Transplanted Busts at the Met

These Renaissance busts were originally in the patio of the early 16th C Spanish Castle of Velez Blanco, which was abandoned over the centuries, bought by the American zillionaire George Blumenthal, and shipped in toto to his estate in the USA around 1900. In 1941 the patio, with its contents, was given by bequest to the Metropolitan, where it was installed in the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts.

Julius Caesar

Nymph of Spring

Italian nobleman

Sculpture with Human Feeling

In New York City we, of course, went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where we somewhat unexpectedly spent most of our time in the collection of Medieval Art. I was particularly taken with some of the sculptures in which the artists had seemed to capture a somewhat sympathetic, human feeling.

Aaron

Moses with the tablets

A Small Street Art Portfolio

Seen within a few yards of each other, on a couple of buildings in the Lower East Side near Whole Foods. They're printed on paper and pasted on the walls, rather than painted in situ, have been exposed to the weather, and perhaps lightly (if so, respectfully) worked on by subsequent graffitists; but the last one shyly reveals the artist: Rosebud.

More Street Art

In a review of the clothing of Rei Kawakubo, in The New York Review of Books, the painter David Salle writes "In our time, juxtaposition itself has become the engine of art, or rather, where art's inner energy becomes most visible." Perhaps that explains why I find street art or graffiti - the seemingly random juxtaposition of images and words, by a single "artist", perhaps layered by another, then arrayed as on a gallery wall, only to be randomly eroded - as pleasing and engaging as most more formal contemporary paintings. Here are three examples seen within a block near Whole Foods on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

Street Art in the Lower East Side

The area is full of striking art, of which these are a small sample.

Iconic New York Publications

Seen while wandering the streets of Manhattan: The buildings housing two iconic publications based in New York.

The New Yorker

The Forward, a progressive Jewish weekly

Some New York Women

People-watching is great fun in New York City.

Penn Station

Subway

Subway

Nolita

Hudson Yards

We're in New York City for a few days, and the first place we went after our St. Paul –Newark flight and Newark–Penn Station train, was Hudson Yards, both because it's close to Penn Station and because it's the newest megarich colossus in NYC. Actually, the total effect, especially the multi-story bronze-colored sculpture in the central courtyard set against the shiny skyscrapers, is pretty spectacular.

Downtown Portland

A miscellany of scenes and people, connected mainly by the ever-popular orange-and-blue color patches.

Vegetable Closeups

From the Farmers Market

Farmers Market

Scenes from a recent Farmers Market in Portland, Oregon.

Food Carts

The large food cart pod at 10th & Alder in downtown Portland will be removed at the end of June 2019, to clear the block for a 30-story high-rise. Too bad for us street photographers, as well as for all the workers and tourists who got their lunches and snacks there.

Japanese Garden Green

From Portland's Japanese Garden, about a year ago.

Utility Sculptures

The plumbing and electrical supply pipes to buildings in my neighborhood often remind me of Constructivist artworks.