[Pink Pig Time Machine by Wilfrid: June 29, 2009]
Another week without much to report of gastronomic interest. I guess it must have been hot and sunny out in June 1999, because I certainly seemed to be hitting the streets.
To the New Museum of Contemporary Art in its old SoHo home, for instance, and a real eye-opener of show. Anyone around the downtown art scene of the 1980s would know the name David Wojnarowicz, but he hadn't filtered into my consciousness on the other side of the Atlantic. A writer, an artist in multiple forms, and latterly an AIDS activist, this retrospective - "Fever" - showed Wojnarowicz's creativity and courage to be inexhaustible. His ability to rally everything about him - materials, experiences, friends, causes - into a consistent artistic sensibility was inspiring. His collection of short prose pieces, The Waterfront Journal, may lack universality of Joe Brainard's I Remember, but it's another book by a New York artist well worth tracking down.
The same day, more downtown history: "Inventing Soho," a collection of documents, plans and pictures relating to the work of George Maciunas, a cornerstone of Fluxus, one avant-garde generation before Wojnarowicz.
As promised last week, I then went to a real circus. Well, Circus Amok, anyhow - no animals, but all kinds of acrobats and bearded ladies. This mix of political satire and big top fun has been performing in New York parks for some years now, but sadly their website shows no current activity.
I don't believe it was my first visit to Angel's Share, but apparently I sidled up to the bar ten years ago and worked my way through several sidecars. The week ended with another long-running and beloved New York show which will ring down the curtain at the end of summer '09: Forbidden Broadway. This was the "Cleans Up Its Act" edition, in the cramped surroundings of the downstairs cabaret room at Ellen's Stardust Diner. You didn't know there was a downstairs? There's always a downstairs or an upstairs.
Dinner out next week, I hope.
