First Saturday at Brooklyn Museum

I'm afraid the word is out about the Target-sponsored free evenings at MoMA (4-8 Fridays) and the Brooklyn Museum (5-11 on the first Saturday of each month). On Friday, I went to MoMA at 4 p.m.; the line snaked around outside, so I went to Lee's Art Shop to pick out a frame for my brother's birthday present. I came back at 4:35 p.m., and the line was just as long. So I went home, changed clothes, and came back in to meet up with a friend at Home. (Home is not the same as home; it is in Manhattan.)

Yesterday, fifteen of us went to "First Saturday" at Brooklyn Museum. Given the spectacularly temperate weather, we were not the only people to think of this. We thought we could dodge the crowds to some extent by not standing in line for the special items, such as guided tours of exhibits and free showings of "The Muppets Take Manhattan" (which I haven't seen, but gave to my brother and his family as shameless pro-NYC propaganda) and "Laura" (which I own). But it turns out that everyone in Brooklyn turned out to see the main attraction: an exhibition of Annie Liebovitz's photographs. The photographs were all in black-and-white, with crisp detail, and were a mixture of personal and professional works. Some of the photos - e.g., celebrities featured on the cover of Vanity Fair - were very familiar, but were still worth a look because they are so much more gorgeous when blown up and framed. Other photographs were much more intimate. I particularly enjoyed the commentary Ms. Liebovitz provided for some of the photographs. A very few of her landscape photographs were displayed. Most of her landscapes were rather grainy, but this one had particular depth and beauty:

There were also about 100 photographs I couldn't get to see because I wasn't in the mood to shove people out of my way. Those photographs were 4"x6" or smaller, and simply tacked up on the wall right next to each other on each side of a narrow corridor. They pretty much covered the entire wall. They were small enough that people had to stand right in front of them to appreciate them, and they were so densely packed that people crammed in shoulder to shoulder (there was no blank space between pictures where a person might slip in to see at an angle without blocking someone else).

Also of particular interest were the watercolors by Walton Ford, in a show called "Tigers of Wrath." Here is a description from the Brooklyn Museum site:

Ford's large-scale, meticulously executed watercolors from the 1990s to the present ... depict birds and animals in a style resembling Audubon's prodigious Birds of America—but with a significant twist. While beautiful, Ford's paintings often portray scenes of violence and offer a wry critique of colonialism, the naturalist tradition, and the relationship between man and animal.

I would have to say that that is an understatement. His paintings are often macabre, and more so on closer inspection. In some paintings, there does not appear to be anything wrong at first... until you see (for instance) the gloves of a lady who has recently been eaten by a crocodile at a fountain.

In one, a number of birds are on the back of a rhinoceros -- not an unusual image, except that on closer examination you notice that the birds hold a string in their beaks, which goes through the rhinoceros's mouth like reins. They are actually riding on the rhino's back in an almost human sense.

Another one has a strange reversal of predator and prey, where it appears that a white bull is attacking and apparently overpowering or even devouring a leopard -- and then you realize that there is a small glimpse of pink connecting the underside of the bull and the leopard's rear. In other words, the bull is actually overpowering or (metaphorically speaking) "devouring" the leopard sexually. The leopard seems to be enjoying the experience, with its head tilted up adoringly in the bull's grasp.

There is also a painting of a tiger with a stream of bees or hornets or wasps flying up from his paw to its tail... and then you see that his tail has a spot without fur, all swollen up from the repeated stings. And many of the tiger's stripes are actually human silhouettes, though it's hard to see in this small format:


Well, after this educational experience, 12 of us adjourned to Junior's, a Brooklyn institution which is also available in Manhattan (two locations in Grand Central Station alone) and Las Vegas.

The smart-alecks among you may be counting heads in the photograph above and snickering to yourselves. Stop it!!
I can count all the way to 20 without running out of fingers or toes. Jeff left early because he was not feeling well, and Paul took this picture for the rest of us. So there!

Junior's is all about cheesecake. (You can get other things there, and the portions are indubitably ample, but they just aren't very good.) In this picture, our model Elizabeth is displaying the amazing chocolate mousse cheesecake.

Junior's theoretically has a bar (and presumably a liquor licence), but the place really feels like (and is) a diner. So Paul and Carolyn shared a Norman Rockwell moment with their ice cream soda.


Despite the naysayers and other "doom and gloom" types who claim that Generation X and beyond are all going to hell in a handbasket, we can take comfort in the fact that many solid American values and traditions continue unabated to the present day. Case in point: the time-honored "rabbit ear" prankster tradition. God bless America!