MoMA

Yesterday I was in NY with a friend who had a meeting. We stopped in to Pace to see the Chuck Close show and loved it. The perceptual structure of his painting was amazing. There is no way to see it in photographs. In the late afternoon we made it to MoMA for a quick visit. The new space is daunting. I felt disorientated by the pathways through the building. It might take several visits to feel comfortable in the space. Two things impressed me. We were looking at a Seurat and a guard came running up and yelled at us for "being too close and breaking their rules" pointing dangerously at the painting. We were close and were commenting on the similarity to pointillism and the Close show we saw earlier. The thing that is funny about this is that the guard thought we would harm any painting. The second thing that struck me was the way the guards yelled that they were closing. They kept it up with no realization that many of the guests seemed to not understand English. I guess that it would be to difficult to teach guards to make announcements in several languages.

It was great to be in the city I love.

My favorite painting yesterday, Mondrian's Broadway Boogie Woogie at MoMA, also related to the painting of Close.