Piers 92 and 94

My and everyone's goodness!, the Art Show on the  piers! this was pier 92 and pier 94, and enormous in every way! So I went with Michele Cone, friend from always, also went to Bryn Mawr, also writes on art, but she is a réal art historian, and I a happy interloper
occasionally
..
So there on the piers, was everyone you ever knew in the world of art,  and Michele knows -- in her élégant way-- just about everyone, what a joy to attend something so IMMENSE with someone you love,  and you can just wander from place to place... I loved most the group from St. Ives, with a lovely John Wells (many years ago, when I was there in St. Ives with our beloved friends Ann Aslan and Clive Blackmore, I had exactly enough to purchase, for my NY ait, a small and lovely John Wells, .horizontally-shaped, like this one at Pier 92.

 I had not seen his picture until today, in a major catalogue of the gallery exhibition him, and ah, of course, exactly the kind of face I would have  -- why say "would have," let's just say, did -- fall in love with. Red Grooms, who lives with his gorgeons wife, the daugher of a totally staggeringly beautiful  woman I met, of course,  with Raymond Mason so many years ago , friends of Yves Bonnefoy, in Paris or London or somewhere -- anyway, Red loved also this piece of art, and we talked about Arthur Dove: I HAVE SELDOM HAD A CHANCE TO TALK WITH ANYONE ABOUT ARTHUR DOVE! --  and also, to the left of the John Wells, was a Ben Nicholson, instnatly recognizable among millions of simple , well, "simple" works.

If I were starting all over, indeed I might, if I could have the over the years developed expertise, write on American art and pietro. But you would have to do it well, and not just from enthusiasm, the way I write and I guess live... I loved teaching, and yes, it was always about poetic-type students, like Maggie Nelson, who OF COURSE won a MacArthur award, and that kind of excited poetic reaching-after intellect, like a récent friend-student, JoJo Karlin, like that...

and Red Grooms and Michele like that also -- many years ago, in the Tate, I think, I found a sort of reproduction of a Nicholson which instantly  purchased, and have hanging, and regard with affection. And then , a centuries-old hand, which I found in Bangkok, there with my husband Boyce, and have in the not much daylight, on a table by the window, in case any light makes its way in, which it does from, say, 12:35 to about 3:15 in the winter months.. .

let me end this, then, with affection, for our friends and the works of art we care about, not for the commercial aspect, but for the réal thing, apologies and actually, hommage to Tom Stoppard also,

How fortunate I  have been!

Septemberish New York

One might well ask: so what is the great deal about living in this incredibly full metropolis when you can't/don't/haven't even tried to see and do 1/2000000the of everything? Well, I can tell you. It is that you could if you wished to. Concerts in the park, as well as in enclosed spaces (except I always love unenclosed spaces, such as Central Park, where the Philharmonic just played -- and we didn't go, but my husband was playing the piano, and what is better than that?)

Yes, to commemorate 9/11, there was Bach, there was Brahms, there was all of whatever anyone could do. We went out to our habitual Performers of Westchester, where my husband has been going for 32 years, and sat in someone's living room to hear a great group of musicians -- some Dvorak, a Bach Toccata, the Mozart C major String Quartet  and the G Minor Piano Quartet,  and as an encore, a movement from the Brahms F Minor Piano Quintet...

I did get to the Richard Serra Drawing show, a retrospective at the Met: and loved the severity and the sweep of it, reminiscent of Egypt - I remember going there first with  my son Matthew, and climbing up a little way of the pyramid of Cheops at night...

And you could choose what to love in the rearrangement of the fourth and fifth floors of the Museum of Modern Art, under the auspices of the newly-arrived Ann Temkin -- and now an enormous and welcome De Kooning. The Old Man and the Museum, runs a piece in the New York Times about Hemingway's choices of paintings, now in the Met...To go with this, The Sun also Rises is playing at the New York Theater Workshop...

Example of having to choose: between Hilary Spurling, such a great biographer, and Red Grooms' opening at on Wed. night -- right after my seminar, how in the goodness to choose?

All these events, and still the signage in Central Park changing seems the most exciting to me: because the new typeface is called Titling Gothic! On 1, 500 new signs! I was initially all excited, thinking it was Tilting Gothic, and I felt the joy of the signs all sliding on a tilt... a short=lived joy, but the enduring one is someone paying attention to fonts on any signs whatever.