looking thing in the middle.
"Restoration," said the artist, "has a postrevolutionary, even counterrevolutionary implication. I was interetsed in the double entrendre in the title, the idea that panorama and the "regime" of restoration of which it is involved could be identified with an ancien régime, which ironically we are preserving, and even resuscitating, bringing back to life."
Wow, just realized you can view what may be the entire exhibit online, complete with zoom-in and commentary -- thanks, MOMA. You rock.
Congrats to Nicole and Manousos on their new baby. Yay! Nicole is another friend from my tenure at Scholastic (like Cleo, from above). They now (Nicole and Manousos, not Cleo) live in Crete (how cool is that?) where she is being creative and entrepreneurial.. Note to self: plan a trip to Greece. I found an older picture of us (as usual, I'm not enjoying being photographed and hence look somewhat deranged and oddly like Drew Barrymore, who I don't think I resemble in real life. Yeah, that's me on the right. Where did that fabulous shirt go?? Nicole is the cute one on the left.)
One of the most interesting was a view of a panorama (the photo itself may have been panoramic in some sense, but the subject was a museum-type panorama with painted walls from the past -- there were stagecoaches and possibly Civil War militia men -- but also, in the nearer distance, what looked like restorers working on the walls... so... layers of reality here, replete with a strange round observatory-looking thing in the middle.
"Restoration," said the artist, "has a postrevolutionary, even counterrevolutionary implication. I was interetsed in the double entrendre in the title, the idea that panorama and the "regime" of restoration of which it is involved could be identified with an ancien régime, which ironically we are preserving, and even resuscitating, bringing back to life."
Wow, just realized you can view what may be the entire exhibit online, complete with zoom-in and commentary -- thanks, MOMA. You rock.
Congrats to Nicole and Manousos on their new baby. Yay! Nicole is another friend from my tenure at Scholastic (like Cleo, from above). They now (Nicole and Manousos, not Cleo) live in Crete (how cool is that?) where she is being creative and entrepreneurial.. Note to self: plan a trip to Greece. I found an older picture of us (as usual, I'm not enjoying being photographed and hence look somewhat deranged and oddly like Drew Barrymore, who I don't think I resemble in real life. Yeah, that's me on the right. Where did that fabulous shirt go?? Nicole is the cute one on the left.)
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