European Paintings at the Metropolitan Museum

I went to see the newly redone and expanded European paintings galleries at the Metropolitan Museum.   I was amused to see that they now have a similar organization to the Gemaldgalerie in Berlin. Upon entering you can turn one way to go through painting as it developed in the Northern European tradition, or the other way to go through through the similar history in the Italian tradition.   Broadly speaking, of course.
The galleries are wonderful, and for the most part, even in the crowded summer tourist season, relatively calm and peaceful.   After seeing Jem Cohen's intriguing film "Museum Hours", I was pleased to catch this view of a museum guard contemplating a wall of Rembrandts, with no one else around:

Aside from seeing all five of the Met's Vermeers temporarily in one room, the highlight for me was seeing the early Italian paintings.   What struck me was the vividness of the colors and designs; it seemed to me that the paintings were less about their ostensible religious subjects and more about the sheer beauty of color and line.   All those brightly colored robes!   There is one painting with a particularly striking blue robe, by Fillipino Lippi about which you learn that the wealthy commissioner of the painting paid extra money to have the finest quality blue.   All of which reminds you of the sheer inventiveness it took back in those days to create these colors.

There are some paintings that seem Klimt-like in their sheerly decorative surfaces, as in this part of a painting of Saint Ursula:

And there are things like the painting from the school of Valencia, which seem to exist in a different world than many of the traditional Italian paintings.

After spending a lot of time with these paintings in two separate visits, my eyes weren't good for much else.
I did see, though, a small exhibition from the Met's Klee holdings that exhibited Klee's development towards abstraction, which came early on in his career.  The blurbs noted that unlike painters like Kandinsky or Mondrian, whose move towards abstraction generally reflected some kind of spiritual or philosophical quest, Klee's turn towards abstraction was in order "to keep drab reality at bay".   While the point is certainly debatable, I like the notion, which sounds Nabokovian to me.

Aunt Hazel of Brooklyn Heights

Continuing in my habit of tracking down my ancestral residences in New York, I looked up my "Aunt Hazel", a gruff and humorous woman who was my maternal grandfather's sister.  I knew she lived in Brooklyn Heights with her companion Aunt Marguerite.  And there they were, listed in the 1940 census as living at 160 Columbia Heights.  The census lists Marguerite as the head of household, and Hazel as her "partner".  Their occupations are listed as secretaries.  Hazel and Marguerite always came to our house for Thanksgiving and Christmas every year, along with all the other relatives in New York.   I wish I knew more about them!

160 Columbia Heights was a very new building in 1940, in an Art Deco style, with amazing views of Manhattan.

After walking around Brooklyn Heights and its wonderful historic architecture, I walked down the hill towards what is now called Dumbo, and saw the famous dual bridge view that everyone photographs:

Dumbo is really more a real estate marketers idea than anything else, with some nice old historic warehouses converted into condos, and some old buildings. It is fun to look at the bridges from underneath.  Who knew that the Manhattan Bridge was held up by a brick chimney?

But what they don't talk about is the absolutely deafening roar produced by the subways as they cross the Manhattan Bridge.  It's kind of like living next to a runway at an airport; I don't know how anyone can stand it.  There was a good reason for this being a warehouse district.

Naturally the next step was to join the crowds and walk across the Brooklyn Bridge.
I have to confess that I find the notion of Gothic arches on a modern bridge to be somewhat  peculiar; I prefer my bridges to be all metal, like the Manhattan and Williamsburg.   But there is no denying the appeal of the patterns of the cables.

The renovations also add a bit of variety, with this tarp covering part of the bridge.

Once in Manhattan, I walked down towards the Battery, and saw the beginnings of Santiago Calatrava's  transportation hub emerging above ground.   It looks a bit sinister at the moment, but will hopefully be a great relief from the bland glass boxes that surround it.