This Sunday I was at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and found myself in front of their monumental Jackson Pollock “Autumn Rhythm (Number 30)”. And once again I had that hallucinogenic experience I often have in front of Jackson Pollock’s famous drip paintings, and which I only have in front of Jackson Pollock’s famous drip paintings.
I’ve never ingested LSD but I imagine this is the closest I’ll ever get to an actual acid trip.
It is not an experience I get from looking at reproductions of Jackson Pollock paintings. Perhaps because these can not duplicate the dimensions of the original. Or perhaps the tactile nature of the paint on canvass needs to be experienced in person too.
I am not sure I can adequately describe the experience, or why it only happens to me in front of a Jackson Pollock drip painting. But here it is:
I sit or stand in front of the painting and examine it like any other abstract work of art. The eye inevitably wanders along the swoops and arcs and patterns of paint on the canvas.
But eventually my gaze rests and finds a spot in the painting to focus on.
Or rather focus through.
And yes, I will “hashtag Keep the Secrets”, although I do wonder where the Magical Powers That Be draw the line. Is sharing evocative details from the Lyric theater’s wizarding-world-related renovation violating the Unbreakable Vow? Will Ministry of Magic aurors swoop down on me, confringo-ing my blogpost (or rather, considering my location, will I be busted by MACUSA agents)?
I write not to reveal story secrets but to praise the stagecraft, of which the enveloping atmosphere of the Lyric is one winning element. Of the story, I’ll just posit that “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” is not, as marketers will have you accept, “the 8th book” or even “the 8th part” in the Harry Potter literary saga. The seven Harry Potter books are their own contained galaxy, and the movies, the original adaptations and the Fantastic Beast films, as well as the play and its published script, occupy their own wonderful galaxies within the same universe. At least that’s the perspective I believe allows for the greatest appreciation of all the “content” the Wizarding World provides.
And then today, the obvious betrayal of the country. The unmistakable beholdenness, obsequiousness, to a murderous dictator, a smiling villain, the puppet master.
This year the rose garden at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden had received a “hard cut”, as we heard a passerby explain. Which made it still lovely but less lush than in 
But this year for the first time I will also include some cool videos of art that changes over time or with shifting viewer perspectives.
Or you can purchase an oil painting of a tv cartoon still of Bart Simpson and Joe Namath. Just one option of many on display at the Joe Namath Foundation Exhibition.
