Guggenheim blah!

This weekend I decided to do a little sight seeing around NYC. I walked around Central Park for HOURS, and I could have been there longer. I saw a castle, various performing artists, and so many dogs that I just wanted to take home, including a 16 month old French bulldog named Claude. He wanted to be my friend. I have to say, once again, that Central Park is my favorite place in New York City. The sad thing is that some "full time" New Yorkers think that Central Park is "the great outdoors". I'm not going hiking or mountain climbing there, let's be serious.

Okay. The Guggenheim. Ugh! Beautifully designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, this masterpiece is best viewed from the outside. Seriously. As you walk your way up the twirly staircase of a gallery, the experience gets stranger and stranger. For the first few levels, we were looking at Van Gogh, Monet, Jackson Pollock etc. It was amazingly beautiful. Some have called some of these paintings life changing. Now, take into consideration that I am not an "art buff" by any means, but I was extremely disillusioned when I passed a steel coil draped onto the floor, and a guard was posted by it so no one would touch the "masterpiece". Hmm. So if I go to Home Depot, I too can be an artist. The most surprising was a strip of drywall that was missing, and people were gathered around looking at it. I started laughing. Are you serious? They are doing construction on that exhibit, and clearly ripped a bracket out of the wall to replace it, and these people think it is a piece of art. Hilarious. So I went up to one of the guards, and while laughing asked if he thought it was funny that people thought this exhibit under construction was a piece of art work. He then looked at me straight faced and said, "That is the exhibit." Wow. I was not ready for that. So after looking at a white box with a florescent light on top of it (another masterpiece), I went and stared at the drinking fountain for awhile. Beautiful.

I may not totally understand "modern" or new age art, but I do understand time management. How long does it take an artist to drape a steel coil onto the floor compared to how long it took Van Gogh to do Starry Night? I'm just saying.

However, I did appreciate a few of the modern pieces that were on display. The Hugo Boss Prize: Emily Jacir exhibit... fantastic. The photo of someone pressing their hands against glass was great. The piece where the artist drew the whole thing in pencil on the gallery wall was very interesting. One collection was done solely with sewing needles pricked through the paper. All in all, I will not be going back unless there is a specific exhibit I want to see. If I want to see beautiful art, I'll go to the Met or MoMa. If I want to see a video of a women saying random phrases with acupuncture needles stuck in her face, I'll go to the Guggenheim.