Virtual Line

Tim told me not to miss Van Gogh's "Cypresses" at the Met where you have to register for a "virtual line" once you get inside the museum. A text told me I had nearly two hours to kill, never a problem in this museum.  I started on the roof with "the eastside of south central los angeles hieroglyph prototype architecture (I)" by Lauren Halsey, postponed from last year.

 

Some Egyptians aren't happy about African Americans claiming Cleopatra as kin.  But when I went on a Nile cruise in Egypt, I noticed more African Americans visiting the tombs than I usually had seen at major tourist sites in Western Europe.  Who wouldn't want to claim such a powerful lineage forgetting, for a moment, that slaves built the pyramids at Giza?

Halsey, a Los Angeles native, has gone a step farther, building her own temple, giving the sphinxes undeniably Black features and substituting graffiti from her Crenshaw 'hood for hieroglyphics.

Next stop:  Tree & Serpent:  Early Buddhist Art in India, 200 BCE - 400 CE.  Somehow I didn't get the memo that CE ("Common Era") has replaced AD.  My bad.  In any case, some of the items on display reminded me of stonework I'd seen on temples in Khajuraho, which was carved centuries later.

Elephant Coping Fragment (Northern India, ca. 150-100 BCE)

Buddha Granting Protection (Northern India, 2nd century)

Buddhist Cornice Roundel (Northern India, 3rd century)

I'd seen Richard Avedon's group portrait of the Factory earlier this summer, but it only hit me at the Met that Joe D'Allesandro had a tattoo immortalizing the moniker Lou Reed used to identify him in "Walk on the Wild Side."   Question is:  did he decorate his arm before or after the song?

I hadn't seen the enormous portrait of the Chicago 7, truncated here, in a long time.  Watch the terrific Netflix movie of the same name to find out more about Abbie, Rennie and Jerry.  It's kind of ironic that Joe has outlived all three.

Van Gogh's "Cypresses" did not disappoint.  

A Walk at Twilight" (1890)

"Country Road in Provence by Night" (1890)

If I could own just one painting by a famous artist, it might very well be this.

"Farmhouse Among Olive Trees" (1889)

Field With Poppies"(1889)