yesterday I took a work break for a couple of hours and went with some dear friends over to the Brooklyn Museum to catch their 1920s art exhibit and also Hide/Seek, which most of you may remember from the controversy over David Wojnarowicz’s “Fire In My Belly”, which was removed from the show at the National Portrait Gallery because fuck those assholes.
Melissa and I put the headphones on and stood and watched the whole video and didn’t really talk about it; we talked about other things with our other friends too and I stared hardest at the portraits that stared back at me. Because I love photography and portraiture especially (mostly because I’m no good at it); it struck me during the 20s exhibit that I love Alfried Stieglitz’s portraits of Georgia O’Keeffe far more than any love for her work on its own (sorry Feminism). I love 1920s photography, when the silver feels like a thing you can touch in the prints, where they shine like precious metals, and digital is wonderful but film and printing is something that gets to me on a gut level and not just because I worked my way through graduate school in a film lab.
I don’t go to museums often enough really, even though I live here in New York and I’m spoiled for options. I see ads for a show on the subway and that’ll sometimes be enough to remind me to go, to take friends, but yesterday’s little group reminded me what you learn about people when you stand in front of art with them; which pieces you need to share with which friend, whose hand you grab when something grabs you in the gut, the stories they make you tell.
The 1920s show is over, Brooklyn, but Hide/Seek is still there and there’s also an exhibit on Djuna Barnes, who was awesome. (I have to go back for it because we didn’t have time.) Go see them.
