On our 3rd and final day spent in Manhattan, we only had until about 1pm to do some final sight-seeing before we needed to hop on the Penn Station subway, followed by the New Jersey Transit back to the New Jersey airport for a 4:10pm flight home. Despite our compressed time, we still had a full schedule planned. We would check out early from our hotel, pass by Bryant Park en route to City Bakery for a proper breakfast before heading to the Chelsea art scene where there are a slew of small art galleries lining the area spanned by 21st to 27th Street and 10th to 11th Avenue.
Bryant Park is a 9.6 acre public park located in the heart of Manhattan’s midtown, running from 40th to 42nd Street between 5th and 6th Avenues. Between October to January of each year, a
winter village is set up with a large skating rink and over 150 stalls selling seasonal food, drink and gift items. Although none of the booths were open so early in the morning, we still had fun peering through the windows to look at the quirky items including a popup card shop, pottery stores, knitted crafts, paintings and even a shop that sold giant Darth Vader sculptures made from spare parts.
City Bakery is a popular bakery and coffee bar that offers cafeteria-style items for breakfast and lunch, using local and organic ingredients. There are frequently long lineups of people waiting to be served at the wrap-around counters that offer pastries, muffins and other baked goods in the morning. Luckily, there is plenty of seating in the large space including a second floor. City Bakery is known for its rich flavourful
hot chocolate that comes with a big fluffy square of marshmallow, so we knew that we had to try this. While we were impressed with the look of the giant marshmallow and approved of the taste of the drink, unfortunately it was not very hot. What we enjoyed more were the fluffy scrambled eggs with spinach and herbs, and the baker’s muffin, which contained apples, raisins and walnuts. After sharing these items and thinking that we were still hungry, we watched a server come out of the kitchen holding a tray of good-looking stuffed croissants. Rushing to rejoin the line, we were able to snag what turned out to be a freshly baked “
pretzel croissant” filled with duck egg, bacon and pear jam, as well as a raspberry scone and a cup of hot coffee. The pretzel croissant is flaky and buttery like a typical croissant, but is topped with a crunchy topping of salt and toasted sesame seed to give it a pretzel feel. All in all, we loved everything we ate here and after the second round of food, we were finally sated and ready to be on our way.
The streets in
Chelsea where the art galleries have congregated feel grittier and more industrial compared to the more commercial art district in Soho. Running along the Highline Trail and flanked by tall office and apartment buildings, there is a distinct lack of restaurants, cafes and shops in this area. It is likely that the rent is much cheaper here as well, and this is reflected in the art on display, which also feels edgier and less mainstream. I wasn’t sure whether the metal humanoid form in front of one of the galleries was a sculpture or a bike rack. We spent the morning walking between 10th and 11th Avenue while making our way northward from 21st to 27th Street. We would peek in the window of galleries to see if we were interested and went into the ones that appealed to us for a closer look. In some cases, the galleries were located on different floors of an office building, which took more effort for us to access and required repeated waits and rides on the elevator. We went to a few of these in the beginning and then couldn’t be bothered after that, since there were so many other galleries to see that had a street presence.
We saw works by graffiti artist
Keith Haring at both the Gladstone Gallery and Pace Prints. But these were not the earlier Keith Haring pop-art that we were used to seeing, which were bright, cheerful images dominated by his iconic “Radiant Baby” and colourful humanoid forms engaged in joyful, exuberant actions such as dancing and hugging. The works on display at the two galleries were from the last few years of Haring’s life before he died from AIDS-related complications at age 31. The drawings shown at
Gladstone Gallery are much darker and closer to something that Jean-Michel Basquiat would produce. These large-scaled drawings, augmented by collage and violent streaks of paint, reference popular culture, historic references, sexual imagery and religious iconography. Pasted on his works are clippings from newspapers and magazines, reproductions of famous artworks and homoerotic advertisements. The exhibition at
Pace Prints, titled Apocalypse, is a collaboration between Haring and beat poet and novelist William S. Burroughs. Ten pages of Burrough’s free-form text are paired with ten images by Haring, which comment on life and death, heaven and hell, political activism, mass consumerism, religion, sexuality and conformity.
Another particularly edgy and downright confrontational exhibition called “
Vote Feminist” was found at the
Nancy Hoffman Gallery, which was showing works by artist
Michele Pred. Through various sculptural installations, Pred advocates for equal rights for women and her exhibition is a call to arms to resist against the “fear-based, misogynistic policies of the current American government” by voting Democrat in the November midterm elections. A display of vintage designer purses are implanted with glowing slogans including “Vote Now”, “Power to the Polls”, “Resist”, “Equal Pay”, ‘Times Up”, “Pro Choice”, “Nasty Woman”, “My Body, My Business” and “Pussy Grabs Back”. The work called “Wage Gap” uses portions of an American dollar and a Swedish krona to show the wage gap between what women earn compared to men in each of those countries (42% on the dollar vs 88% on the krona). Re-imagining an automatic voting machine like the one used in the 1944 election between Franklin D. Roosevelt (Democrat) and Thomas Dewey (Republican), Pred created a pink version that called for a vote for Ruth Baeder Ginsberg (representing Feminism) over Donald Trump (Patriarchy). There was a full-bodied suit made of satin and Velcro called “Pussy Riot Gear” which Pred planned to wear at demonstration marches, and a neon-light display over a embroidered floral pattern with the in-your-face slogan “Feminist as F**k”.
We were very taken with the silhouette paintings in watercolour and acrylic created by artist
Idelle Weber in the 1950s and 60s. On display at the gallery
Hollis Taggart, Weber’s silhouettes depict anonymous, yet universally recognizable archetypes such as couples, girlfriends, brides and grooms, athletes, and most notably, business men in office settings. It is likely that the opening sequence from the TV show “Mad Men” was influenced by Weber’s works. Rich especially liked the watercolour titled “Babes” of three bikini-clad women looking down upon their reflections, which was going for just over $6000 US. I liked the silk-screened images covering all sides of a lucite (solid transparent plastic) cube that we could have owned for a mere $20,000 U.S. I guess I have expensive tastes. Needless to say, we did not come home with either of these pieces.
Yossi Milo Gallery was presenting the works of
Kyle Meyer called “
Interwoven”, which consisted of giant photographic prints with pieces of fabric woven into them. Meyer, who originates from Eswatini (formerly Swaziland in Southern Africa), creates a hybrid between a digital photograph and a lush, vibrant, tactile weaving using traditional Swazi techniques. He photographs members of the LGBT community who are marginalized in Eswatini, giving them a voice while allowing them to “hide” behind the head wrap which he asks them to wear for the picture. Meyer then weaves vertical and horizontal strips throughout the image, which helps to obscure the identities of his subjects while still allowing them to express themselves. I found these to be extremely powerful and thought-provoking pieces.
At
Bernaducci Gallery, John Baeder’s quaint oil on canvas paintings of
roadside diners, eateries and food trucks capture the essence of small town America. Practising photorealism, the art of reproducing an image on a photo in as realistic a fashion as possible, Baeder’s initial paintings were inspired by linen-finished colour postcards. Baeder’s exhibition is called “
The Road Well Taken”, referring to his travels through the United States in search for more subject matters. Also on display were paintings he did of matchbook covers which he collected during his travels. Baeder’s paintings feel nostalgic due to the old-fashioned diners that he depicts, but also has a surreal feel due to the flatness and dulled colours of the paints that he uses.
On display at
Winston Wachter Fine Arts,
Zaria Forman’s large-scale pastel drawings of aerial views of landscapes in the Arctic and Antarctic are so detailed and realistic that they look like photographs. Forman traveled with NASA’s science missions to track shifting ice flows, with the objective of illustrating the rate that our polar regions are melting, cracking and shifting. A video projected on the floor further highlights the issue. Rendering images of icebergs, glaciers, ice streams and snow fields in shades of white and blue, the beautifully majestic drawings almost seem abstract.
We were lucky to come across an exhibit by graffiti and street artist
Mr. Brainwash (a.k.a. Thierry Guetta), famous for being featured with Banksy in the 2010 documentary “Exit Through The Gift Shop”. Held in the historic
Starrett-Lehigh Building and in collaboration with the campaigning organization “
It’s A Thing”, the exhibition was part of a larger campaign intended to raise funds to benefit cancer research at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre. On full display was Mr. Brainwash’s trademark style of recreating and then subverting, combining and repurposing works from other famous artists and street artists, resulting in a “new work of his own”. There were reproductions of Vincent Van Gogh’s most famous self portraits substituted with Basquiet-like faces. Robert Indiana’s iconic positioning of letters to form words like HOPE and LOVE were decorated with images of flowers. Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is cradling a Jeff Koon’s balloon dog in her hands. What looks like a 16th Century portrait of a woman is given a face reminiscent of Picasso’s Cubism works. A pastoral scene is overlaid with the image of a Star Wars storm-trooper holding a paint brush and a can of paint. The words “Star Wars” have been painted over to now say “
Stop Wars” and the paint drips off the canvas onto the picture frame. This piece is so like a work by Banksy that it could easily have been mistaken for one. I particularly liked the set of paintings that together form “The Surrealist”. The top painting of a coastline is covered with an image of Salvador Dali with his trademark mustache. Hanging from the mustache are two ropes that span this painting and its frame, continuing onto the second frame and painting where the ropes form part of a swing that a little girl is sitting on as she looks out into the meadows. This is Mr. Brainwash’s version of a diptych!
There were several large collages with paper clippings from various sources and bright blue neon lighting in front of them. One pair formed the words “Always Smile”, so I guess they are meant to be sold as a pair, since “Smile” by itself would make sense, but “Always” on its own would seem strange. My favourite pieces were the sculptures of Rodin’s “The Thinker” and the famous armless “Venus de Milo”, made from pieces of rubber tires. While there did not seem to be many original ideas in his works, there is no denying that Mr. Brainwash is a clever and talented artist who makes fun and quirky pieces, abet by appropriating other people's ideas.
Our impromptu 2.5 day trip to Manhattan turned out to be a great success and we managed to pack a ton of activities into this short time span. Basically the visit was all about art, theatre and dining, which was exactly what we were looking for. We watched some great shows, ate at wonderful restaurants and saw some amazing art exhibits. More and more, I am liking this idea of short quick trips to nearby cities, requiring only a small carry-on bag that can be tucked under the seat of our airplane. We will definitely try this again in the future.
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