The Llama of the Lake

On Sunday, I rented a paddle boat to venture out in Meadow Lake at Flushing Meadows Corona Park. I espied in the distance a creature sticking out of the water and paddled toward it to get a closer view.  As it came into focus, it became clear that it was an inflated llama. 

What is not clear is why it was placed in this body of water where swimming is prohibited and why there is a canister put in in its center. If any of you should know the answer, I'd love to hear it.

Should you be in the Flushing area of Queens, you can visit Meadow Lake in person, though the llama may not be visible from the shore. Measuring 95 acres, Meadow Lake's claim to fame is the distinction of being "the largest fishable freshwater body in New York City," as per New York State's Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC).

The aquatic life that confer the fishable status on the lake  include: Alewife, American eel, bluegill, brown bullhead, common carp, goldfish, gizzard shad, silverside, largemouth bass, mummichog, Northern snakehead, pumpkinseed, white mullet and white perch  The DEC mentions all of the above, though it fails to mention inflatable plastic llamas.

I do have to give a shout-out to Wheel Fun Rentals, which supplied our boat for $30 plus tax per hour. We did get there before noon when the park was nearly empty and the lake completely so, so were able to use the coupon you can find  on the link. However, it takes great stamina to keep going for more than 90 minutes and we did not use up the full second hour you get free with the coupon. 

The shout-out is for calling me to let me know I forgot to pick up my license that is held while you take the boat. As there is no official procedure for the return, I forgot about it. But I did get it back after they called me to let me know.

If exertion is not your thing, you can choose to do what this visitor did and bring your own swing seat to attach to a shady tree to give yourself the best seat outside the house.

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Going for the brass ring

 

Why the focus on Wisconsin for Climate Change?

map source https://wgnhs.uwex.edu/wisconsin-geology/ice-age/

This is the question that bothered me when I first learned of the Wisconsin Glacier that is considered responsible for the natural formation of New York, including the the large boulders that remain in Central Park. On a NYC Park tour at Alley Pond, our guide (whose last name is actually Park -- an aptronym if ever there was one) explained that there was a time when the entire area was covered by ice a mile thick.

I found it somewhat confusing that the ice over New York should be named for Wisconsin and discoverd the answer in the online Britannica : "Wisconsin Glacial Stage, most recent major division of Pleistocene time and deposits in North America (from 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago). It was named for rock deposits studied in the state of Wisconsin."



Mystery solved, at least as far as that goes. The entry does point out the correlation of the end of that period with the extinction of certain species, including the mammoth and sabre-toothed cats. But it's says it's not necessarily accurate to say that their demise was simply the result of overhunting because a lot of factors go into climate and even more into species survival.


There's more information about Wisconsin geology herehttps://wgnhs.uwex.edu/wisconsin-geology/ice-age/. That's the source of the map pictured above.


Obviously, the climate policy censors have not yet gotten around to that site yet, as it says, "Changes in climate have followed a regular pattern for the past 700,000 years. Each cycle lasted about 100,000 years and consisted of a long period of generally cooling climate during which glaciers grew, followed by shorter periods of conditions similar to or warmer than those of today."

Related post: http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2015/10/what-brontosaurus-skull-can-teach-us.html

The book on the exhibit

A few weeks ago, I visited the New York Historical Society's Armory Show exhibit. Though it opened in 2013 for the 100 year anniversary, you can still catch it until February 23, 2014 (and if you're a Bank of America credit card holder you can get in free, January 5 and February 2 courtesy of the Museums on Us program)

 There is an audio guide for the exhibit, but it is really difficult to take in all the details of the politics behind the show from that information. It became much clearer when I read Elizabeth Lunday's The Modern Art Invasion: Picasso, Duchamp, and the 1913 Armory Show That Scandalized America.The books clarifies the differences in various types of modern art and the reactions they aroused.

 One of the things I found striking was how responses spread in 1913, through poetry, of all things. Lunday explains (p.80) that it would have been the "Twitter" of the day. "Where today's individual tweet and caption photographs in response to popular events, in the 1910s they wrote poetry -- vast reams of it, on every subject from the weather to fashion, foreign wars to the suffrage movement." The number of rhymes devoted to the Armory Show made it the equivalent of the subject an internet "'meme'" today. The book includes a few examples of such rhymes.

While the subject is the Armory Show, the book follows up on development in the modern art world throughout most of the 20th century and touches on major figures in American art whose fame came laer. One figure who currently looms large in the art world and did sell a painting through the show is Edward Hooper. But it wasn't the show that made him a success. He didn't sell another painting until another decade had passed. Lunday follows up on him briefly, as well as other artists whose names have became associated with modern art -- or the reactions against it.

Related posts: http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2013/11/masterpiece-marketing.html
http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2013/01/art-reflecting-life-reflecting-art.html

Fom $7 to priceless: masterpiece marketing

The crowd waiting to get in to the Frick on Sunday, November 17th

Today I visited the Frick Collection to see the special exhibit on view through January 19, 2014,  Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Hals: Masterpieces of Dutch Painting from the Mauritshuis. (Of course, I also went into the rest of the museum, but as I've there several times before, the real draw for me, as it was for the many people waiting around the whole stretch between 70th and 71st and even round back onto 71st -- in the rain as pictured here.)

The visiting  painting that is the unquestioned star of the special exhibit is  "Girl with a Pearl Earring." Not only does it illustrate all the promotions for the exhibit, but it  given pride of place -- the equivalent of a solo performance -- in the museum. It is the only painting hanging in the oval room. Its special position allows visitors enough room to cluster around it without blocking people's view.



The exhibition details tell a rags to riches story about the painting, both in terms of its restoration and in terms of its valuation. The audio guide, relayed that the star painting was sold for the equivalent of just $7, as relayed here:

The history of the acquisition of the Vermeer has by now become legendary. Des Tombe purchased Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring in 1881 at a sale at the Venduhuis der Notarissen in the Nobelstraat in The Hague for 2 guilders with a 30 cent premium.  ...After Des Tombe’s death on 16 December 1902 (his wife had died the year before and their marriage had remained childless) it turned out that he had secretly bequeathed 12 paintings to the Mauritshuis, including Vermeer’s famous Girl with a Pearl Earring."⁴(from Quentin Buvelot, "COLLECTING HISTORY: ON DES TOMBE, DONOR OF VERMEER'S GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING" in the Mauritshuis Bulletin, Vol. 17, no. 1, March 2004)

 Why should a painting that originally sold for just $7 become such an attraction? The answer is simple.   It is now Vermeer's  best known painting,  thanks to Tracey Chevalier's 1999 novel, which was the basis of a very successful 2003 movie. Now that's an interesting point in terms of marketing value. The Frick is well aware of the film's role in the painting's popularity and so is offering a showing of it on Monday evening, November 18th, with an exhibition viewing to begin at 5:30 and the film at 6.  

 Not to say that the painting is not worth of attention, but I'm not certain it would have drawn such a crowd if not for the attention cast on it by a bestselling book and well-received movie. It's certainly not the only painting by Vermeer to feature a woman in pearl earrings. One of the three Vermeers that the Frick owns is a later work of his, "Mistress and Maid" pictured here.  But no one wrote a book to popularize the story that the painting seems to tell and then went on to dramatize the same in a film, despite the suggestiveness of the woman's expression at being handed a letter by her maid.

It's something to consider: commissioning a book that could turn into a popular film to cast the spotlight on a particular work of art.