Hello everybody and welcome back to My Weekly Flickr.
Another beautiful day made even more beautiful to me as it is the first day of my second week of vacation. More practice for retirement. And this week will really give me a glimpse of retirement as there is very little going on so I will have to decide how I fill my days. I found a website that lists all the art galleries in New York City with links to their websites but unfortunately doesn’t tell you the genre of art they exhibit. So I’ll have to go through a bunch of them to determine if they are things I like. Much of what I’ve seen so far is contemporary and I’m not a big fan of contemporary art. I did find one exhibit at Hirschl & Adler, scenes of home life from the 18th Century to the present which I plan on visiting. The website initially said it was located on Fifth Avenue and 57th Street so when I found myself standing on the corner of 57th Street and Fifth Avenue this morning I looked around and didn’t see it. When I went back a little while ago it said it was located in the Crown Building and then it gave an actual address, 730 Fifth Avenue, so I’m confident I’ll be able to find it.
Beyond that I will visit the Metropolitan Museum of art a few times and continue to look for other venues. I walked up to the Met this morning to see the one remaining exhibit that I hadn’t seen yet, Grand Illusions - Staged Photography from the Met Collection. I wasn’t sure I was going to see it but my brother recommended it and yesterday Roberta Smith in the New York Times gave it a very good review so I went. It was remarkably good. A small show, 40 items, all from the Met’s photography collection covering a broad period of time from the early days of photography to current times. Lots of interesting pictures, the star of the show is Fright, a collaboration between a photographer, an artist and Virginia Verasis, Countess of Castiglione. She arranged to have her portrait photographed, dressed in an elaborate costume as if for a night out at a ball during which a fire erupts. The photograph of her was then colorized by the artist who also painted the scene of a conflagration behind her with flames licking at her feet as if she is fleeing for safety. It’s a remarkable piece and the star of the exhibit as they blew it up to 7 feet and mounted it on the wall at the entrance of the gallery. The original is further into the exhibit. This is a link to an illustration from the Met website.
http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/682875 Among the other highlights is a Lewis Carroll photographed staging of St George and the Dragon as portrayed by three children. The card explained that Carroll had a room built and stocked it with toys and theatrical costumes so as to stage the pictures and shoot them.
http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/283093 A few years before that a Swedish born Brit took this picture of a brother and sister, Mr. and Miss Constable. They are posed affectionately with her hand around his shoulder and his clasping hers and they are staring at something. His gaze is so intense you wonder what they’re looking at. I thought it resembled a still picture from a 1930’s movie starring Robert Donat or someone like that.
http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/283096 This is a link to yesterday’s NY Times review. You will see several additional illustrations as well as another look at Fright.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/28/arts/design/review-grand-illusions-showcases-deceptive-photography.html?_r=0 I always keep a very small flash light in my pocket when I go out as I always read on the bus. The buses all have reading lights but often aren’t on, or are broken, or too dim to actually read by. But it’s awkward holding the light and reading the newspaper as you need to keep turning the pages. When I visited my dentist recently I noticed that she wears a headlamp so as to shine an intense light on the teeth in my mouth as she works on them. The doctor’s version of the miners lamp the men wore in the bowels of the mines. I thought it would be exactly what I could use and wondered if it was available commercially. I went to Amazon and found lots of them. So I purchased an inexpensive one and it just arrived. It’s exactly what I wanted. Luckily there is a review on Amazon that explains the lamp comes with absolutely no instructions and then goes on to explain how it works using illustrations. It takes three AAA batteries but doesn’t come with any installed which explains why nothing happened when I pressed the button. But without the help I don’t think I would have been able to open the device to put the batteries in. I would have thought it was an out of box failure which actually is what I thought before I went back to Amazon and read the review. It has four settings, one very bright white light, one a little less bright, one solid red light and finally a blinking white light. It’s great for me at my kitchen table where my overhead light isn’t so good for reading and it will be really great for reading on the bus when the reading lights aren’t available. And when I go for my long walk in the complete darkness of a winter morning I can wear it with the red or blinking lights on and possibly avoid being run over by someone who was talking on their cell phone and didn’t see me. Very pleased.
When I posted the Daniel Radcliffe video I did so as I was impressed by his memorizing the routine. Betty panned it saying he was a lousy rapper but that was really beside the point for me, I don’t like rap music so it didn’t matter if his rapping style was weak, I was just amazed at his ability to rattle it off fautlessly. So here is another short video of The Tibetan Memory trick. I first saw Jerry Lewis do this on one of his television programs from 1963. That was the series where the theme was Think Pink as his wife was pregnant, they had four boys and wanted a girl. As it turned out the fifth child was a boy as well and came to a very bad end which I won’t go into here. It also showed that Jerry was not the greatest parent or person in the world. Anyway, some of you may remember the music group The Turtles whose two main artists were Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan who went on to do an act as Flo and Eddie. I always loved the Turtles and Flo And Eddie were wonderful as well, I have a live concert of theirs on tape where in addition to playing their original material, they do spoofs on other rock bands. This is a video of a live concert, the audio portion only, in which they do the Tibetan Memory trick. I never was able to go beyond nine myself.
Flo and Eddie (The Sanzini Brothers)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w52AS1q3kqMSo now, if I remember correctly, this must be where we go to the Flickrs.
Andy G.
IMG_2685
https://www.flickr.com/photos/129719604%40N05/19373142784/ Twiggy's Choice
https://www.flickr.com/photos/martina_cd1/20053579131/ Man maid ?
https://www.flickr.com/photos/9433783%40N04/19430486673/ Blue & Aqua
https://www.flickr.com/photos/toni_richards/19376383713/ Libby Lauren
https://www.flickr.com/photos/libbylauren/6784873568/ White Dress and Glasses
https://www.flickr.com/photos/bobbievnc/19443525723/ Vivienne Westwood suits
https://www.flickr.com/photos/otokonomusume/6486070063/ Untitled
https://www.flickr.com/photos/lovelymaco/20072622315/ Mr.taxi dance
https://www.flickr.com/photos/myy_mee/16863811436/ Pink housemaid
https://www.flickr.com/photos/blackietv/20096426325/ vibes
https://www.flickr.com/photos/128199758%40N02/16807006285/
Betty's Pub 20.1
Topic: Can this be the Summer Flickr with only 4 weeks left? I guess! (Read 18054 times)
