one down

Today is my first year wedding anniversary and to celebrate, I'm staying home. Neal and I will spend a couple of productive hours doing homework and the like and then I think we'll play for the rest of the day, which will likely include window shopping, a matinee, and dinner out. It just so happens I was looking for recent New York pics in our folder of images and came across some pre-wedding planning photos, which is timely, of course, and made me feel very nostalgic, for that impossibly romantic day one year ago, and for California in general, specifically Oakland. Here are a few shots of the locale...


This is where the ceremony took place:


Right under this tree:


Awww...

Anyway, New York was super fun. We took the Chinatown bus, of course (why spend over 100 bucks more - per person - to take the overpriced and probably highly overrated train??), getting to the city around noon on Friday. Our first stop was the Doughnut Plant, where we shared four varieties, two raised (coconut cream and strawberry) and two cake (triple chocolate and cashew), plus coffee and the-best-chai-ever. We returned on Sunday morning (after trying a blah-boring bialy at nearby Kosar's) to try a few more varieties, that time immensely enjoying three raised (vanilla bean, chocolate, and peanut butter banana) and strawberry cake (better, in my opinion, than the strawberry raised). Yum!

But getting back to the itinerary...after checking into our hotel, we made our way to the Whitney Biennial, where we spent most of the rest of that first day. I really enjoyed it. I've heard a lot of people complain about how it didn't meet their expectations, was kinda boring, etc. The way I see it, with a survey of that sort, you're bound to disagree with the inclusion of many of the artists, the layout of the show, the exclusion of certain people or media (by the way, when did "mixed media" change to "mixed mediums"? Is this to distinguish "fine" or "high" art from mass media? Are we still afraid of the masses? I mean, come on. I'm pretty certain the plural of "medium" is still "media," "mediums" referring to those talented folk who can, like, speak to the dead and stuff, but whatev...)...but if you can walk away having jotted down the names of 8 or 9 artists that have inspired you in some way, I'd say it was a pretty worthwhile trek as far as art journeys go. But maybe that's just my sunny disposition talking.

The names I jotted down included (surprisingly, several photographers) in order of appearance: Angela Strasheim (dealing with death in a glowing suburban way), Chris Vasell, Amy Blakemore (some might describe her use of the Diana camera as gimmicky, but I kinda dug it), Billy Sullivan, Marilyn Minter (where have you been all my life?!), Florian Maier-Aichen (stickin' it to the modernist photography man that is Bernd & Hilla Becher and the whole Dusseldorf school), Mark Bradfod (anyone who can use the word "palimpsest" to describe their work is okay by me), Peter Doig, and Kori Newkirk.

On Saturday, we hit a few galleries, namely 303 to see Inka Essenhigh's paintings - I was a little disappointed but I think the sparseness of the exhibition (just five paintings, and she had the space all to herself) and amount of stark white gallery wall in relation to the paintings may have had something to do with it. A nice surprise was Tara Donovan's installation of plastic cups at PaceWildenstein's Chelsea space.



We made a stop at Chelsea Market (what could be a better follow-up to gallery art than a gourmet cupcake? See post-cupcake images above.) before heading to Queens to check out the Museum of the Moving Image. We spent most of the afternoon there. I enjoyed the various television/movie history/artifact exhibitions, as anticipated, but quite enjoyed, unexpectedly, the first floor of all variety of arcade, computer, and video games.

On Sunday we spent a couple of slightly rushed hours at MoMA, where we vied for space in front of the many Edvard Munch works on the top floor (what's with the sun-setting-over-water/quasi-religious "i" motif popping up in so many of his paintings and prints?). We made our way down the newish space rather quickly in order to grab lunch before taking the bus back to Boston.

There was more to note, I'm sure, but this blog entry's getting a little long in the tooth, if you know what I mean. More later...