I returned home after spending three soggy, dripping, puddle-jumping days in New York City, soaking up culture as I walked among a sea of abandoned, bent, broken umbrellas littering the streets and sidewalks like road kill. I saw three plays in three days (Come Fly Away - Twyla Tharp’s brilliant choreography which co-habited with Frank Sinatra's singing, Red - Marc Rothko and his young assistant yelling and arguing about art, life, and death (both plays turned me into a clapping, stomping, cheering looney), and The Book of Grace, which was so awful it triggered a migraine). I ate great food (the prix fixe Sunday Suppa at Dovetail was especially wonderful for the third time in a row), and interacted with some outstanding exhibits at MOMA, The Museum of the City of New York (the Charles Addams exhibit was too short, but funny and sweet), and the renovated Eldridge Street Synagogue (our docent was not only adorable, but full of anecdotes and information).
My favorite art moment was the Marina Abromovic exhibit at MOMA, which I want to ooh and aah about, but not before I blurt out the words nudie people. (I also saw the William Kentridge and Tim Burton exhibits, which I found equally mind-blowing, so please check them out online.)
Abromovic’s performance piece started on the second floor of MOMA, so I stood outside the lines and watched her sit silently in her wood chair and stare across the wood table at whichever crazy participant volunteered to sit and stare back. The guard asked me if I wanted to join her, and I emphatically told him, “No way José,” because at first I thought it was kind of insane to sit in silence in a huge room illuminated by klieg lights, people watching and ogling, video and regular cameras whirring. But, the more I watched, the more I found this performance piece riveting and thought-provoking. I mean, when, if ever, do I sit silently and look at someone without bursting into words (or song)? Never is when. Because I lack the words to more thoroughly explain what I experienced, I’m going to channel Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons singing Silence is Golden, and Beverly Cleary’s Ramona The Pest (when Ramona was told by her kindergarten teacher to “sit down for the present.) to inch me a little closer to understanding the essence of this piece.
Let me be honest. I only checked out this exhibit at first because I read that there were going to be nude men and women “performing.” Since I haven’t seen all that many nude people up close and personal in my lifetime, I wanted to up my count. You know what? I didn’t ogle. Surprised? So was I.
The first two nudies (it varied – sometimes there were two women, sometimes two men) flanked a narrow doorway, which means I had to sidle past them and touch their live flesh and nether regions to enter the rest of the exhibit. The guard who had to stand there all day had a smile plastered on his face as I slithered past. Could you blame him?
The second nudie (a male) lay on a slab with a skeleton draped on top of him. Since I went through the exhibit twice, I got to see one circumcised and one uncircumcised guy. The under side of the circumcised guy’s penis was black. I wanted to know why, but there wasn’t anyone to ask, plus I knew that if I’d Googled it later, I’d only have gotten porn sites. Therefore, it’ll have to remain a mystery.
The third nudie (female) had to sit on a bicycle seat suspended above us on a wall. She was the only nude performer who made eye contact, but I ended up looking away after a few minutes, because I couldn’t keep my chattering monkey brain quiet. Or stop smirking.
When I got tired of seeing the nudies, I checked out the clothed people. Two stood across from one another, inside a glass enclosure, their index fingers pointing, but not touching, like Adam and God in da Vinci’s painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Two others sat back-to-back in another glass enclosure, their hair tied together. Unfortunately for me, I wouldn’t have been invited to perform this piece, because I have no hair to tie.
There were many videos to watch, when the silence and nudies got to me. My favorite showed a slew of men humping a large, verdant lawn. According to legend, it was believed that when men masturbate into the ground, a more abundant round of crops will grow. Another video played above the original set of the exact same rooms depicted in the video. Butcher knives formed the rungs of the ladder leading to the “rooms.” A constant loop of the artist talking about each and every thought and action she experienced while in these “rooms” blared from loud speakers, but the videoed verbal diarrhea exhausted me so much (almost as much as live silence, come to think of it) I had to run out of there.
In case you want to know, I didn’t find the live nudies any more titillating than all the painted and sculpted nudes I see standing, sitting, and living in silence in every, single museum I’ve ever visited. I found it exhilarating to experience art in the flesh. And in 3-D, minus the chintzy paper glasses.
I’ve barely scratched the surface of this unbelievable exhibit, but I have to admit, it got me to think of something other than UConn basketball, the two migraines I got when the weather got stormy, and how much weight I’ve gained this winter. Quite an accomplishment worth noting, eh?
