The Year of Yes
New York Yes
I may have already unpacked my clothes from this weekend’s trip, but I’m still unpacking and sorting through my memories. To run through it all chronologically would be folly (and maybe a little boring), so I’ll skip right to the point of it all:
Let go of the artifact. Just make. Just do. And keep doing it. For yourself. And not for some faceless, unpredictable audience or an unknown, shapeless future.
And, most importantly: Breathe. Especially if you’re in a small, crowded museum gallery on a rainy Sunday.
I am referring, of course, to the Tim Burton retrospective at the MoMA, which my friend Ivan and I schlepped down to New York to see. Sure, the movie memorabilia was cool to look at, but what really struck me was what a prolific artist Burton is. Though the show was small in terms of space, it was not lacking in breadth. The gallery was crammed with drawings, paintings, sculptures and early film/video work. Burton’s been at this for 40 years, and guess what? Not all of it is good. Not all of it is finished. A lot of it is untidy. But all of it is remarkable for how he has channeled all his fears and insecurities into a unique visual vocabulary across a number of mediums.
Which reminds me of my drawing teacher from art school. During orientation, he stood up in front of an auditorium full of fresh-faced, first-year students and held up a large, hastily-made sign that read, JUST START NO ART. In other words, forget about the finished project and embrace the process. While Ivan and I walked through the Bauhaus show later in the afternoon, I asked, “Do you think that when these artists were working on this stuff they imagined it would end up on the wall of a major museum?” His answer, of course, “No.” I’m sure Burton never thought his doodles would be subject to such consideration, either.
I pondered a similar question the next day while looking at the dried, mummified cadaver hanging in a glass case at the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia. Did this guy have any idea that about a hundred years later he’d be satisfying my, and countless others, morbid curiosity? I’m thinking not. Perhaps because he was one of “the criminal element” who, subject to the legislation of the time, lost the right to determine how his remains were disposed of. He hung right downstairs from the huge collection of skulls, across from the plaster cast of Chang and Eng, and right next to the drawers full of stuff people have swallowed (the Perfect Attendance button was a particular favorite of mine and Ivan’s).
It was awesome. And exhausting. The whole weekend was about just seeing. And walking. And walking to see things. Oh, and eating lots and lots of what I lovingly call Jew-food.
Rather than chronicle the whole trip in detail I’ll just provide an impressionistic list of experiences that would probably make no sense to anyone other than Ivan and me.
- You want the chopped liver? NO.
- It’s not a sandwich so much as a GIANT PILE OF MEAT. With bread at the bottom.
- Pain relievers are best consumed on pancakes, covered with maple syrup.
- Wit? Or wit-out?
- ABSOLUTELY NO PHOTOGRAPHY ALLOWED.
- Recalculating…
- Singing “Imagine” at John Lennon memorial is unoriginal.
- You know it’s going to happen, but you still jump when it finally does.
- Remember to lock your arm. Lock your arm!
- And when you travel with a gentleman from the Ozarks, you needn’t trouble yourself with opening doors.
And now I leave you with me doing a little jig in the rain at Times Square.
