Friday, December 4, 2009

Eye Candy for the Holidays

I was New York this week and spent some happy hours wandering through the Met Museum, discovering things and getting ideas. But it's Holiday Time in New York and Eye Candy of the most sparkly, over the top kind is on my mind. I nominate the people behind the Bergdorf Goodman windows as Artists of the Month. I look forward to these windows every year and am never disappointed. The theme is Alice in Wonderland - sort of. In any case it's High Surrealism complete with illusions, misleading reflections, visual tricks, strange proportions and juxtapositions of scale and context. The closer you look the more you see from the story - keys, white rabbits, pocket watches, little doors - they've done a great job of capturing of Lewis Carrol's bizarre vision. Adding to the glorious confusion are the reflections of buildings on Fifth Avenue and other gawking spectators, carrying the theme out past the windows into the street. After leaving 5th Ave I went past a display on 6th Avenue - Claes Oldenburg couldn't have done it better - which comes first? Pop Art or Pop Culture?