Off Topic:

New York City

All photos unless otherwise stated: Per-Erik Skramstad © Wondersofsicily.com

 

My favourite travel destinations are Sicily (of course), London, Svalbard, Bayreuth (Wagner Festival), New York - and Ravenna.

This is me taking a selfie outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

 

New York - City of Creativity and Energy

Acrobats in Central Park, New York.

 

 

Acrobat in Central Park, New York.

 

 

Acrobats near Brooklyn Bridge.

 

 

Acrobats in Central Park.

 

 

The People in New York

The guys who built America. Did they get paid what they deserve?

 

 

 

Rich man - poor man. In New York you will meet both.

 

 

Ground Zero - a Heartbreaking and Beautiful Memorial Site

National September 11 Memorial Site at Ground Zero.

Photo: Per-Erik Skramstad / Wonders of Sicily

 

 

 

The Ground Zero Memorial.

Museums in New York

Marble head and torso of Athena. Roman imperial copy of a Greek original of the end of the 5th century B.C. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

The goddess Athena is rendered as a beautiful young woman. The lining of her helmet—which was pushed up on the top of her head—appears above her hair. The protective aegis (goatskin) with the Gorgon’s head in the center is reduced to a kind of collar that permits the torso and garment to be articulated. The original Greek work was probably executed in bronze.

 

 

James Ensor: Masks Confronting Death (1888). (MOMA, New York, 2016)

 

Thomas Schütte: United Enemies, 2011. (MOMA, New York, 2016)

 

One man watching Three Musicians (1921) by Pablo Picasso.

 

The Whitney Museum of American Art.

 

 

The breathtaking exterior of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth Avenue at 89th Street.

 

Children marvelling at the art work Flying Carpets (2011) by Nadia Kaabi-Linke above their heads.

Growing up between Tunis, Kiev, and Dubai, Nadia Kaabi-Linke has a personal history of migration across cultures and borders that has greatly influenced her work. Flying Carpets (2011) reflects the experience of immigrant merchants in Venice who often display their wares on rugs that can be gathered up quickly upon the arrival of authorities. Mapping the movements of the vendors and their blankets on a single bridge, Kaabi-Linke recreated the forms in steel, aluminum, and thread, suspending them above the viewer.

 

 

At the Guggenheim Museum I was particularly moved by the town Kader Attia (born 1970) made of couscous. The fragile buildings invite us to reflect on the coming and going of cultures and people, and on man's mortality. To me the essence of the work was about existential vulnerabilty, although the artist intended a more political reading.

Kader Attia lives and works in Algiers, Berlin, and Paris. Raised in Paris and Algeria, Kader Attia reflects on the impact of Western societies on their former colonial counterparts. For Untitled (Ghardaïa) (2009), Attia modeled the Algerian town of the title in couscous, accompanying it with photographs of architects Le Corbusier and Fernand Pouillon, and a UNESCO declaration identifying the town as a World Heritage Site. Colonized by France in the nineteenth century, Ghardaïa is marked by architecture that informed Le Corbusier’s modernist designs; Attia’s structure thus embodies the impact of Algerian culture on that of its colonizer.

 

 

Museum Mile in the Carnegie Hill Historic District.

 

 

Male confusion at MoMa, New York.

 

Architecture in New York - and some places

The Flatiron Building in New York.

 

The Financial Times Building, New York.

 

When you walk around among the skyscrapers in New York, the meaning of the opening titles in Alfred Hitchcock's classic North by Northwest becomes clearer. The film begins in New York.

 

 

 

The marvellous Guggenheim Museum.

 

Brooklyn Bridge.

 

“But if ye will not do so, behold, ye have sinned against the Lord: and be sure your sin will find you out.” Numbers 32:23 (KJV)