Peggi and I had dinner at an Italian place on the Upper West Side. We ate outdoors and sat next to Annie Liebowitz. I thought about how we were going to visit two major museums the next day?
We started with MoMA. “Adrian Piper: A Synthesis of Intuitions, 1965–2016” is kind of a geeky title but then Adrian Piper is a geeky gal. The show at MoMA is the result of a four-year collaboration with The Hammer Museum and is the most comprehensive retrospective of Piper’s work to date.
The show opens with her LSD paintings and Sol Lewitt-like (her friend) drawings. I dove into her obsessive diary entries and was sold on her brainy humor. Check out this early early performance piece. Her angry art from the eighties made me laugh out loud. She tackles racism head on but in ways as sly as a fox. Large screen videos show her teaching classes in Funk Dancing. This is a huge show that manages to leave you wanting much more.
Duane had a doctor’s appointment on the Upper East Side so we made plans to meet him up there when he got out. We were on the third floor of the Met Breur’s show, “Like Life: Sculpture, Color & The Body” when he joined us. The show is a sensation, one where the wall tags make it even more so because the sculptures include realistic, contemporary human forms, religious figures, Ex Votos (sacred offerings) and dolls as well as centuries old, idealized human form, marble statues. I knew the Church had a problem with nudity but if I hadn’t read the text I wouldn’t have thought about the problems created when worshippers fell in love with the statue instead of the intended depiction. The show was so well done it was “Like Life.”
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