Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters

I have spent enough time in New York City to know that I don't really want to live there. Not for any extended period of time. Maybe Brooklyn. I think I could handle Brooklyn.
I'm a west coast girl at heart. There is something very...hard about NYC. I'm a big softie.

I love to visit. I wish I could go right now. Manhattan offers a wonderful anonymity. It has always amazed me that amid all the chaos and noise, all the people jammed onto 8 miles of narrow island, it is very easy to be alone. No one asks if you are okay. They just walk by and let you be. Right now, I want to be alone; Greta Garbo style. I don't get enough alone time. I want don't want the world to go away, I just want to fade into it for a while.

Art is the biggest factor in my love of NYC. I remember the first time I went to MoMA. I guess I was about 19. I was visiting with my father, and we had decided to take a stroll through the museum. They were having a retrospective for some artist I had never heard of. I wandered through the galleries, walking past some of the most famous works of art by some of the best artists the world has know. I was never a huge fan of Van Gogh, but as I turned the corner into one of the galleries, there it was; "Starry Night." I stared at it for a while. I couldn't help it. It wasn't behind glass. I could have touched it. I wanted to. I watched as the paint seemed to move off the canvas. It looked like schizophrenia had exploded.

But right around the next corner was the real prize. Picasso's "Les Demoiselles D'Avignon." It was immense. At least 6'x10'. I started to cry. This painting had changed everything. The entire art world turned on it's head. This was the first cubist work ever displayed, and it was right in front of me.

After that I wandered into the gallery housing the retrospective. I caught my breath in my throat. I had never seen anything like it before or since. It ran the gamut from Pollack style abstraction to photo realism. This was the first time I encountered Gerhard Richter.

That is how Gerhard Richter became my favorite artist.

NYC is full of stories like that for me. And for everyone, I would guess. It offers the world to those who will look for it.






The last two are Richter's. Quite a range, huh?

Interesting side note:
I went to the "Top of the World" lookout at the World Trade Center in 1999. We parked in the vast parking lot located under the towers. The funny part is, the last song that played on the radio before we got out was "Ain't no Sunshine When Shes Gone."
I just thought about that the other day. Hmm.