NEW YORK - DAY 3, VAN GOGH AND MORE - DECEMBER 22, 05

1133 days ago

My cousin wanted also to see the Van Gogh drawings exhibition at the Met. As I managed to see only part of the ground floor on Wednesday we went back to the museum. No bridge crossing on foot, as we managed to get in the car of a Colombian guy looking for the extra 3 passengers. At the museum we met Jane - a Jewish Tibetan Buddhist friend of his, a really lovely lady actually. As we were carrying food with us (the Museum cafeteria wasn't cheap at all) we got stopped at security and had to get permission from the supervisor to check it in. I managed to keep the chocolate and juice though.

I was there from about 11:30 up to 5:15pm. We started off with the Fra Angelico exhibition, works from the whole period of his life, gathered from all around the world. Once again I realized an exhibition is the best way to have a global view of an artist's evolution. If not, you see 5 paintings here, and 3 there five years later. Plus there were works by Benozzo Gozzoli and a few other painters for us to see the environment and the followers. I knew Michelangelo admired Fra Angelico a lot.

We followed with Van Gogh, first with Ruisdael, Hokusai, Millet and other artists that influenced his style. Then on to the drawings, following all his steps, from the times when he started, while a minister in a mining town in Belgium, until the very end, in the asylum. Dark, tired workers, colourful boats and fields, starry nights and the view from the hospital, its corridors...so painful. Van Gogh is my favourite painter since I was 20 and he still is. I am a very tormented person, with lots of ups and downs, jumping from enthusiasm to apathy and depression. I FEEL his paintings inside, his look for the inside light that never turns off.

A brief respiro occasioned by a fashion exhibition, the outfits of some rich new-yorker, that could afford vintage Indian and Afghan jewelry and clothes Lacroix, Chanel, YSL and the kind. She liked colourful ethno clothing, which I prefer too.

I wanted to show my cousin the exhibition about medicine in ancient Egypt and I met my Hindu friend B. exactly in the same spot like the day before. We agreed to meet upon museum's closing time and go for another coffee.

We had a snack on a museum's bench then Nicu and Jane decided to go. Jane gave me her phone number, for when I might be back.

I wanted to go see the Modern section and maybe Asian, if time allowed. First I dropped by the Dutch painters (I call them "painters of light" as none is as good ad they are at it). There were not as many landscapes as I expected, but a lot of Rembrandt and some Vermeer, one featured in the "Girl with the Pearl Earring". Of course all tourists were taking pictures of this one

So there I was, not alone, but surrounded by my old friends Rodin, Renoir, more Van Gogh (bought a poster of a simply stunning sunflowers image), Degas, Monet, Cezanne. I was roaming through the rooms, feeling I cannot get enough of it, going back to see them once more (a young lady in blue by Renoir, the Van Gogh) Downstairs I bumped into one of my Dali favourites: The Hypercube, featured even on this very site. Unexpected encounter, I was so happy about it. Some Picasso's too from his early times, Joan Miro.

The Asian section was closed for whatever reason and time was running short anyway. I met B. and we went to a Starbucks in the West Side of Central Park. I had an Eggnogg (Hen Milk in French and Romanian) then said good bye to my new friend and headed towards South to meet my cousin.

His girlfriend showed up (curious about the mysterious female cousin visitor - a pretty tall American with a Polish background - blond long hair and blue eyes. We felt like having a drink so we went for a Pomegranate (her) and Hibiscus (me) Margaritas at Rosa Mexicano, across from the Metropolitan Opera House. She's a resident doctor, to become a surgeon in Morristown, New Jersey.

My cousin wanted to go back to her place as it was dark, the Margarita was strong and she wears glasses. So I ended up on a sofa this time, to make a difference to the air beds that hosted me at my cousin's place and Michael's. We took the train back to NY in the morning, and there was no more strike.

"Dimension Dali " and the Divine dimension - March 17, 05

1427 days ago

As I am working as a volunteer at the International Festival of Films about Art, I saw a few films last week-end and I'll continue this Saturday.

The documentary I saw about Dali and the different sciences that influenced his creative process opened my mind towards the ideas behind his paintings. I always loved words and images more than numbers, mathematics and physics were rather boring and insipid for me in highschool. Numbers are so precise, words have so many senses. Geometry was the only one that awakened a vague interest in me.

But many times I would stop and stare at the perfection of the nuances and shape of a flower, wondering how was this possible, how can so much beauty and delicacy exist in such a simple thing?

Salvador Dali was a friend of Romanian prince and mathematician Matila Ghyka (that's really funny for a Romanian name), who came up in 1932 with the Golden Number - Golden Proportion theory. According to him all symmetry and harmony of shape are tributary to this report: 1,618. Pineapple fruit, flowers, shells, leaves, even human body are illustrating this theory. Pyramids, the Parthenon in Athens, Renaissance paintings are other proofs.

So Dali used this theory. But next to the mathematics, he gathered knowledge in nuclear and molecular physics, quantum mechanics, the Big Bang theory, DNA (ADN in Latin languages) and tried to show it all through his work. Like the famous Soft Watch which represents in fact the relativity of time. He knew that our senses and our intelligence are not enough to perceive and explain the Universe.

But what struck me in that film was the mention of the HYPER CUBE, a four-dimensional geometrical figure, to suggest the other dimension, the one we cannot perceive. Christ is to humanity what a hyper cube is to the cube. "Dali understood that Christ was the interface between two domains and was due to ascend to another one we cannot comprehend". Isn't it beautiful? To Dali all symmetry around us, all harmony and visual beauty were clear proofs of God's existence. Even DNA (ADN) code's structure. God as the supreme arhitect and mathematician.

To me, the need of creating and admiring art has no other explanation. Art recreates reality, in a supra-reality, the emotional dimension of it. It satisfies our longing for the outter world, the one we just feel, we know it is there. Because God is beyond the visible and the comprehensible, unlike anything we can perceive or explain. But He talks to us through the beauty of the world or the one we are able to create. A bright red apple, a perfumed pineapple, a luminous sunflower, clear water with colourful fish swimming in it...the little miracles we see every day.