Saturday at the Met

There's something about looking at art, isn't there?

I met my friend Alisa on the steps of the Met on this 70-degree Saturday afternoon (after we got 10 inches of snow on Sunday night!!!!), and we took advantage of my employer membership to waltz in for free, and who doesn't like a freebie? Courtesy of my employer, I can take a guest into the Met, MoMA, and the Whitney. Let the tourists pay full freight, I always say.

I always love going to museums with Alisa because she's an artist and I always learn something when we go to see art together. She's knowledgeable without being pompous, and amidst the tourists shuffling dutifully from painting to painting, giving each one approximately 5 seconds each, I'm getting a mini master class from a real artist!

I wanted to see the exhibit of American landscapes, because I happen to be completely in love with a giant Albert Bierstadt ("Storm in the Rocky Mountains") that lives at the Brooklyn Museum, a 7-foot x 12-foot painting that requires at least an hour to take in. It hangs alone on a wall with a bench in front of it so you can sit and absorb it. Today Alisa and I spent about 20 minutes in front of a single painting, dissecting it and discussing the details. Alisa always sees the light in a painting -- where it's coming from, where it's hitting, and how the artist depicts it.

The Met is completely overwhelming -- after 20 years in New York, there are still galleries that I haven't seen! You go in with a goal, and find yourself pulled by a tractor beam (or a glimpse of "Madame X" or a luminescent El Greco through a doorway) from room to room, and before you know it, you haven't seen what you half-intended to see in the first place. That's a beautiful thing, isn't it? I am always diverted by portraiture; today it was the portrait of Consuelo Vanderbilt and her son.

Visiting paintings with Alisa, we were the recipients of some glares, because we were clearly having far too much fun. Apparently, when you go to a museum you have to check your sense of fun at the door along with your twelve dollars and march grimly from room to room as if completing some duty that has grave national implications. We seemed to be the only people in the sculpture garden who were having fun (maybe because we didn't pay twelve dollars to be there), but I guess loud guffaws are completely outre at the Met. But -- at the same time Alisa gave me a lesson about Balzac's hands (wouldn't "Balzac's Hands" be a really good name for an indie album?).

We paid a visit to "The White Roses," even though the European painting galleries had the most annoying crowds we encountered anywhere in the museum (maybe that's where they feel they'll get their money's worth -- for me, I get more bang for my corporate ID in the armor or medieval art galleries.) I just wanted to say hello to the White Roses because it has a special place in my heart -- I remember the first time I saw it, turning a corner and there it was. There was nothing I could do upon my first sighting except start to cry. Call me a sissy. Now my feelings of affection for the painting are laced with some sadness that I will never get to have that feeling of seeing it for the first time ever again.

Feeling soul-scrubbed by art, and before full-blown art fatigue could knock us sideways (only sore feet and aging knees did that), we headed downtown to the Marshall Stack, which hasn't been graced by the presence of your Janey for nearly six months (after I delivered a venomous wine-influenced voice mail that went something like this: "You know, you alwaysh call me your friend, but it sheems that I always call you but you never call me so that tells me we're not really friends, so I guess we're not friendzzz, so... bye!"). Okay, so I'm immature at times; Matt doesn't seem to hold it against me, which clearly makes him a far better person than I am.

Needless to say, it was a great, great day.

Total aside: is it just me, the sake I drank, or spring fever, or is Saturday Night Live completely hilarious with The Rock tonight?