Rachel’s New York blog #7
Photos: the view across the resevoir in Central Park and a shot of Broadway, somewhere around 110/115th St.
Well, I still don’t remember what happened on Monday. So, I’ll just move on to Tuesday. On Tuesday, Solita and I went to the Met (Metropolitan Museum of Art). We may also have gone to breakfast, or perhaps that was one of Monday’s activities. Either way, she took me to a very sweet, homey café that was decorated on one side like an old-fashioned ice-cream parlor or something small-towny, with cherry-patterned plastic covering the stools and a green and white flowery theme going on. The main dining room did not have the cherry theme but the tables were old doors or windows (can’t remember exactly now) and there were huge metal sunflowers on the wall. We shared a big breakfast of eggs, home-fried potatoes and blueberry pancakes. There was no room for the yummy-looking homestyle desserts.
At the Met, Solita and I walked through the crowded but small Chanel exhibition (Karl Lagerfield just isn’t Coco Chanel – every time I liked something it was Chanel and when I didn’t like something it was Lagerfield) and then through an exhibition of Matisse and his fabric paintings. I liked that very much. I love the bold colours and sketchy watercolour style of Matisse. I love how you look at a woman’s face in one of his paintings and a square around her eye isn’t painted and you have no idea why that bit of face is left white, but just that it works and you want to stare at it for ages.
Solita had to go to work that afternoon, but I hung around the Met some more and walked through a huge Max Ernst retrospective. He was a dadaist and surrealist (a founder of the movement) – before Dali. I loved most of his work and his many different styles through the years. So much of it was not particularly comprehensible to me, but fascinating to look at. It did strike me as quite feminist though, as there seemed to me to be a theme of paintings about women bound up or trapped – in a social commentary sort of way, not in a misogynistic kind of way. I also saw a photography exhibit I didn’t like very much. You can check out some of the work in the exhibitions here: http://www.metmuseum.org
I think what came next was that I got off at the wrong subway stop and had a long trek home across Central and Morningside parks. I stopped in a Latin American restaurant for rice, red beans and yucca (why oh why are there no black beans!???) and ate the whole dinner, stuffing myself silly with carbs. Not sure what Solita and I did that night – maybe another night of wine, fruit and chocolate out on the verandah?
