Laser Dove & Phoenix Crotch

My wonderful friend Grace- who I met years ago while painting during a Manhattan Youth Ballet audition- and I haven't seen each other for a while even though we are regularly in touch. We both put today on the calendar to meet up.

Tomorrow is her wedding anniversary though, so her husband came too. They are going to a show and staying overnight.

We met for lunch at Bites of X'ian.  We all needed a hand-ripped noodle. They are amazing.

It's not something I want often, because I like that it's special. This place does a good noodle.  

It's a bit of a hole in the wall which is also probably why it is so good.

Then we went to The Met.

It was very crowded... we ended up at the Degas/Manet show again.

Once again, I am very drawn to Manet's water.

Grace's husband wanted to visit Rembrandt, so we went into the Renaissance galleries which are newly renovated and, as I have lamented previously, are not showing my favorite Memling.

They ARE displaying some ripe garbage there though, like some gouged-eye Picasso terrible drawing.  And a blue period Picasso next to El Greco, which honestly makes the Picasso look even worse than if it was by itself.

There are many paintings WHICH DO NOT BELONG in those galleries, aside from the Picassos.  Ingres doesn't belong there either, as much as I do love him.  And others too, 1800s and even more from the 1900s, next to 1600s paintings.  It makes no sense whatsoever at all and I can't believe they made room for this crap and didn't put my Memling back up.

Normally I like these galleries.

I love early Northern Renaissance, I love Holbein, Hals, Rembrandt- there's a great room of old cityscapes which are fantastic.... and there is also gallery after gallery of really bad paintings.

Just because something is in the Met doesn't make it good.

So, naturally, we went on a Painting Mockery Expedition.

Grace and her husband are just as good at this as I am.

There are so many anatomical distortions, breasts literally coming out of collar bones, weird feet, plastic hands, HUUUUGE heads, people who were definitely severely inbred, and so many other things to mock. No feelings were hurt because all the artists are dead.

Imagine leaving behind such a craptastic legacy.

This guy in the painting is literally using the painting background as a fingerpainting session.

(And it's a terrible idea compositionally to be pointing anything at the edge of the frame like that.  Unless, I suppose, you are pointing out your own finger painting within the painting.)

I really like these early Dutch portraits.  I like the small precision of them.  Grace says the girl has a big head and she's right but I still like them.  

It's a little hard to see in the photo, but here we have Laser Dove.

I'm pretty sure this cherub is trying to warn Mary to stand clear of the incoming laser beams.

We did visit Rembrandt but I didn't take pictures.

After, we went to the costume institute to see what was going on down there.

It was a show about women designers in the 20th century.

In one room, Grace's husband decided to pick out the weirdest dress and give it a title.

Here is our winner, which he aptly named "Phoenix Crotch".

There is nothing that could possibly follow that.