Summer Friday
some quick links for weekend reading
Hello lovely friends, the GF cake recipe I promised will come with the next installment. Instead, here are some quick hits, mostly things I read or saw this month so far. It’s art heavy because my artist’s way group has convened on NYC for a two-week residency involving a strict schedule of museum shows. Pro tip: the Brooklyn Public Library offers culture pass access to museums for free. Your library probably participates in something similar.
I will be OOO from August 24-September 8. Please send playlists and recs for books you can’t put down for beach and travel.
Things I read:
Make coffee shops social again! (truly bleak stats here)
Down Time, Andrew Martin. The Covid novel I didn’t know I was ready for. Enjoyed it, but not as much as Early Work.
Stay True, Hua Hsu. Haven’t thought so deeply about zines or grief in a long time. Beautiful view on 90s youth in the east bay, and an important look at the recent Asian-American generation. A special book, thank you for the rec, E.
Upon finding out my go-to Ikea down pillow model has been discontinued and people are NOT happy with the replacement, I engaged on the most mundane, elusive quest only to find…everything is worse on purpose now.
The great choreographer, dancer, and movement artist Simone Forti left us two weeks ago at age 91. She lived quite the life and leaves an impressive body of work—she had connections to Fluxus, Judson Dance Theater, lived in the northeast kingdom of Vermont for a decade, etc. I highly recommend the beautiful book Radical Bodies, the companion to the UCSB show about her, Yvonne Rainer, and Anna Halprin. My copy is in storage; it’s funny, I miss being surrounded by my books more than anything else I own (I kept my favorite abstract floral mug with me).
Hello? Is anyone paying attention? A SpaceX rocket crashed into the moon last week and nobody in my orbit seemed to notice. This actually happened before (2022) and got me thinking again about space trash. Almost as disturbing as the fallacy of recycling…
All my group chats are talking about this piece. I personally loved seeing an interrobang in the paper of record. Reading reminded me of the first time I noticed someone decades younger mixing references from the 90s/00s: the Mac DeMarco Celebrate Brooklyn show in August 2019 in Prospect Park.
Art I saw:
I recently spent an afternoon wandering through Bard’s Hessel Museum of Art and was deeply moved by the Betty Parsons show. I knew her as art dealer to Mark Rothko et al and had no idea about her own paintings and sculpture work. Her use of color felt exciting and discovering her oeuvre over 40 years after her death felt akin to seeing Hilma af Klint’s work for the first time. But what really struck me was her remarks about creativity and inspiration: Parsons distinguished between the world (messed up, even back in the late 70s/early 80s when she was nearing the end of her life) and the beauty of life and living. Absolutely worth a trip upstate and don’t miss the Navajo weaving show. I was surprised to see the connection to microchip manufacturing in a handcraft show. Very cool. Both shows are open until the fall. Thanks to Ryan, Ander, and Ezra for the invite.
Giacometti at the Temple of Dendur at the Met: transcendent. One of my favorite quiet spaces in New York. The current Costume show is a chaotic algorithmic mess, sponsored by Bezos/Sanchez, with high production value and low coherent narrative. Some incredible costume detailing and utterly unexpected art (a casual Picasso Blue Period painting next to a knit strapless blue dress, ok? A Luchita Hurtado tryptic shoved behind corsets from the 1880s, sure?) but kind of disappointing curation overall.
Duchamp at MoMA. Liked the chess paintings and seeing his line drawings. Interesting context for what his work evolved into and painted a loose picture of his social circle in Paris. But what I really enjoyed was the photography in the African architecture show.
Noguchi’s New York at the eponymous museum. Robert Moses hated his proposals, interesting to see what the city could have been with his free-thinking imaginings for public art in office buildings and with playgrounds and parks. Cool to see the symmetry between this and the Duchamp; the show included the chess set Noguchi designed for the same gallery show featuring the Duchamp chess paintings. For my California friends, the Noguchi Garden by the Orange County Museum of Art is really lovely and makes a nice companion to seeing the art across the street. NB: The Noguchi staff is trying to unionize and the museum refuses to meet with them. More info here.
Misc.
I watched Barbara Kopple’s The Hamptons on Le Cinema Club, originally a limited series made for TV, over several nights. (You probably know her groundbreaking coal strike doc Harlan County U.S.A.) Seeing the excess and consumption of the 2001 Hamptons scene and how unabashedly people lived and partied before smartphones is kind of wild, in stark contrast to the locals and the peaceful nature that proceeded summer shares and bottle service. Kopple’s doc features interviews with locals and notables (the Robert Wilson interview alone!). A spectacular human snapshot of the before times.
Last week I ran into my old pal James Sanders at the Odeon, funnily enough where we first met 18 years ago. He’s the downtown architect who wrote the eight-episode series about New York, produced by Ken Burns. James informed me that there are two new episodes, coming out September 21 on PBS, that catch us up from 1999 when the original episodes aired. History/architecture/urban planning wonks take note.
This was so rich. Thank you!!!🙏🏼
For reading, all things Aysegul Savas. I recently finished White on White and felt it under my skin.