Smithsonian

Who knew that Kongorikishi (Aka nio) was the one to protect Buddha while the latter's visit to India. Who even knew that Buddha would have to be "protected" in his own birthplace - the place that he first preached at. It took me a visit to this museum at the Smithsonian to realize all that. There is this beautiful tall statue of Kongorikishi and his brother, who ruled the two kingdoms in Japan, and helped Buddha in spreading his message.

After taking a look at this fabulous collection of Asian arts in the Smithsonian institution, I visited other museums in the area. All of these museums are free to public. Looking at these museums you can easily tell that they still don’t run out of funds at all.

I took special note of Thomas Wilmer Dewing, a nineteenth century artist who has some naturalist expressions of the female. It was quite interesting to see Algernon Charles Swinburne advocating the oil paintings of James Mcneill Whistler which promoted a euphoric stance in philosophy - aestheticism.

“Frida Kahlo” painted by Alfredo Arrequin was captivating. After looking at some of these great paintings by John Alexander, I would start to consider him one of the greatest painters of our times. His allegory of double life has been used in a lot of paintings (the most simply depicted in his work – the man of two lives) (http://johnalexanderstudio.com/main/prev/106?page=4 )

Jasper Francis Crospey was the land scape artist for the day. The other most interesting landscape artists was Robert Duncanson. Angel by Abbott Handerson Thayer appeared to be the most accurate depiction of an angel to me so far.

The real size piano by Thomas Wilmer Dewing is enchantingly beautiful. So are his other paintings. The landscape by Albert Bierstadt was a surrealistically pleasant depiction of nature’s beauty. One cannot expect this kind of a reality except in fairy tales.

Latest visit at MoMA

This was my second trip to MoMA. It is definitely the best of art museums I have been to. It is classy, appealing and very accessible. This is the first time I got to use my corporate membership (thanks to my job at JPMorgan) so there is some excitement that comes from that.


Anyways, the special tour this time was that of Latin American artists. I discoverd Leon Ferrari whose most drawing seemed to be with some drooping lines and what I might say - blobs. Technically they are called drip drawings. Then there was Gego - Gertrude Goldschmidt - who played around with distorted geometrical patterns. Interestingly some later works of Leon Ferrari appeared to have mixed theses blobs and geometrical patterns. Mira Schendel and Helio Oiticica despite their abundance at MoMA, didn't interest me much.


The Photography tour was especially interesting, because of my recent interest in it. I discovered George Bernard who has this style of introducing some kind of noise (an unsettling effct, rather) in some of his photographs. I thought that was very distinct. Of course, Ansel Adams had those really great shots of geysers being shown at MoMA (old faithful geyser). I saw some shots of these abandoned buildings by Paul strand which are probably the best of the lot. I am not into portrait-photography so much but Josef Koudelka had some of the greatest portraits I have seen. Probably because he uses background to convey some character as well.

On the top floor, the Painters garden (Etchings by Lycian Freud) has some really interesting impressionism-style paintings. Garden in winter exhibits a b&w dense and noisy painting style.

In retrospect, Jackson Pollock has similar characteristics to that of Leon Ferrari but he is a painter , of course and uses color (oil paint) more freely that Leon Ferrari can (him being a publishing artist).

Among some of the striking images were those Jean Dubuffet which had this metallic touch to. Soul of the underground looks like made from cast iron residues, actually. Other than those, there are some fine mesh drawings with pencil by Seurat that are full of grandeur despite their simple means.

Vasil Kandinsky and Martin Puryer were two other new artists I hadn't paid more attention to before.

For a cup of coffee...

It was the first time I have felt so uncomfortable in the new york streets that are always brimming with people. I tried walking to my gym last Saturday and it took me 10 minutes to cross just two blocks. For five minutes I was just standing amidst people with everyone around me probably as desperate as myself, to be just moving forward to their way. But of course, there were people with their kids showing them all the fanfare that holidays bring on the fifth avenue.

This is the picture of the most crowded Starbucks I have ever seen. Except in New york, people go to Starbucks to relax. I remember those fine evenings at school that I spent working on my math problems or writing assignments. The starbucks at new york fail to bring back any of those memories.