Tuesday, August 29, 2017

Solo, European Travels

I am susceptible to obsession. As I’ve mentioned before, my focus is more often on ideas, rather than people or objects. I learned about Art Basel a few years ago. I decided that I had to attend the original Art Basel, not Art Basel in Miami Beach or Hong Kong.

Geneva

On January 21^st of this year, the day after a particularly difficult day and birthday, I booked a flight to Zürich for Art Basel, in June. I was worried about travelling alone, in Europe. I’ve been all over the US by myself, but I wasn’t sure how I’d feel abroad, solo. These fears and anxieties were unfounded. I over research everything in my life, plan beyond the necessary level, and triple-check all plans. Those who know and understand me have learned to allow me to plan almost everything when we’re together. Sure, it’s about control, but it’s also about having incredibly high standards and wanting everything I do, see, or eat, to be the best. I also enjoy the research; the process is, more or less, my real job.

Upon arrival in Zürich, I took the train to Geneva. After a few hours by myself on the train and checking into an Airbnb, I knew I wanted to stay longer. Switzerland was comfortable, on-time, and seeping with a pleasant standoffishness. The trip was planned for eight days. I extended the trip to two weeks by adding a few more cities in Switzerland and a foray into Italy.

Geneva was as quiet as I had heard. I went to two museums, walked to the UN and a botanical garden, meandered through a Saturday flea market, and read at a coffee shop. Both art museums were small and focused on contemporary art: Centre D’Art Contemporain Geneve and MAMCO Geneve. I was somewhat jetlagged for both museums; perhaps that’s the correct way to take in contemporary installations.

From Geneva, I took the train to Basel for the four days of Art Basel. There are many

Song Dong, Through the Wall, 2016

aspects to the art fair. There’s a section for larger installations/sculpture, two floors of gallery booths, installations throughout the town center in various buildings or public spaces, a night of performance art, panel discussions, and film screenings. Four days are necessary to avoid art fatigue.

Also, there are art museums in Basel and nearby that require a visit. I took my time through Art Basel, only a few hours at a time. I went back each day to see things I had missed, or pieces I had rushed by because of the crowds. I revisited my favorite installation three times: a 53-minute, three-channel HD color film by John Akomfrah, “The Airport.” The film is an eerie, Kubrick-esque elliptical narrative of anachronistic individuals, filmed in Athens and Southern Greece. After my first Art Basel experience, I would certainly go again, as it’s never the same.

Aside from Art Basel, I took the tram to Germany to see the Vitra Design Campus and Museum. I happened into a two-hour architecture tour. The campus is intentionally considered, with buildings by Jean Prouvé, Frank Gehry, Buckminster Fuller, and Zaha Hadid. Also, I went to Fondation Beyeler, an art museum that’s a short tram ride northeast of Basel, and the Kunstmuseum Basel. Both of these museums are small, but with pieces I hadn’t seen elsewhere by Warhol, Rauschenberg, and Holzer.

From Basel, I took the train to Zürich. Overall, Zürich was my favorite city in Switzerland. It seems the most international and happening. I ate authentic Swiss food at Zeughauskeller (sliced veal in a mushroom cream sauce with rösti), chatted with two half-American bartenders at a hotel bar, saw a Judd exhibit at a gallery, and visited the Kunsthaus Zürich. I also made a pilgrimage to the closed-on-the-day-I-was-there, Pavillon Le Corbusier.

Lucerne

After Zürich, I went to Lucerne for one night. I spent the afternoon sitting by the lake, drinking beer, and reading. I caught a lovely sunset, climbed the tower of the church on the hill overlooking town, and had more drinks at a rooftop bar. In the morning, I found a quiet breakfast at Mill’Feuille and took the train south to Lugano.

I spent one night Lugano: a very Italian, but still Swiss city, one lake over from Como. I took a cog railway up San Salvatore, ate a perfectly northern Italian dinner, and walked around the lake. Lugano was instantly less organized than the rest of Switzerland. The stereotypical Italian influence was evident upon arrival. No trams, but rather busses, construction, and confusion.

The next day I took the train to Milan: the only major city in Italy I hadn’t visited on my only trip to the continent, in 2005. I’ve looked at flights to Milan over the years, in an obsessive way. People don’t speak entirely fondly of Milan, as they do about Rome, Venice, or Florence, and so, of course, I wanted to visit.

I loved Milan. I ate some of the best food I’ve had, anywhere: two meals at small trattorias, Trippa and Ratanà. I found a great coffee shop, Pavè, and went every day. I ate pizza twice; I did the best I could for pizza in the north. I ate gelato once. I took the subway around the city, walked the neighborhoods, took pictures, drank coffee, and read books. A recurring theme.

I was arted-out, so I only went to four art things in Milan: Prada Foundation’s two locations, La Triennale di Milan, and Dan Flavin’s chapel, Chiesa Rossa.

I spent six weeks in Italy, one summer, when I was twenty-one. To say that the entire country, culture, and general European sensibility was lost on me, would be an understatement. I didn’t do the typical American student thing—be drunk and loud—rather I spent the time in a manner not unfamiliar to me: depression and anxiety. I went with the wrong people; I was the wrong person; I didn’t want to go.

Perhaps waiting twelve years to revisit was wise. After this experience, I’ll try to spend two week in Europe, by myself, every summer to cover the ground I “should” have, with friends and a backpack, years ago. But this solo journey fits me. I’ve never been one for the expected, required, or predicted. The freedom of thought and time, spent by myself, was unlike anything I’ve experienced. I didn’t have to speak to anyone; I didn’t have to perform. I found a feeling and way of being that I can’t let myself forget.

Botanical Garden, Geneva

Parfums de Beyrouth, Geneva

John Akomfrah, The Airport, 2016

Otto Piene, Blue Star Linz, 1980

Rikrit Tirvanija, untitled 2007

Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Our people are better than your people), 1994

John Baldessari, Ear Sofa; Nose Sconses with Flowers (in Stage Setting), 2017

Cildo Meireles, Amerikkka, 1991

Petrol Station, Jean Prouvé, 1953/2003

Fire Station, Zaha Hadid, 1993

Factory Building, SANAA, 2012

Slide Tower, Carsten Höller, 2014

Vitra Design Museum, Frank Gehry, 1989

Vitra Schaudepot, Herzog & de Meuron, 2016

Buckminster Fuller 1975 / 2000 with T.C. Howard

Vitra Design Museum

Fondation Beyeler, Riehen

Rauschenberg, Windward, 1963, Fondation Beyeler

Warhol, Do It Yourself (Flowers), 1962, Fondation Beyeler

Jenny Holzer, Fondation Beyeler

LeWitt, Kunstmuseum Basel

Ryman & Judd, Kunstmuseum Basel

Stella, Kunstmuseum Basel

I Never Read, Art Book Fair Basel

tete de moine at the grocery store

HUCKBEIN, Basel

Kiefer, Kunsthaus Zürich

Cragg, Kunsthaus Zürich

Giacometti, Kunsthaus Zürich

Munch, Kunsthaus Zürich

Sliced Veal and rösti, Zeughauskeller, Zürich

John Baker Stadelhofen, Zürich

Cafe Henrici, Zürich

Baltho Küche & Bar, Zürich

Judd/Malevich, galerie gmurzynska, Zürich

Pavillon Le Corbusier, 1967, Zürich

Lucerne

Mill'Feuille, Luzern

Lugano

Sass Cafe Vineria, Lugano

Ratanà, Milan

Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, Milan

Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II Roof, Milan

Duomo Roof, Milan

Pavè, Milan

La chiesa di Santa Maria Annunciata in Chiesa Rossa, Dan Flavin, 1997

Pizza Am, Milan

Fondazione Prada, Milan

Vitello Tonatto, Trippa, Milan

Rabbit Taglierini, Trippa, Milan

Tripe, Trippa, Milan

Alice, Milan

La Triennale di Milano

Lievità Sottocosto, Milan

La Bottega del Gelato, Milan

L.O.V.E., Italian Stock Exchange, Milan

Tuesday, June 27, 2017

San Francisco, One More Time With Feeling

Outside of the Northeast corridor, I have visited San Francisco more than any other city. In May, I made a fifth trip to my favorite city. I ventured across the country at 19, 27, 30, 32, and 33. As I’ve written before, on this very blog, I fell in love at first sight. I can’t even recall if the trip was my idea, but if feels as though it wasn’t: a drive up the PCH from Los Angeles to San Francisco, with a night in Monterey. A drive followed by all the cliché, touristy requirements that a 19-year-old and her college boyfriend would enjoy. To a degree, I’m delighted that trip freed me from ever having do those things again.

Now, my trips to SF are loose and meandering. I stay in the Mission because it’s self-contained, has everything I need, and is accessible by BART. As always, I ate more food in a week than I do in a month. Yoga, coffee, pastry, walk, lunch, walk, coffee, dinner, walk, bar. An embarrassment of riches.

There was a slight focus on pastries. I skip croissants anywhere else in the US. Sure, that seems extreme, but I am that exacting. I ate pastries from Tartine, Craftsman and Wolves, and B. Patisserie. Each one reminded me to save myself for the best and eschew laminated pastry elsewhere.

As far as meals, I ate breakfast at Tartine Manufactory, lunch at Hong Kong Lounge II, Akiko’s Restaurant, and Boulettes Larder, and dinner at 20 Spot and Flour + Water. I had coffee at Four Barrel, Blue Bottle, The Mill, and Verve. Also, cheap eats tacos at Taqueria Los Coyotes, papusas at Panchita’s Restaurant No. 2, and sausage at Rosamunde Sausage Grill. Beers at Monk’s Kettle, Zeitgeist, and Toronado.

Perhaps the standout, beyond Tartine’s coddled eggs, duck jowl at dim sum, and Flour + Water’s pastas, was lunch at Akiko’s. I had no real reason to consume an omakase lunch on my last day in town. But, sometimes I can’t reason with my logical self. I could have chosen cheaper sushi, but I did not. Sometimes the shiny object wins. I sat at the counter and enjoyed single-piece-by-single-piece of sushi prepared for me. I did so, as best I could, while ignoring the loud and rather unapologetically wretched conversation had by three middle-aged men out for a boozy lunch. Given that the restaurant is in the financial district, I shouldn't have been surprised.

Four Barrel in the Mission

Beyond food, I went to the SFMOMA. It’s been under construction many of the times I visited. The space and size of the museum rivals the MoMA. Boxy and cavernous, beyond the featured exhibit, the galleries were sparsely attended. The “Matisse and Diebenkorn” exhibit was packed in a way I haven’t experienced since Georgia O’Keeffe at the Tate last summer. Really, zero elbow room to view the work. I move through those situations quickly. I also went to the de Young Museum again. I like city view from the tower and the “Summer of Love” exhibit wasn’t bad. Finally, I stopped in Grace Cathedral to see Keith Haring’s Last work: an altar piece.

With plenty of time to think and walk, I tried to reflect upon, once again, why I’m drawn to the city. Recently, I read Joan Didion’s new and short, South and West. California is her familiar, her childhood: “Part of it is simply what looks right to the eye, sounds right to the ear. I am at home in the West. The hills of the coastal ranges look ‘right’ to me, the particular flat expanse of the Central Valley comforts my eye. The place names have the ring of real places to me. I can pronounce the names of the rivers, and recognize the common trees and snakes. I am easy here in a way that I am not easy in other places.”[1] Having grown up on the East Coast, well acquainted with those place names and names of rivers, I have no rightful, experiential claim to the West.

But, I have always felt at home there, be it SF, Seattle, Portland, even, to a degree, Los Angeles and San Diego. Similar to Didion, I feel easy out West, in ways that I do not in the well-trod geographical regions of my life. Perhaps it’s the lack of attachment that frees me. There’s chance and opportunity in a place not weighed down by the psychological associations of childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood.

But maybe it’s something else. Maybe there’s an attitude and a life and a relief that is unique to the West. Cleary, I’m still in pursuit of something.

[1] Joan Didion, South and West: From a Notebook (New York: Knopf, 2017), 126.

Tartine Manufactory

Tartine

Craftsman and Wolves

Kees van der Westen, Verve

Hong Kong Lounge II

Rosamunde's

Panchita's Restaurant No. 2

Akiko's

Kougin Amann, b. patisserie

The Mill

Twombly, SFMOMA

Morris, SFMOMA

Kelly, SMFOMA

Calder, SMFOMA

Albers, SFMOMA

Serra, SFMOMA

Ed Ruscha, "History, Future," 2004, Gagosian Gallery

Keith Haring, "The Life of Christ," 1990, Grace Cathedral

Monday, May 8, 2017

Memphis to Dallas Road Trip

For many years, I’ve had a goal to visit every state. It began when I was nine. I started collecting thimbles. When visiting Boston, I was in a store that sold a thimble for each state. I bought about eight from states I had never set foot in. At the register, the guy told me I had to promise to visit each state; I replied that I would. Sure, I'm the kind of person who accepts a challenge from a stranger, at the age of nine.

Since then I had been to all but five states. There was a cluster of states in the middle/south that I wasn’t sure how I was going to visit. Thus, I came up with a road trip from Memphis to Dallas, with a dip into Mississippi and Nebraska, that would allow me to visit four of my five remaining states. My mother, also on this fifty-state mission, but a few behind me, joined the bizarre road trip.

We started the trip with a flight to Memphis. I’ve been to Nashville and drove the entire state

Clinton Library

east, through the Great Smoky Mountains to Asheville, on another road trip. I wanted to see Memphis; my mother wanted to go to Graceland. We went to Graceland, the Civil Rights Museum and the hotel where MLK was assassinated, ate some not great BBQ, found good coffee at City & State, and then drove to Little Rock.

Memphis is a small city, “dark, dark in the daytime.” It’s tiny compared to Nashville and felt deserted. We drove a short fifteen minutes into Mississippi, so I could say I’ve been to Mississippi. I’ll revisit properly, at some point.

We spent one night in Little Rock. In the morning, I went out for coffee to an awesome spot: Mylo Coffee Co. They bake fantastic pastries in house. Then we went to the Clinton Library. My mother wanted to go and I wanted to see the building. Given the current political climate, I ended up feeling sad and dismayed that someone so accomplished and successful had run the country, and now, we are where we are. After the library, we went to a coffee shop for lunch and drove to Tulsa.

Tulsa is known for art deco buildings. It’s a gorgeous tiny city. I wanted to go to the Tulsa Art Deco Museum in the lobby of a building. To call it a museum is an exaggeration, but I took some pictures I can use in my history lectures.

Then we drove north to Bartlesville to see Frank Lloyd Wright’s Price Tower, his only extant “skyscraper.” At nineteen floors, it’s a beautiful, odd FLLY building. My favorite part of being in his buildings is wandering around. He built tiny closets that often aren’t locked. I like to see how subsequent owners changed things to build modern bathrooms and AC systems. I like to see the light fixtures and the corners and the details.

We took a tiny elevator to the top floor where there is a restaurant; the building is now a hotel. We had a drink at sunset on the top floor. There’s something about the energy of a FLLY structure. I feel better in them. I feel at ease. I think it’s the feeling of being inside something so intentionally built. Something that makes architectural and aesthetic sense. There’s a reason I based my first tattoo on a FLLY stained-glass window. Good design is good design. A rarity these days.

After the skyscraper, we drove twenty-minutes north to crossover into Nebraska. Again, I will make a real visit to Nebraska (no hurry), one day. We drove back to Tulsa to have dinner in a building we happened to find while walking around. The Vault Restaurant is an old bank that’s a mid-century modern heaven. Dinner wasn’t bad. I had a very Murakami-like conversation with a bartender, smoking a cigarette on the roof. It was something.

Crystal Bridges

Since Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is closed on Tuesdays, we had to backtrack from Oklahoma to Northeast Arkansas, Bentonville, to go to the museum the next day. The Museum is free and owned by Walmart. I have mixed feelings about Walmart owning so much art (so much of it not on display), but at least the museum is free. The architecture of the museum is unique. It’s built over a river, designed by Moshe Safdie. The way the water reflects onto the art, in the outside hallways around the galleries is very cool. Having viewed so much art, at this point, it has almost become about the surroundings and the architecture of the building in which the art is presented. There’s nothing like the old factory buildings of MASS MoCA, or the Campbell’s factory of DIA: Beacon, or basically, all of Marfa.

Before the museum we had breakfast at The Hive (very good) and I went to Onyx Coffee Lab for coffee. I grabbed a macchiato, a drip coffee, and two single origins.

After the museum we had a long, long drive down to Dallas. I’d never been to Dallas/Fort

Velvet Taco, Dallas

Worth. I’ve been to Austin, El Paso, Marfa, and Nacogdoches. DFW is a beast. An absolute beast of a sprawling city. Immediately, we went for tacos. I always joke that I only eat tacos in Texas and California; pretty much every taco outside of those states is a waste of time (save South Philly Barbacoa). I enjoyed the tacos at Velvet Taco; my mom, not so much. But fancy, carefully curated, Texas tacos are something a northerner might not necessarily enjoy.

The Kimbell, Louis Kahn

With a whole day in DFW, we over did it on the art. We went to The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, the Kimbell Art Museum next door, the Nasher Sculpture Center, and the Dallas Museum of Art. I love seeing art in cities that aren’t NYC. The museums aren’t busy, during the week at least, and the art is always unexpectedly fantastic.

Again, the architecture of the FW Modern and Kimbell made it for me. Intentional concrete buildings. One of the Kimbell buildings was designed by Louis Kahn; it’s hard not to be in awe of it. The Nasher was very cool; being inside a sculpture garden in the downtown of a city is a stellar juxtaposition. I could have stayed there all day.

After overdosing on art, we went for BBQ. Lockhart Smokehouse. Years ago, I waited in line for five hours for Franklin BBQ in Austin. Yes, it remains the best BBQ I’ve ever had. I’d say, for only waiting five minutes, Lockhart was very, very good. My mother had never done the whole, here’s a bunch of meat wrapped in butcher paper, goodluck(!), thing. It was worth doing.

The road trip ended in Dallas. I added Mississippi, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Arkansas to my list of states. All that’s left is North Dakota. I’ll end up in Minneapolis, one of the last larger cities in the US I need to explore, and drive over to North Dakota. Then, I guess, I’ll have to move on to countries.