Grand Central Station, Chrysler Building, French Building, and Rockefeller Center

Some unfinished business--great gift shoppe, library cards--took us back to the New York Public Library, and afterwards we had a look at several more architectural wonders in the neighborhood: Grand Central Station, the Chrysler building, the French building, and Rockefeller Center.

From the bottom of the canyon

Goal for the day: the Chrysler building, my favorite
art deco, at least in the large format category

But first, a pass through Grand Central Station

Now in the lobby of the Chrysler building, much art deco,
much beauty...

Not much interpretive information, no gift shoppe...but plenty of 
guards to keep you inside the lines, not bothering the tenants...

Still my favorite in that category

Moving right along, another tall skinny going up

Headed for Rockefeller Center, we noticed the French building

Impressive beauty

Carrying on to the Rock; as the fella' says

Birthplace of television broadcasting; FWIW

We grew up in the television age...much of it NBC, but by this time
we were thinking more of CBS, and the Late Show, as a later post
will show...

Nonetheless, there was much of aesthetic and architectural
interest at Rockefeller Center

The Met: Tiffany/Moore Exhibition

The Met had half a dozen special exhibitions going on in September and October, and among those we took in was the special assemblage of items from the collection of Edward C. Moore. Moore was a collector and designer, specializing in silver, who rose in his own family's silver business, as Tiffany's chief supplier, then joined Tiffany's when it acquired the Moore silver firm. Moore was highly talented, well educated in his work, and wealthy, which is a great combination especially for travel and art collecting, among other things. He collected from the four corners of the earth, based many of his Tiffany creations on items he had collected, and, upon dying, left his vast collection, some thousands of items, to the Met. From 1942, they we dispersed throughout the museum, but for this exhibition, sponsored by Tiffany's, several hundred have been reassembled to honor Moore. Included were items he collected  as well as items he designed for Tiffany's. We'll see much more Tiffany work, particularly glass, when we tour the Met's American Wing, and especially later, when we tour the lamp collection at the NYC Historical Society. Tiffany's is practically synonymous with NYC, thank you Truman Capote, and maybe we'll have breakfast at the Blue Box Cafe sometime.

Further background

Edward C. Moore

Among the prize cups Moore designed

Goelet Cup, Schooner Prize, 1884

Moore was especially fond of glass and led Tiffany's
through much experimentation with glass technique;
above, from his collection, is a footed 16th century
Austrian vase, blown, painted, gilded, etc.

More bits from his glass collection

Swan Moore designed for the 1776 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition

Silver, copper, and gold dish, also from the 1776 Exposition; Asian
flourishes, but a reference to a 17th century French novel...

The so-called Conglomerate Vase, wherein Tiffany's mastered
Japanese metal-working techniques...

Tiffany-decorated Smith and Wesson pistols, early 1880s; silver bullets
not included

More Japanese metal work

1890 Tiffany candelabrum

Pair of Tiffany silver candalabra, 1884, commissioned by
Mary Morgan, said to be Tiffany's most elaborate in Moore's
tenure; at least 6 feet high! 

Enameled vase--the Magnolia Vase-- from 1893 Chicago

World Fair; gold, silver, enamel, opals...

One room from the exhibit

The Met: European Paintings To 1800, Part The Third

And now, the exciting conclusion of our multi-day tour of the Met's European paintings to 1800...and somewhat beyond...

Georges de La Tour, The Penitent Magdalen, 1640

A very early Velazquez, The Supper at Emmaus, 1622

Velazquez, Portrait of a Man, 1635; perhaps a study
for a larger painting...

Velazquez, signed copy of a portrait of Philip IV, 1624

Velazquez, Portrait of Juan de Pareja, 1650; Pareja was 
Velzquez' personal slave, whom he subsequently freed and who
went on to be a successful Madrid artist

Giovanni Panini, Modern Rome, 1757

Watteau, Mezzetin, 1718; Mezzetin is a character from the
Italian commedia dell'arte, same as the more famous Pierrot

Jean Chardin, Soap Bubbles, 1733; several copies elsewhere;
this one destined for the Fuhrermuseum; until 1945

A whole wall of atypically fanciful Hubert Robert landscapes...originally
hung in a royal pleasure palace outside Paris...maybe accounting in part
for his being sentenced to the guillotine some years later...it's a long story,
but he later became one of the first directors of the Louvre as we know it
today...

Joseph Duplessis, Benjamin Franklin, 1778; when he
was representing the rebel colonies and charming the
ladies of Paris   

Fragonard, Marie Emilie Coignet de Courson, with a
Dog, 1769

Corner of a Fragonard and Watteau room

Elizabeth Louise Vigee Le Brun, Alexandre Charles 
Emmanuel de Crussol-Florensac, 1787; family favorite
after seeing so many of her portraits at the Louvre, 
Versailles, and the National Gallery (London)

Also by Vigee Le Brun, Julie Le Brun, her daughter; the
Met intimates it has deeper aesthetic/philosophical implications;
looks pretty clumsy to me, but she clearly had a satire/parody
streak...in addition to being Marie Antoinette's portraitist and
having had the good sense to get out of Dodge before the
shooting began...

The lone Hogarth, The Wedding of Stephen Beckinham
and Mary Cox, 1729; great satirist, moralist, not much
of a portraitist

Jean-Baptist Greuze, Broken Eggs, 1756; following in the footsteps
of Steen...

Jacques Louis David, Antoine Laurent Lavoisier and
Marie Anne Lavoisier, 1788; Lavoisier was thought
to have revolutionary inclinations, and this painting
was refused admission to the salon of 1787 for being
potentially inflammatory; Lavoisier, the great scientist,
was subsequently guillotined...

Vigee Le Brun, again, Madame Grand, 1783; eventually Talleyrand's
spouse

David, General Etienne-Maurice Gerard, 1816; after major
involvement in the Revolution and in the Napoleonic era,
David retired to Brussels in 1815 to do portraits...

 

Baron Francois Gerard, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand
Perigord, 1808

David, The Death of Socrates, 1787; I can't believe the French let
this one go...classic neo-classical David, just before Brutus and the
Lictors...

Louis Leopold Boillly, The Public Viewing of David's "Coronation" 
at the Louvre, 1810; public viewings of David's work were sometimes
as historic as the events they depicted...e.g., The Lictors Bring to
Brutus the Bodies of His Sons...