New York 5

April 21, 2010

Metropolitan Museum yesterday. There was a members’ preview of the Picasso exhibit, and I am a member, so in we went. I don’t see what people mean when they automatically answer the question of the greatest painter of the last century with the name “Picasso.” Was he? Otto Dix was showing across the street at the Deutches Gallerie, and would a vote for him be so astray? De Kooning? Why such unanimity? Cubism made Picasso a great painter. He wasn’t a great painter before Cubism, and he wasn’t always after. He was certainly present for all the great moments and advances. I tell my students that sometimes just showing up is enough, and perhaps I’ve been right. He was certainly rich in imagination and good humor. I think there are certain names– Picasso among them–that immediately throw such a glamor that people stop looking at the things they actually represent: triumphs of PR, not hollow, not dishonest, but maybe not immune to re-evaluation.

Off in the evening to Under St. Marks, a little basement theater in a charming neighborhood off 1st Avenue. At Union Square we were offered free hugs, which was sweet, but also bewildering. A stunt? The overflow of youthful energy? What was I meant to give in return but hugs back again? Anyway, I had two. Delicious Japanese food across the street from the wrong theater. At the right one (sort of), some guy was trying to decide which of four one-acts his theater should give a full production, and let me tell you, there was no answering, for each was worse than the last. It was brutal. I came as near as I ever have to crying out mid-play and bulldozing toward the exit. I thought they were by different playwrights, but TB thought it was but one, observing, “it’s impossible for four random people to suck so much dick.” We had to clear our palates with many drinks with Kyle the Bartender (from NW Indiana) in the hotel lounge. Kyle looked like Clark Kent and missed his dad and brothers, all of whom probably look like Cark Kent..

When the plane banked over the Smokies, the mountains were pale green and paler green and full-on emerald, the watered valleys flashing here and there with dogwood and redbud, under a pearly shatter of clouds, and I thought I had never seen a land more beautiful. I was glad I lived here. I loved every minute of New York, but I was so glad to live here and visit there that tears stood in my eyes. I told TB so, seeing how his next step is into the City and whatever it has waiting. He was unmoved, as I assumed and hoped he would be.