Christine's Design Blog

Based on Gone with the Wind. Of epic proportions. Click to enlarge.

Just saw via the MoMA’s Twitter feed that there is a monkey going around the museums of New York!

Apparently a pianist, JoseSPiano, is behind these photos on his Flickr stream.

Some of my favorites from the monkey’s visit to the MoMA:

Monkey with Monet.

Just to clarify, this is what he’s lounging on, on one of those pink cushions to be specific (this installation was great for tired MoMA-goers … I miss it!):

And here he is at the Brooklyn Museum, which I have yet to visit. He’s certainly motivating me to go more.

These photos reminded me of Hoops and Yoyo and the photos that people send in of their Hoops and Yoyo plush toys going around the world, which can be found here. A few years ago, I, too, purchased a pair of these guys so I could photograph them everywhere … but I guess it never happened. Alas! We have Monkey now.

The Starry Night (1889)
Vincent van Gogh
Oil on canvas

The last couple times I was at the MoMA I decided to revisit this old favorite, but, much to my chagrin, it wasn’t there.

So I Tweeted:

really wishing starry night would go on view again @MuseumModernArt

And guess how they responded:

@whereismytomato Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” will be back on view at MoMA on Wednesday, June 17th!

I love a good response where you didn’t expect to get one. So, boys and girls, if you’ve been hankering to see this painting again, you can see it starting on Wednesday.

The Met Museum Store is having a warehouse sale, which means amazing discounts on books that usually cost at least $50. When I was there on Friday with my figure drawing class, taught by Thaddeus Radell, I splurged on these wonderful books, but there were many others, so you should take this chance to beef up your art library (the van Gogh was a bit pricey, but I absolutely love him, especially his ink drawings):

Howdy.

To start things off, I shall ramble on about my most recent museum visits, which were like satisfying a four-month thirst. Having not been to either the Met or the Moma since December, going to both only a week apart from each other was just the ticket.

Our figure drawing class went to the Met to make up for this semester’s snow day. On Friday and Saturday evenings, a small group of strings and a pianist play at the balcony cafe above the lobby, so it’s always nice to go then. Class was meeting at 6:30, so I arrived around 5:20 to take a look around. I only had time to look at ‘Raphael to Renoir: Drawings from the Collection of Jean Bonna,’ which is on the second floor until this Sunday, April 26.

Some of my favorites were:

Park of an Italian Villa, Jean-Honoré Fragonard

They sing for the one who made it up, Francisco de Goya y Lucientes

Houses in the Countryside in the Snow, Vincent van Gogh

Houses in the Landscape, Vincent van Gogh

At the Moma, two of the biggest exhibitions I saw were Mira Schendel and Leòn Ferrari’s ‘Tangled Alphabets’ and the Martin Kippenberger retrospective, ‘The Problem Perspective.’

Examples of ‘Tangled Alphabets’:

Lara, who I ran into as I was leaving the Moma, and I discussed in class yesterday how the exhibition was somewhat repetitive, but I suppose that is the nature of a whole exhibition based on an artist’s explorations in a single style or idea. This exhibition is on view until June 15.

My new favorite artist is Martin Kippenberger, who was sarcastic, tongue-in-cheek, and extremely prolific in his art. It seems he literally partied himself to death with his craziness, for he died at 44 of liver cancer after a short but dizzying career. The only way to truly experience the essence of Kippenberger, you’ll have to head over to the Moma before May 11 (I think I might go again).

Oh! And before I forget, another very interesting exhibition was ‘Performance 1: Tehching Hsieh,’ which showed posters, photographs, and cage (yes, cage) from Hsieh’s first year-long performance from 1978-79. The Taiwanese-American locked himself into a jail cell he had built in his apartment. For a year he did not read, write, listen to the radio, or anything other than eat the food his friend brought him once a day, have his photo taken by his friend (whom he did not speak to), scratch tick marks into the wall counting the days, and relieve himself (into a jug which his friend emptied). It was quite a powerful exhibition, walking along the wall of 355 photos showing the growth of his hair and beard (10 photos were missing due to film damage). I also had a very eeri, creeping feeling when I walked into the little room holding the cage, inside of which were a cot, sink, mirror and bucket. This one’s on view until May 18.