The Met and The Rock

At the Met---
Brancusi I...............Occult Photography...........Brancusi II
Euro Sculpture...........Spanish Courtyard...........Art Student

At the Rock---
Look down................Retro Viewing..........Central Park West
Up the shaft.....................Middle.....................Bottom

At the Metropolitan Museum of Art:

I first saw Constantin Brancusi´s work while a student in Paris 10 years ago - I loved the simplicity inherent in his sculpture. In 2 of these photos, I was circling "L'oiseau d'espace" trying to find, in the lighting, two different ways to see the same sculpture.

The book is from an exhibit called "The Perfect Medium", about the early years of photography and its use to "prove" the existence of ghosts, ether, and other otherworldly stuff. As an art form, photography was in its infancy, and most people were unaware of how photographic plates could be exposed to produce false results. To me, it was more of an exhibit on how desperately some people needed to believe in the afterlife.

The first courtyard is filled with European sculpture; at the end of it is a lovely cafe where we ate lunch. The second courtyard was restored from an old Spanish villa. The third pic is a detail of the sculpture courtyard; no rest for the artist.

At Rockefeller Center:

To fill the high altitude viewing void left in New York by the destruction of the World Trade Center, The Rockefeller Center as re-opened "The Top of the Rock" for the first time since the 1980´s. Here we have a view to the south, a view of a Viewer, and a view north to Central Park and the upper west side.

The outside view wasn´t the only spectacular sight in "The Rock"; in a brilliant move, they have added a light show to the elevator shaft, visible through the glass ceiling of the elevator.

I want one in my building. (And no, they don´t sell "I topped The Rock" t-shirts, or you would all be getting them for Christmas...)