I didn’t start writing this blog until 26th December, the fourth day of our stay in New York. This was partly because we were so busy going round the sights, museums and theatres of the city that I seldom sat in front of the laptop we brought with us, but also because I still have the after-effects of that poets’-artists’-swine-flu that hit me before Christmas. Energy levels depleted, coughing levels highly enhanced, I’ve spent a lot of my time fighting for breath! But it hasn’t stopped me using what’s left of both breath and energy to enjoy everything here.
When we got here in the early afternoon of 21st December the sun was glittering off snow and glass as we inched our way into Manhattan in the hotel shuttle car. It was the day after a big blizzard that hit the city from the Midwest, where we heard that conditions were extreme. In New York the snow was amazingly picturesque and Christmassy. The snow-covered porches of the board-faced houses in Queens reminded me of “About a Boy” and other movies set here.
The sunny weather continued for the next three days. We went for a long walk on the morning of our first full day, through Central Park to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The snow was deep and the paths were very slippery – I fell flat on my back twice – but it was very pretty, with the skyscrapers fringing the park looking ethereal and transparent in the sun, the skating rink and frozen lake crowded with cheerful people and all the sculptures dotted among the trees.
The horse-drawn carriages that line up outside the park gates were trotting through the park with picturesquely decorated coachwork and passengers snuggled under red blankets. We found a squirrel on a tree next to the park, which posed obligingly with nuts in its paws though we were not quick enough to get a photo of it.
The Met, on a street at the farther end of Central Park, was an amazing museum. We especially enjoyed the Oceanic section and the Egyptian sculpture.
The Rodin sculptures were fantastic too, including a copy of the Burgers of Calais. I didn’t have time to do any drawings, except when we were queuing for lunch near the Burgers (no pun intended!) and I did a sketch of part of that complex group sculpture using a pen-brush. The Modern Art section was packed with paintings and sculpures that have iconic status, too.
Found Gallagher’s Steak House just across the road from the hotel, on the first evening, and dined there, hugely and expensively – loved it and booked to eat there on Christmas Day too.
We wore ourselves out on the second full day, another brilliantly sunny one. We spent the day walking in Manhattan, admiring the Chrysler building,
with its art deco lobby and ceiling painting of modern marvels of the early twentieth century
the gothic style churches of St Bartholomew (St Barts), St. Patrick and St Thomas
St Thomas was our favourite, with its beautiful carved reredos inside and its rows of saints outside on the facade. By 4pm we had a camera full of art deco detail from the Rockefeller Center. I thought the gold sculpture that was the most photographed was by no means a masterpiece but Donall photographed me in front of it anyway.
There were lots of other Egyptian and Deco inspired motifs over doors and windows that deserved and got our attention. The ephemeral Christmas decorations at the Rockefeller Centre were lovely, angels and stars made of what looked like woven willow branches sprayed silver-white.
Christmas Eve we devoted to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMa) which was just round the corner from our hotel. There we saw Orozco's huge whale skeleton installation, Mobile Matrix (I wrote a poem and made a drawing of it)
and then at Radio City, also nearby, we went to a late afternoon performance of the Christmas Spectacular – it was brilliantly staged kitsch and we loved every moment of it. The chorus girls (Rockettes) were faultless, the three-D laser effects wonderful – we came out feeling that we’d definitely not avoided Christmas, and were glad of it.
Christmas Day was overcast and later wet. We had lunch at Gallagher’s and then went to the theatre – amazed that a performance was staged on 25th December of West Side Story, which I had never seen. (British theatres are normally closed on Sundays and never open on Christmas Day). We were right up “in the gods” and certainly walked off our lunch. The action was a little distant from us, but still very enjoyable. The lead male singer had a beautiful voice and the dancing was great too. We were less impressed by Maria, whose voice became a little harsh in top range, than by the second female lead, Anita.
After Christmas Day we caught up with the other main museums – the Whitney which has an important collection of modern American art, and a special exhibition of Georgia O'Keefe's abstract paintings.
We queued for a long time in the rain to go into the Guggenheim which was disappointing because the whole gallery was turned over to Kandinsky, with a couple of modern installations which we found frankly dull. I like Kandinsky’s work and it was interesting to see his evolution towards pure abstraction but we’d been looking forward to seeing some of the surrealists’ work that Guggenheim famously collected (she was married for a time to Max Ernst). We found the staff at the Guggenheim fairly unhelpful – OK, it was a horrible wet day and the queue was very long – but their attitude was rude and officious, especially when people asked to use the (totally inadequate) restrooms, after standing in the line for an hour or so.
December 26 was extremely wet. The skyscrapers were wrapped in a mist of rain and all their lovely reflective surfaces were opaque and grey. We got a Metro card and braved the subway. Of course we found it difficult at first – the interconnecting lines, in particular, which are not named as in London and Paris, but numbered, were confusing to us, but Dónall did a brilliant job of navigation
and we began to feel like old hands by the end of the day. We collected a lot of images from the walls of the stations, which have mosaic motifs and numbers that must date from the system’s opening at the beginning of the last century. I was charmed by the rows of wooden seats that stand on the platforms, too – basic, sturdy and rather comfortable, they look like relics from the past and are still doing the job they’re designed for. In general, the tunnels’ unadorned and peeling girders looked forbidding and we felt we’d rather not be found travelling alone on the less frequented stations at night.
Finding ourselves at the Lincoln Center that wet Boxing Night, we bought excellent seats at the performance of “South Pacific” by Rogers and Hammerstein that evening. I’d never seen it on the stage before. It was a lively, colourful performance with a beautifully deep set. And the following evening we already had balcony seats for “Song and Dance” by Sondheim, which we saw in London earlier this year. It was the same Trevor Nunn production but this time starred Angela Lansbury as the Countess and Catherin Zeta Jones as Desirée. Angela Lansbury, especially, was brilliant.
The weather changed back to sunny after 26th. It was milder, too. We found the Frick Museum on 27th – a lovely place created by a man who seems to have been far from charming himself. The paintings he collected by Whistler (elegant society portraits), Holbein (a searing virtuoso portrait of Sir Thomas Moore is unforgettable), Rembrandt (his last and greatest self portrait and “The Polish Rider” stick in my memory above all) Van Eycks, Vermeers and Impressionists – housed in an elegant mansion off Fifth Avenue.
Finally, on 27th, we even managed some retail therapy and dived into Macy’s instead of joining the two-hour queue to go up the Empire State building – that experience will have to wait until we go back to New York at a less crowded season.
But we do fancy New Year in New York, next year.
