Daily Blague

There are so many great things about Ms NOLA's new job that it would take all day to go through them, but for our purposes, suffice it to say that getting off at lunchtime on Fridays in summer is pretty neat. We had another afternoon at the Metropolitan Museum to kick things off.

There are two shows at the museum that, while not unforgettable, are well worth seeing. The first is a major retrospective of Max Ernst's artwork; it's going to close in a couple of weeks. The other is a minor show that examines the inspiration that Henri Matisse drew from bold and exotic textiles. At the start of the show, there's a fragment of fabric that belonged to the painter, and it is surrounded by pictures in which Matisse improved upon it as a backdrop for still lives. The pattern, a late-eighteenth century print in blue on white of flowers in garlands and nosegays, is of a fussiness that Matisse completely eliminates each time he exploits it. Throughout the show are many other panels, articles of clothing, and even some quilted, cut-out North African wall hangings that simulate tracery grillwork. It was not clear to me if any of these items belonged to Matisse, but that's not to say that they have no bearing on the show. The paintings, of course, are genuine, and they all show that Matisse could transform color and a sense of play into joy of a high order.

Max Ernst, a member of the surrealist circle that formed in Paris after World War I, was a craftsman as well as a dreamer, and what surprised me most about his paintings was the feeling of quality about them. They're quite painstakingly done. My favorite was Snow Flowers (1929), above. No reproduction can do justice to the illusion of fabric texture that Ernst coaxed from his brush to make the round blob in the lower center of the picture, and no reproduction would be likely to get the colors just right. It is a haunting picture, and I can well imagine falling in love with it. The images that are famous because they're creepy - The Robing of the Bride, and The Angel of the Hearth - left me unmoved at best; Robing is every bit as shocking as it was undoubtedly meant to be, and I can't imagine spending more than ten minutes in its general vicinity. But the abstractions are most absorbing. They are also, of course, not surrealist.

Now we're off to Carnegie Hall. Ms NOLA's housemate, Mr Nerb, has scored some seats for a JVC Jazz Festival New York concert featuring Dave Brubeck. Jessica Molaskey will be among the guests. I've no idea where the seats are, but we ought to have a good time. I'll let you know.