Monet in Chelsea

Darlings, run don't walk to the show up now at the Gagosian Gallery at 522 West 21st Street on the late work of Claude Monet. It's there until June 26th and it's a beautiful thing. A year ago Mr. Gagosian mounted a show on the late work of Pablo Picasso. Hats off to the gallerist for bringing these shows to the public, free of charge.

Off course you know that French Impressionist Claude Monet (1840-1926) created some of the most poetic and idyllic paintings in Western culture. This show focuses on the end of his career when he was enjoying some prosperity, and had bought the house and gardens in Giverny which would inspire and comfort him. He turned his attention to the gardens and the water gardens for subjects, and created his meditative, transporting water lily paintings. You may remember when Jane and I visited his famous Water Lily series at the Museum of Modern Art.

At the Gagosian, the paintings are hung in four rooms. The gallery has very high ceilings and openings of light that imitate sky lights. It's like being in a very modern church.
(Images from Gagosian web site)

My favorite paintings were light and sunny. Green, blue, pink and olive green swirl together suggesting reflection and water depth in this painting from 1907.

This take from 1908 was more greenish, suggesting a bright day.


One painting of water lilies from 1916-1919 featured pink lilies that looked like fat roses floating on light green leaves in a pond of light blue water. Dark green tendrils of weeping willows hung down the sides. What a vision. Claude Monet once said, "I perhaps owe becoming a painter to flowers."

I have long been drawn to the work of Claude Monet. When I first arrived at college at McGill University and even before I became an art history major I bought myself in the college bookstore a poster of this painting by Monet.

It's titled The Regatta at Argenteuill from 1872. I loved it's buoyant, cheerful colors. The brushstroke streaks of pink and orange reflection in the water just made me happy.
Monet famously lived a life of great style at his house in Giverny which I have wanted to visit. I have some books about his art of living including Monet's House which covers how the house was decorated

and Monet's Table which includes recipes, for he and his wife were renowned entertainers.

The house at Giverny included a big studio where Monet painted. Here is the old man now.

I like the wicker furniture, the polished wood floor and the paintings hung high up on the walls. Isn't it fun to think of Monet painting here some of the works now on display at the Gagosian Gallery.

Family Style in New Jersey

On Saturday TD and I headed out to bucolic New Jersey, where everything is now green and lush. First stop, my brother Eric's house where we met up with my parents. Eric and his wife Tracy own the prettiest house surrounded by verdant gardens. There it was peaceful and quiet.

We had a delicious lunch

and went to a lacrosse game which my niece Jane was playing in. You remember Jane. Here we are a couple of weeks ago on the roof garden at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She likes art and she likes sports: well-rounded!

We walked two blocks under giant leafy trees to the lacrosse playing field and sat on the bleachers in the shade.

Jane scored a goal! Here she is, bottom row on the left. It was fun to see her in action.

Then it was on to the main event of the day at the home of my cousin Kathleen. My aunt Ellen, my mother's sister, age 73, just graduated with her B.A.! Her three daughters, my cousins, had a party. That's a good reason to celebrate, don't you think? It was a big party with a white tent in the backyard and a lot of family and friends. I took advantage of this garden party to wear my new Liberty tie. The white tent was accented with purple flowers and the setting was picturesque.

Do you think my cousins were influenced by my post on purple flowers?

It turns out that purple is my aunt's favorite color. In fact she was wearing a silk jacket the color of these petunias.

Little pots were arranged with a mix of flowers. My favorite detail was the little purple confetti shaped like graduation caps.

Even the desserts sparkled with purple.




Outside, my cousins Kathleen, Linda and Mary Ellen dressed in black and white gave a three-part toast to their mother. Chic, no? My grandmother would have been proud.

At age 65, Ellen decided to go back to college to pursue her Bachelor's degree. She enrolled at Montclair State College and worked hard at it for six years. A knee ailment made it difficult to walk around the campus plus the academics were challenging. She was always the oldest person in the room, including the professor. Ellen was tempted to give up but she persevered, and in a great example of determination at any age, she ended up graduating cum laude in Women's Studies. At her party she quoted Eleanor Roosevelt: "You must do the thing you think you cannot do."
Big congrats to my aunt Ellen.

Ka-ching!

Eureka, I got my first check from Google AdSense! It took only two years to accrue enough ad hits for a $100 check. I just don't know where to spend it all!
But seriously, I like having ads on the site. I know some blog friends keep their sites ad-free but I like my musings and sketches to be connected to the real world of commerce, to "Madison Avenue." And I like some of the ads too. Just as in magazines, sometimes ads add to the fun. Oscar de la Renta and Neiman Marcus have advertised on my site, and a couple of times I've taken screen shots of ads. Here is A Little Night Music, now lighting up Broadway:

An ad for Nordstrom

and this is the Metropolitan Opera's HD program in local movie theaters.


If you like my site please click on the ads to inspire the blogger (moi) to keep going and perhaps I'll receive another check before 2012!

Roses and Refuse

Along the Hudson River Park where I run and ride my bike are blooming right now the most wonderful rugosa roses. It's really a shrub with dark green leaves which explodes with joyous flowers at this time of year. The roses also smell heavenly – fragrant and slightly fruity.

Rugosa roses are native to eastern Asia where they grow on the coast, often on sand dunes. Because the plant is tolerant of seaside salt and wind, it is also known as the beach rose. Tough, low maintenance and salt tolerant, it is often used next to roads which are salted during the winter for ice. Like the West Side Highway.

Mounds of roses have been planted throughout the Hudson River Park – white at the entrance

pink at the water fountain

and along the bike path, with the river beyond

Waves of pink and red at the tennis courts.

I love this flower which is white and pale pink in one bloom.

The best part though is around the big sanitation center.

As you come up on it there are seemingly fields of flowers.

The roses diminish the sanitation truck idling in the background.

The beauty and the fragrance overwhelm.

If you have to have a giant sanitation center, it's nice to have it surrounded by roses, no?

Street Life

(click to enlarge)
Street banners and telephone kiosk ads that I wrote for Limelight Marketplace are now up in Manhattan, and it's fun for me to see things that I wrote on the street. Limelight Marketplace is the new shopping destination in Chelsea which is housed in the former Limelight nightclub which was originally the Episcopal Church of the Holy Communion, built in 1844-1850 by Richard Upton, architect of the renowned Trinity Church on Wall Street. Sixty different vendors have taken the vow, and my banners reflect the celestial offerings – it's divine!

Flowers Right Now in New York City

are purple. Like the purple pansies I planted at the front door. Pansies like cool weather so these have been happy this spring. I love climbing the steps of the stoop and seeing their smiling faces.

(click to enlarge photos)
Inside we have magenta peonies, full and luscious, each one like a ruffled ball gown which grows out of a small hard ball of a bud.

At the farmer's market there are spiky irises

and pastel cornflowers

and clouds of phlox.

I like the coolness of these purple spring colors before the hot pinks and reds of summer. This pale lilac phlox tone to me is a Swedish color. I'd like to have a room painted this hue, like a library. Right now our library – I say library, it's our office/guest room/library – is painted grey but it doesn't read grey to me, it reads dark white. Next time I think I will try a soothing Swedish purple color like this phlox.

"American High Style" at the Brooklyn Museum

Outfit at the entrance of the show by Norman Norell.

It has been quite a year for American style in New York. First there was the the "American Beauty" show and seminar at F.I.T. over the winter. Then last Monday "American Woman" opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Last Thursday, TD and I went to the opening of "American High Style" at the Brooklyn Museum of Art which is up in conjunction with the show at the Met, as a part of the Brooklyn Museum costume collection moves to the Met for care and storage.

The show in Brooklyn highlights some of the most renowned pieces from its collection. This show starts with heavy, ornate, highly structured gowns by the House of Worth, as does the show at the Met. This is because modern fashion begins with Charles Worth, the English dressmaker who moved to Paris to create the first famous fashion label. This show states that "one of his most significant contributions was to transform the perception of dressmaking from craft to art by raising aesthetics and identifying himself as an artist."

This striped dress in the middle is by Poiret from 1910. A few years ago the Met did a beautiful show on Poiret. These horizontal stripes overlaid with silk chiffon look quite modern.

This silver lame dress is also by Poiret. The notes say five embroidered pomegranates are scattered over its surface. This dress could easily be worn today - so beautiful and simple.

The outfit on the left by Schiaparelli was perhaps my favorite in the show. The silk blouse is decorated with a dazzling star burst of sequins and beads. It tops a black ribbed silk velvet long skirt. Just put on these two pieces and you are spectacularly dressed. No jewelry necessary. The top is a jewel in itself.

Here's a little nineteenth century multi-media. The painting is by Carolus-Duran and depicts Emily Warren Roebling dressed to meet Queen Victoria in 1896 in a gown by Worth. Emily Roebling is famous in Brooklyn; she was the daughter of John Roebling who designed and built the Brooklyn Bridge. When her father died, Emily took over the historic project. In the foreground is the actual dress that she wore by Worth, an elaborate concoction of velvet and silk and brocade. I was taken by the plethora of artificial flowers embellishing its long train; the woman was dragging a veritable garden around behind her!

This little figure shocked me. This is a black gown worn by Queen Victoria at the christening of her great grandson Prince Edward. At first I thought this mannequin was kneeling; I had no idea Queen Victoria was so short. Certainly you don't get that idea from glamorous movies made about her. I learned later that Victoria was so short and stout that she was buried in a square coffin. True story.

Here is an array of gowns by the American couturier Charles James who famously lived in the Chelsea Hotel. These are sculptures to wear.

After the show there was a reception in the main lobby of the museum. A few years ago the Brooklyn Museum added a new modern entrance which I think is very successful. It reminds me of the Louvre, where you are inside and looking up at the old buildings outside.

We walked down the Eastern Parkway to Grand Army Plaza, TD and I in our blazers. When we passed a family on the sidewalk, the young girl turned to her father and said excitedly, "I think they are twins!"
At Grand Army Plaza, The Brooklyn Public Library was lit up. The curving entrance features gold-embossed ancient figures around the towering doorway, like a great Egyptian temple at dusk – a distinguished center of learning and culture.