More Brooklyn Photos

The Brooklyn Museum had two top-notch shows that I got to see with my sister and cousin. It was the last day of the big Annie Leibovitz retrospective, and there were no separate tickets to see the special exhibition, so the place was packed: amusement-park length lines and bodies smashed against each other all around.

Here's a good pic of one of AL's photos of Susan Sontag:



There was also a special exhibition of Ron Mueck's work that I'd read about. It was startling, but after all the hype I was surprised to find myself underwhelmed. Mueck does miniature and gigantic renderings of human bodies, using silicone and other materials to faithfully recreate individual strands of hair, etc. Here's a good image:



I took two photos myself, using the iSight camera on my laptop, which proved to be surprisingly good for this sort of thing. The museum's wifi capability was a real lifesaver too, as I was able to figure out when I could catch a train back to Philly. Here's one of Mueck's sculptures, surrounded by the thronging, curious crowd.



The display room where Mueck's work was shown was strangely empty, especially compared to the packed-to-the-gills, not-entirely-coherent displays in the permanent collection. Immediately across from the large statue I just photographed was a utility door with an electrical outlet on either side. I made a long Duchampian joke about the door being a true (if accidental) work of genius: the "really real" in a room of clever, conspicuous fakes. "The unopened door," I said, "both invites and resists us."



That said, I remain unconvinced that I'm not (accidentally) right. To quote Oscar Wilde: "it is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth."