Sanfranchrisko

BC and I are back in San Francisco, where, really, I look 10 years younger than I did in New York.  I think it’s the predominance of grays and blues in New York, which are just not part of the flattering side of my color chart, a deficiency of green and beige, the near absence of pastels.  Upon getting home, I immediately threw on a pink shirt and pulled out my neti pot and washed that city right out of my nose.

Our last day in NYC was spent visiting the galleries in Chelsea, where we didn’t see much to blog about, except for Lisa Yuskavage’s fabulous show at David Zwirner, where green was dominant, her bosomy babes nestled in verdant landscapes, legs spread, a pie in the face…  Her mastery over paint and technique forces an engagement with such disturbing imagery, well, disturbing to this homosexualist, and an inquisitiveness into unraveling the almost cinematically spurting content.

Having never been to the United Nations, we walked over from Chelsea.  They wouldn’t let us see much, as it was a weekend, and what a dump.  The walls were seeping, the grand side entry was completely covered up with security tents, no curatorial will exerted over the awful member nation “gifts” stuffed into every nook and cranny… Isn’t there a feng shui person on staff?  This is not the qi of international progress.

We continued our walk back to Times Square and bought tickets for one more show, Impressionism starring Jeremy Irons and Joan Allen.  The play seeks to create a theatrical and romantic equivalent of the impressions that the painters of the late 19th century sought to capture on canvas.  Unfortunately, the only impressions left on us were closer to those of branding irons.  Message after message was seared into the flesh of the helpless audience.  We didn’t find out until after that people had been walking out during intermission while the show was still in previews, so the producers cut the play and eliminated intermission.  We were trapped!  But Barbara Walters was in the audience! When she walked in, just a few seconds before the curtain went up, all heads turned her way and you could hear whispered “Barbara” “Babawa” “Baabaa” like little sheep.

BC and I checked out the Martin Kippenberger exhibition at MoMA today. It’s a really great show for people with limited attention spans, as he didn’t really stick to any one style or subject for too long, and the vastness of his output is quite entertaining, and he appeals to those who like to read wall labels and delve into the artist’s intent, as most of the work is saturated with meaning and references to art historical figures and movements. It seems very much like he was dealing with the last days of modernism as well as his own life. The last body of work on view at the museum is his reworking of the Raft of the Medusa, paintings and prints that convey a sense of an artist trying to come to terms with the past but unable to hang on, with little of the humor or irony of the earlier work—very powerful and moving.

Tonight we saw Eugene Ionesco’s fantastic Exit the King at the Barrymore Theatre, starring Susan Sarandon, Geoffrey Rush, and Lauren Ambrose. Susan Sarandon tells her husband, the king, “You are going to die in an hour and a half. You are going to die at the end of this play.” The comic absurdity of the narrative somehow manages also to be emotionally wrenching, the story basically about a man, the king, learning to die.

New York to me is the smell of creosote and cigarette smoke. And Magnolia cupcakes.