Brooklyn Museum: Fred Tomaselli

For a museum with such a majestic exterior, the Brooklyn Museum was disappointing. The first floor was poorly designed and windowless; the entire fourth floor was closed off; the collections (African, Korean, European paintings) were meagre. What the museum did well were small, specific collections: the "Mummy Room" was striking (examples: a mummified baby crocodile; original pages and translations from The Book of the Dead); the contemporary American furniture and art section was attractively designed, with brightly painted walls; the Iranian and Islamic art section is apparently one of the most comprehensive of its type in the country. I would have enjoyed a New York- or Brooklyn-specific art section, like the Greater New York exhibit at MoMA's P.S. 1. I seemed to have proved correct, yesterday, the claim that the Brooklyn Museum is only worth the trip if there's a good exhibit, which there was: Fred Tomaselli.

Some artist-related keywords: California desert, birds, plants, deep red, big art, enamel, 3D, "op-art," pills, constellations, collage.

What Tomaselli does (mainly) is use pills, pieces of plants, dead bugs, etc., to make patterns and images on massive pieces of wood. He paints, too, and makes complicated collages from magazine images. Then he covers the entire piece with a thick layer of enamel, which he lets dry then paints a second, corresponding layer. The result is often something close to an optical illusion, with massive, expansive designs that, unlike messy Impressionist art (Impressionism is for blurry-eyed middle-aged suburban moms!), you can enjoy Tomaselli's paintings from both up close and far away. Looking in detail, you can see exactly what type of pills make up the pattern (he often uses Tums); being far away is also necessary for taking in the entirety of the painting and receiving the aesthetically psychedelic effects. Probably the most visually stunning art collection I have ever seen.

The Printed Note

Did I mention my internship at Assembly Journal? My official title is "contributing editor" (sweet!), and besides writing articles and editing others, I'd probably be sorting through manuscripts, researching literary events in the area, et cetera. My first article was put up on the site today! Hooray!

Fort Tryon Park & The Cloisters

I continue to discover, amid the industrial rubble and smog and flashing lights of the city, nature. Fort Tryon Park, located on the upper upper west side (near Inwood, where I got lost last time), is a hilly, rough-hewn gentle giant of a park. Though not nearly the size of Central Park, Fort Tryon makes up for its lacking area through density, stacking meandering paths atop one another as the glacial cliffs of the Hudson River's edge climb ever higher; the panoramic views of New Jersey and the Bronx are, well, panoramic. But it is quite amazing to be atop not a building, but a piece of nature and to have a view like that, as I am most of the time smothered in the underground warren of midtown.

In the center of Fort Tryon Park is The Cloisters, a museum founded by Theodore Roosevelt in 1938. The exterior is striking; it was designed to resemble a Gothic monstery, sort of -- there are architectural elements from the Romanesque (1000s AD) to Gothic (1200s, ish) to Medieval (1400s). It is essentially a venue in which to provide a "real" artistic and historic experience, meaning that the artwork and artifacts are displayed in settings that most closely resemble their original. At first I was disappointed, having learned that The Cloisters were not, in fact, actual cloisters. Yet, after visiting a few rooms, the experience became remarkably logical. I felt like I was playing a game I didn't know I could play -- wandering from the "early Gothic" hall (made to replicate the 1200s) to the "Unicorn Tapestries" hall (1500s) made me suddenly pay attention to the artistic and architectural differences between the two periods, which I already, subconsciously, knew. The early Gothic art was tortured, all stone and pointy arches, simplistic stained glass, Jesus everywhere. The Unicorn Tapestries (which are famous, apparently) were set in a warmer room, with a large hearth, thick rugs on the floor, wooden chairs, fanciful flowers woven into the massive, nonreligious-themed tapestries.

The "cloister" areas, which were designed to replicate the monastic gardens, were beautiful. One garden was strictly culinary and medicinal, growing plants that Medieval monks would have grown in their time: horsetail, feverfew, quince, stinging nettle, chives. Another contained plants that were native -- both in the wild and grown at home -- to Europe during the Middle Ages; another contained only wildflowers. (Pictures soon to come!)

An added bonus to visiting The Cloisters was a free ticket to the Met (the two museums are related). I rushed down to Central Park, but only managed to get in about 20 minutes of visiting time, which was unpleasant and rushed and I should've just gone home. I missed the "Big Bambu" exhibit I had wanted to see, and was subjected to an annoying "street performance" while I unlocked my bike from outside the front of the museum. Oh well.

The trip totaled a little over 25 miles, which puts me in good shape for the Tour de Bronx this month! Wahoo!

Parks & Recreation

Thank goodness for subsidized everything! Unlike most active New Yorkers, who prefer to pay an obscene $160 per month for a New York Sports Club membership, I've paid $75 for an entire year -- for a membership at the city's Parks & Recreation centers, which are located in all five boroughs. Many of the centers are designed for city students, and so are made up of nothing more than a gym and a ping pong room. A few of them are outfitted as "normal" gyms, complete with weight rooms, tracks, indoor pools, and cardio machines. The best ones even hold yoga and fitness classes (for free! the quality, however, I cannot yet vouch for). The only thing lacking from the centers are racquetball courts which, I now know, seem to be available only to wealthy, white men and their sons, at ludicrous $20 per hour rates and with membership-only exclusive privileges, yada yada yada. Oh well.

Today's public project was swimming, at the Chelsea Recreation Center. The pool was surprisingly clean, and the lanes were even divided into slow, medium, and fast (to help sort the old Chinese ladies from the fit foreigners, apparently). Experiencing an American indoor pool was surprisingly refreshing, as I had gotten accustomed to the chaotic free-for-all at my local Vosgien pool (i.e., no lanes, no division of ability, a generally communist sense of space). I did a decent number of laps, held my own in the fast lane, and bussed my way across town with a quiet sense of community pride. I'm starting to feel like I live here.