York Long Photo Thin A

New

By Chris Garcia

Essay

You may ask yourself, what is this, Mr. Garcia? What new sort of buffoonery have you unleashed on the WOOF after you nuffed things so badly last year? Well, Ill tell you! I went to New York City (you can just say New York) and did a trio of Oral Histories for work, then followed it up with a visit to four museums, some visiting with friends, and a general good time. It was a lot of fun and I hope I can get back to New York sooner than later. Of course, it has left me broke, but when is that not true? So, heres what this is, of course thats a full paragraph after I promised to tell you what it was all about, isnt it? Anyhow, these are a series of photos I took on the trip, each cropped to make it into this rickdickulous form factor taht Ive chosen because it fits into my luggage so much better than full-sized zines. What you gonna do. Of course, the essays arent that typical, well they may be typical of me, and the photos are often blurry, or poorly composed, or ost often both, but still, they tell the story of what I love about New York... and what I can do while waiting for a flight.

Artworks Featured
Cover - A Mask, perhaps Tlingit, from the Met. Page 1 - Untitled by Dan Flavin Page 2 - Me eating at The Thirsty Koala. Photo taken by John Plutte. Page 3 - Bust of a Young Man from The Met Page 4 - Unique Forms of Continuity in Space by Umberto Boccioni Page 5 - Man with a Lollipop by Picasso Page 6 - Cheval Glass Attributed to Franois Honor-Georges Jacob-Desmalte Page 7 - Chess set and Tapestry from The Met Page 8 - Group of Bears by Paul Manship Page 9 -Christinas World by Andrew Wyeth Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 -

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 Yes, that is an actual Emmy and that is the view I had out of the window of the Apartment on Wall Street where Meg and Will live. Im fairly sure thats the building where the Museum of American Finance is located. And this was the second Emmy I had seen on my trip to NYC. You see, the reason I was there was to do the interviews with Computer Graphics pioneer Lillian Schwartz, but other things got added on. When we got to Lillians, we looked around and found that she had an EMMY! Shed been nominated for another, for her work with Ed Emsh on Lathe of Heaven in 1979, but she won one (a Technical Emmy) and it was on her counter. Its slightly smaller than the one at Wills, but no less cool!

OK, so Im a fat guy. I know I am, and its OK because Science will save us all! Anyhoo, I have eaten so many different kinds of food over the years, it nutty! Ive had about 100 different kinds of foods from around the world, which is nothing compared to many of my friends, but Ive always said it was a lot for a guy who has only left th eContinent twice! Anyhoo, New York probably has more different types of Cuisine than any city other than London! I was hoping to get a lot of great food, but I really only managed two significant meals out: one at a Russian restaurant where I dined with two legitimate Eastern European models! It was awesome! The other was Australian food at a place in Queens called The Thirsty Koala. It was so good. We had Lamb Lollies (I was nearly on the road to a Roo burger) and and it was amazing! Some of hte best lamb Ive ever had, but the caramelized Pumpkin was the best thing ever! The thing about the place was how well-cooked everything was. The crispness of the salad stood up well to the musky pumpkin and the gamey lamb! PERFECT!

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The Met

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a hallowed Hall for Museum Types. Its a legandary place and its got a collection among the best that Ive ever seen. I went there when I was a kid, but I hvent been back in more than twenty years! Thus, I went there this time with the idea that Id enjoy a leisureely visit. Now, the real reason I was in New York at all was for Oral Histories, and the one I had to do on Thursday was scheduled for 10am, but it ended up lasting until almos t2:30! That happens, but it meant that I had only 2 hours to go all through the place. So, once again, Chris Power trips through a Museum! They have an exceptional collection of Medieval, Egyptian, Roman, and various African, MesoAmerican, and European pieces of Art & Culture. Its an amazing collection, and it was in the Roman Galleries that I had the most fun. Thats right, the Roman Galleries. You see in that statue over there, these guys understodd how to make realistic pieces. That guy in that statue there, upclose, and if you dont notice that his skin is marble, its amazingmly realistic. The hair and the beard especially. Greek art was nice, but it didnt look real. Roman art DID!

Now, I headed over to the Museum of American Finance, right across Wall Street from where I was staying with Meg Totusek and Will Frank. I hadnt planned on going, but I saw the sign as I was walking back to their place and figured Id swing by. Its a pretty nice location, actaully. Its got a lot of stock artifacts, including Tickertapes from the 1929 Crash, and lots of stock certificates, a bit on the history of money. The place is largely dedicated to Al Hamilton. That pair of statues of Burr and Hamilton facing off with their guns raised, greats you as you come up the stairway into the museum area. Now, the Burr Hamilton duel was a significant poit in the history of American Politics, I mean Burr was VIce-President and Hamilton was one of the most respected men in all of America... even if he was a dirty foreigner. Go there, if only to see all the interactives!

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The Museum of American Finance

I am not a big fan of Olde Tyme Art. It just leaves me cold. Its just craft, an atte,]mpt to recreate the image of the wold we live in, with as great a fidelity as possible. Even El Greco, so influenced so many of the early Modernist Artists, was trying to paint the real worl, but alas, wasnt a great painter. The fact that he got over with Art Hisory types and the buyers of the day is a testament to the brilliance of his compositions. The Turn-of-The-Century arts world gave us a bunch of artists who were concerned with teh idea of portraying movement. The Statues of the Futurists were amazing, and there are others that may or may not have been a part of the movement (including Brancussis works, and that woman who seems to be made of concrete-dipped pipecleaners. Both the Met and the MoMA had this statue, or two that were so closely formed as to be nearly indistinguishable, and they tell a story of how traditional art is no longer suited to sit stationary in a gallery, how the pressing forward motion of time must be presented in the arts, and these statues do just that! Also, I just like this one.

 I like to take pictures of people taking pictures. Almost universally, their pictures are better than mine taking pictures of them taking pictures. Im not good at the picture thing, and part of that is what I want out of photos. What do I want? I want a situation. I want people interacting with their spaces, especailly if that space is a museum. There is little more interactive than visiting a museum. You have to be around people. you have to rea, you do stuff together. You might not talk, but you are all intereacting with the same items. And taking a photo is a high-level form of an individual interacting with their museum. You see, the thing Museum types want more than anything is for visitors to walk away with an experience, and one in which teyve significantly interacted with the artifasts, Its them taking a moment in their lives and putting it to image so that they can re-live it whenever they want. I like to capture that moment, largely because I cn can ardly fo that on my museum visisi. This one,

That previous image was of a Peruvian Scissor Dancer. No other video showed a dance that was as energetic as teh Peruvian Scissor Daners. They dance a jib-like, leaping dance. First off, theyre dancing with scissors! Real scissors! Thats gotta be dangerous! The pose they put the Scissor Dancer into was as if it was flying, which was a bit further than anything they showed in teh video, but it captured motion and was so different than anything else in the display, which I assume was the point! The one on this page is from the Hopi, a costume used in the Butterfly Dance. Its a gorgeous piece, one of the finest Ive ever seen in person. The Headdress is made for each woman who wears it by the boy she dances with. I dont think Ive ever seen a headdress this tall and wide. Its a beautiful thing, and the lighting in the place really plays it off in the colorzones it portrays! The outfits in teh exhibit were all exceptional, and well-presented. Im glad to find that this is to be aroud for five years. Thats a long time for an exhibit, and I am certainly saying everyone should make a trip to see it! These costumes arent just ethnographic studies put in cases: theyre works of art, incredbily prepared.

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 SO, I took pictures of me in every mirror I could find at the Met. It is a staple of th eworld of Social Media to do shots in Mirrors (especially the Bathroom Mirror Pic) or of ones self (called the Selfie). I like Mirrors, so I went and did some comedy poses in them. My favorite mirror in the world is in teh Hollywood Rooseveldt Hotel in Hollywood. Its my favorite Hotel as well, but there is a missor, I believe its till on the second floor, that is suppoedly haunted by the ghost of Marilyn Monroe. Now, I know, there are no such thing as ghosts, only there are, totally. Have I seen them? Sorta. Have I heard enough ghost stories to turn my beard white? Its getting there. Have I hears them? Yes. But those are other stories. I completely believe tha ghosts exist, and that they can imprint on objectsMirrors are creepy objets for me. Sometimes very creepy. I get cold shivers sometimes at the museum when Im ther alone and I walk into the bathroom and am faced with a great rank of mirrors. Its scary. Ive been on the floor looking at that mirror and it it, in fact, creepy. Its not that mirrors scary-looking, but its out-of-place, somehow. Much like this frame, its gilded and ornate, not at all in the style of the Modern Rooseveldt. I gotta take Linda there.

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 This picture, possibly more than any other, shows the troubles I have with general photograpy. You see, this is a lovely chessboard, I believe from before the 17th Century. The Tapestry is even older, I think. The Chess Board is lit museum-style. The light falls on the object at the proper lumens, but more important that is hits things well. Now, the area of the tapestry that is near the board is well-lit, and visible, and at full-size, its rally petty. Now, I use a very simple camera, a Sony Bloggie. IT also has a Video mode, and its what were shooting 5 Cons with. This Camera has no flash. which is actually a plus in a Museum as they almost never allow Flash. The problem is that you cant throw any light on a subject. And neither do my compositions. You see, I like headroom. Preferably lots of it. Or excessive foreground. Theres a photo later that is one of hte better examples of that. I like to feel like everything is either being loomed over by the world, or is removed from us. I know, I know, Im the height of pretention. Its what I do. So here, I wanted some space beneath the ornate feet of the chessboard, so I stepped back as far as I could. It resulted in catching that edge you see at the bottom. Ive got athis thing where what I love doing I have absolutely no talent at. Still, I love it so. On to MoMA...

There is an exceptionally good portion of the New York National Museum of the American Indian and it is called Circle of Dance. Its a lovely, and GIGANTICALLY open circular area (I believe its called the Diker Pavillion) with 1/4 of the wall being a projection screen showing a continuous loop of various forms of Indian dance. Around 1/2 the area are cases with examples of dance costumes. The presentation takes up a lot of space, but its powerful. There are a bunch of amazing pieces, and the videos are snippets, but they are powerful examples. The entire effect of the exhibit is of being emersed, and I was quite pleased to get a chance to see it. The importance of dance to various communities is huge, and one of the reasons I was hoping to go to the National Archives and see the various dance footages theyve collected. This piece is a dress worn during traditional Seminole Stomp dances, which is a wonderfully simple dance, but also an excellent form of aerobic excercise!

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 I am 1/8 Ohlone. Its something I am proud of. My Great-Grandmother, Mary Cota, was one of hte last pure-blooded Ohlones of her band, and my Grandmother is one of the last living Ohlones of 1/2 blood. I spent a fair bit of time researching my heritage, and while I was at the National Museum of American Art in Washington D.C., I worked with a bunch of Indian Art, most notably a series of Pueblo paintings from Santa Clara Pueblo, as well as a series of Water colors from New Mexico. At that point, the National Museum of the American Indian wasnt open, either in Washington or in New York. It was an interesting time because they were showing their stuff at various other museums and making preparations to open. Eventually, they opened in NYC with the collection that had once been The Museum of The American Indian, They housed it in the U.S. Custom House in Lower Manhattan. Its a lovely building, and its gorgeous. Its also tiny. I mean, looking at it, youve got a good setting with a lot of space, and the two or three small exhibits are well-done, but thats about it. I think its somewhere around 10K square feet, though they do put a lot of great artifacts up. Compared to many of the other museums, even the MesoAmerican portion of The Met has a larger display space. Now, it may be that there was a gallery or two that theyre redeveloping, but it was a slight downer. Still, lovely stuff!

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MoMA

This young lady, who appears twice more in these pages, came in at the same time I arrived and we basically took a similar path all day. She was paused takign what seemed to be a hundred photos of a flourescent tube, painted yellow, on a wall with little else. So, I took about a dozen pics of her taking those pictures, and this one happens to be my favorite. Well, thats not true. The original version of this, befor eI cropped it, had about an equal amount of floor visible as there was wall. I like the lonlieness that image provides, but here, in the cropped version, I think its a bit more moddy. Of course, if I had Photoshop, and knew how to use it, I could probably amp that up a fair bit. I did monkey a lot with teh cropping, but thats easy days! See, I try! I caught up with her later in the day and showed her the photos. She was Collmbian, though spoke very good English, and she wanted to put the images on her iPad. So we did. Thats the thing about taking pictures of people from behind: they can have tons of their images captured, theyll likely never be able to be recognised, and that photo might go around the world, So, this is a part of series I call Girl With Lots of Space

National Museum of The American Indian

 Andrew Wyeths Christineas World is an American Treasure. Id never seen it until this trip. Its a masterpiece, no doubt, but its also somewhat troubing because you have no idea why shes down there, do you? Theres no one anywhere around, so its likely she fell on her own, or theres someone lurking just off the canvas, and theres also no one to help her up. I understand that the subject for this painting was actually mildly crippled, and Wyeth was making a statement on that. What really bothers me is that I cant see her face. Say what you want about the Mona Lisa being mysterious, but you have evidence. Shes smiling, a little, and shes not in pain, in fact shes in a position where we might say shes in relative comfort. Christina? We have no idea. Has she fallen and is she in pain? Is she simply laying on the grass lookign out at the farmhouses? Is she crying from having run from the house after some rebuke? What is the look on her face? I consider this one of the most beautiful and distressing paintings Ive ever seen. In the last 16 months, Ive seen the two paintings that I consider the true American Respresentive Classics: Whistlers Mother and Christinas World.

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 Robert Rauschenberg. The man was ballsy. Hed put taxidermied animals on his paintings, slap random things together, and then folks would assign them value. His explanation of his work Bed is awesome, as he basically says he had this quilt laying around and he decided to work with it, and he just thought that a Bed was a good idea. He didnt say anything on the Museums Audio Tour about this one with an eagle on it. To be honest, this is not my fave of his works, that would be the one with the Angora Goat on it, which I think is called Goat. I think Id like this one more if there was a more obvious symbolism. I know, I know, thats exactly what hes trying ot say, that there is NO meaning, but if it had been a vulture I could spin a ton of meanings out of it, liek how it was about the collectors of art who circle works, picking up what they can scavenge while they wait for artists to die so they can make their money. THAT would have been something to work with, but alas, thats not what we got!

I am a video game historian. I get paid to help ensure that the history of video games is presented to the generations of the future. I also happen to hate the academic study of video games. Let me start by sayign that the MoMA has a new Video Game Art exhibit, which I found a bit confusing, but it was interesting. The problem with every study or exhibit Ive seen about video games is so simple: they forget that no one is playing the games for any reason other than theyre fun. Yes, I get it that there are rehabilitative forms of gaming, and educational, but really, the truth of video games is entertainment, and we dont celebrate that when people write their papers and put together their exhibits. I, like Don Draper, believe that nostalgia is the most powerful of emotions, and that separates me from them.

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 You can see my ideas of what I want out of my photos in this one. Theres a young woman taking a photo, and theres a bunch of Graphic Design in a sort of wall collage in the background. Theres a completely unnecessary label-thing in the picture. Also, theres a TWA image in it, which is an airline I have loved and loved all my life. Let me explain... SO, while I was in College, they sold these packages for 500 dollars where you got 4 one-way tickets . You had to be a student, and you pretty much had to fly through St. Louis, but it was an amazing deal. TWA was sorta stuck in 1968, still with the graphic design of the olden days. I think the stewardesses were even wearing very old-fashioned uniforms. I got to know St. Louis Airport so very well, and I often scheduled it so Id have between 7 and 12 hours in St. Louis, so I went into the city a bunch. Including their art museum, The Saint Louis Art Museum (SLAM!) and there, along with the Museum of Fine Art in Boston, I started to develop my love of Modern Art.

This is a happy accident. I was standing in the Pop Art gallery, taking photos and I shot this one and the guy got in the way. When I took a look at the photos, I spent like ten minutes trying to figure out who the guy with the weird fake blonde hair was. Of course, that was not the dudes hair, but his head just in front of the Andy Warhols Marilyn Monroe. Pop Art is one of my favorite movements of the 20th Century. Its got a lot to say, and even when it goes off the rails a bit with Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, there are a lot of wonderful artists whose works I love. I briefly tried to be a NeoPop artist. Actually, a Collagist. I love the collage form, taking existing imagery and making it into new fashions. Its kinda the easiest form of art as it requires very little in the way of actual drawing talent, and thus its perfect for me! My take was pretty simple: take Household imagery from magazines like Better Homes & Gardens or House Beautiful. Then Id inhabit the gorgeously shot and light-filled rooms with dim figures. One, my favorite, was a HUGE rooms with a bank of windows (it was a tri-foldout) and put a moody Mulder & Scully in it, then images of security cameras and Checkpoint Charlie and other weird things. Yeah, It wasnt high art.

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 I am a fan of Contemporary Art, which encompasses everythign from Post-Modernism to Stuckist figurativism. The MoMA defines it as art from 1980s to today. The MoMAs contemporary gallery is awesome. Theres David Salle, who is one of my favorites, and theres Gilbert & George, and a beautifully nutty Jeff Koons. There was also a piece called Spanish Head Composition by George Condo that Id never seen. This moved me. You see, its collage, as Condo took drawings he made and attached them to the canvas, then drew a large and impressive figure in the center. The faces are strange, some drawn out, all of them with a messy urgency. They are all different, all strange, its as if its an ethnographic study of a planet where the inhabitants are bizarrely shaped monsters. Its a wonderful piece, and Condos a very popular artist with museums and art curators. I can see why. His work is very painterly, much more than Spanish Head Composition would say. Condos got something,and even his regular figurative images have a sort of bizarre un-worldly sense to them. I love how an artists work might vary all over the map and still, theres a singular sense to it.

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