Artful Dodger…

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Today, is probably one of the most concerning, emotionally paralyzing days of my life.

The worse case scenario is now a reality along with financial fears when the market opens this morning.

Nothing to be said.

A diversion is much needed.

I shall provide a temporary distraction.

Read on.

I hit up the NYC museums last week.

I thought culture would bring me closer to Hillary and masterpieces would take my mind off of the disastersof the 2016 Presidential campaign.

God knows, you do not peruse museums to channel the classless, uninspiring Dumphf who will now be the next president of the United States…who are these morons who voted for him and kept a majority of the same people in Congress?

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I took in an enlightening exhibit at the new MET Breuer which stands in place of the old Whitney Museum on Madison Avenue and 74th Street.

The riveting collection features American artist, Kerry James Marshall (born 1955).

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This is the largest museum retrospective to date of his work.

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The exhibit encompasses 72 paintings that span the artist’s remarkable 35-year career.

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The works are counter stereotypical representations of black people in society.

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Born before the passage of the Civil Rights Act in Birmingham, Alabama, and witness to the Watts rebellion in 1965, Marshall has long been an inspired and imaginative chronicler of the African American experience.

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He is known for his large-scale narrative history paintings, featuring black figures defiant of blackness in a medium in which African Americans have long been invisible.

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I was blown away by the pain, vibrance, irony and sheer size of his works.

The idiom, a picture is worth a 1000 words, is truly evidenced in Marshall’s striking works that honestly portrait black lives within the context of white suburbia.

Paul Klee
Paul Klee

There was also a small Klee collection of artwork that without labels, you would never know it was Paul Klee.

Paul Klee
Paul Klee

I adore Friday nights at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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Destination…the Max Beckmann exhibit.

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The show puts a spotlight on artist Max Beckmann’s special connection with New York City, featuring 14 paintings that he created while living in New York from 1949 to 1950, as well as 25 earlier works from the New York collections.

Max Beckmann
Max Beckmann
MET Mezzanine
MET Mezzanine

Fortified by an extra cold martini sipped on the mezzanine level of the classic museum, we perused the show.

Max Beckmann Self-Portrait
Max Beckmann Self-Portrait

A tycoon, a trapeze artist, a nightclub owner, a sailor, German Expressionist Max Beckmann saw himself as an actor on the stage of life and often painted himself in disguise.

Max Beckmann Self=Portrait
Max Beckmann Self=Portrait

Beckman fled his native land after he was famously denounced as a “degenerate” by the Nazis.

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Beckmann died just 16 months after arriving in New York, suffering a fatal heart attack while on his way to view his painting, Self-Portrait In Blue Jacket (1950), on exhibit at the MET.

Max Beckmann's Wife
Max Beckmann’s Wife

Beckmann was crossing 69th Street and Central Park West when he had the fatal heart attack.

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We made the round trip to the 5th Avenue and 82nd Street museum unscathed by physical maladies.

Let’s hope America can withstand the pain, inexperience, idiocy and uncertainty of a Trump presidency.

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