After a very fun but FREEZING day in NYC, here is what I saw!
Hirshfeld:
The Hirschfeld display at the Feidan gallery was very interesting. Margo
Feidan is the agent for Hirschfeld, and her gallery is EXCLUSIVELY for
Hirshfeld stuff. She represents no other artist! The gallery on Madison is a
very VERY small storefront at a very good address. You go in the place and
there is a guard in a room that only holds him, his chair, a small desk and
a space heater. You go down a metal spiral stairs from there to the print
room. The prints have never been mass-produced, are numbered and limited.
They are signed by H but the Ninas are not numbered by his signature on the
prints. My son thought it would be cool to get a print of Woody Allen he saw
as a gift for his NYU film school grad friend and roommate until he heard
the prices! *grin* The prices start at $700. and go up to $45,000. The
young gallery attendant was so nice and informative. She assured us you
could pay off the print in terms that were quite easy and take as long as
you needed. Of course, the print would remain at the gallery until it was
paid for....no thanks, he said!
Then we took an elevator up to the 6th floor to see the originals and an
attendant goes went with us. While we were there another young woman was in
the elevator to see the originals. She asked to see the indexes that were in
binders on a bookshelf in one of the main rooms with the original drawings.
She was looking for one in particular because she had heard her grandmother
was in the drawing! She had danced with Martha Graham. They found the
drawing she was after in one of the indexes and it was made in 1941. She
wanted to know if there were prints available for that drawing,
unfortunately there were none. The original had been sold, and there was no
immediate info for her on the buyer. They were in the process of taking down
her information when we left to track the owner and see if they could get
permission for a print somehow. It was great fun to listen in on all that
while we were ooohing and awwing over the drawings! Hirschfeld was such a
master of expressive line. I grew up finding Nina's on the NYTimes Sunday
Arts and Leisure's section. My son remembers doing that, too, and doing the
art project I taught him as a part of his 6th grade year at my school as his
art teacher/mom.
Chuck Close at the Metropolitan Museum of Art:
The show was brilliant, if it comes to a museum near you, or you get to NYC,
SEE IT! Remarkable! Just the physical size of these prints is astounding,
the process daunting, and presentation fabulous!
The Princeton web broadcast of the Chuck Close talk set the stage for this
show for me. He described making these prints and showed slides of his work.
It is still online if anybody was interested in viewing it and can be found
at
http://www.princeton.edu/WebMedia/lectures/
scroll down to Oct. 9th.
I am looking at it right now, so I know it is still on.
On a personal note, It was SO much fun riding the subways and walking around
NYC with my son, Greg. Took some pictures with my digital camera along the
way which will be a nice way to remember the day as well.
After the Museum, we walked through Central park at sunset, saw the
beautiful patterns of the black trees and decorative fences on at the snow
cover, watched ice skaters on a pond from up high as we stood high on a rock
outcropping, saw reflections of the buildings on the ice and had a peaceful
break from the wind-chill walking through the pathways there. The park was
almost empty because it was so cold except for the skating area. On the
streets in the darkness we saw the twinkley white lights on trees -What a
lovely day!
