The CHRYSLER BUILDING Crown

from Wikipedia:

The Chrysler Building is also well renowned and recognised for its terraced crown. Composed of seven radiating terraced arches, Van Alen's design of the crown is a cruciform groin vault constructed into seven concentric members with transitioning set-backs, mounted up one behind each other. The stainless-steel cladding is ribbed and riveted in a radiating pattern with many triangular vaulted windows, transitioning into smaller segments of the seven narrow set-backs of the facade of the terraced crown. The entire crown is clad with silvery "Enduro KA-2" metal, an austenitic stainless steel developed in Germany by Krupp and marketed under the trade name "Nirosta" (a German acronym for nichtrostender Stahl, meaning "rust-proof steel").

When the building first opened, it contained a public viewing gallery on the 71st floor, which was closed to the public in 1945. This floor is now the highest-occupied floor, most recently occupied by an office space management firm. The private Cloud Club occupied a three-floor high space from the 66th–68th floors, but closed in the late 1970s. Above the 71st floor, the stories of the building are designed mostly for exterior appearance, functioning mainly as landings for the stairway to the spire. Very narrow with low, sloped ceilings, these top stories are useful only for holding radio-broadcasting and other mechanical and electrical equipment. Television station WCBS-TV (Channel 2) originally transmitted from the top of the Chrysler in the 1940s and early 1950s, before moving to the Empire State Building. For many years, WPAT-FM and WTFM (now WKTU) also used the Chrysler Building as a transmission site, but they also moved to the Empire by the 1970s. There are currently no commercial broadcast stations located at the Chrysler Building.

ROBERT MELEE'S Figurative Sculpture at City Hall Park

from The Public Art Fund website:
Through April 2009, Public Art Fund will present an exhibition of four large-scale figurative sculptures by New York-based artist Robert Melee at City Hall Park. Since 1978, Public Art Fund has presented 19 temporary exhibitions at this lower Manhattan location, including the work of Alexander Calder, Julian Opie and Roy Lichtenstein. The current exhibit by Robert Melee features immense forms that while amorphous and featureless, seem familiar in their generalized characteristics and poses - slouching, sitting, pointing, standing upright - but also retain a haunting sense of disguise and alluring somberness.

Robert Melee is known for producing works of art that explore human behavior and psychology. Throughout his career, which began in the early '90s, he has focused his attention on interaction and relationships as seen through characters, both real and invented in his film, photography and performances. Melee began creating figurative sculpture in 2005, and these four outdoor bronze sculptures, presented together for the first time, represent some of his most recent work. To construct these commanding forms, Melee starts with mannequins to establish the basic human figure, and then works to blur recognizable details with abstract forms by adding built armatures and covering most of the features with canvas and plaster. This sculpting method allows him to manipulate and re-shape the human form. He then casts the sculptures in bronze and employs his signature painting technique called "marbleizing," an obsessively exaggerated interpretation of classic marbleizing, in which he drips and splatters the sculptures with brightly colored enamel paint. The results are works of art that unite formal characteristics of painting and sculpture: three-dimensional objects with a surface-area that underscores the materiality of the paint. His process is evocative of such Abstract Expressionists as Jackson Pollack and Willem de Kooning, who became known for their expressive use of color applied through intense physical labor.

These sculptures may be viewed as suggestive of different stages of life - from infant to child to adult - as supported by their titles, It Sitting, It Standing, It Up and Her Leaving. The artist's choice of "It" in the titles refers to a non gender-specific figurative form and reminds us that the works are, in fact, generic featureless masses. This direction, which pushes the sculptures towards the grotesque, challenges the "idealized form" often represented in traditional figurative art.

APPLE Introduces New Desktops

Apple in the Big Apple

Yesterday, Apple introduced its "refreshed" line of Mac desktop computers, adding stronger capabilities and slashing the prices. The new line of products include new models of its iMac, Mac mini and Mac Pro desktops, following a refresh of its MacBook notebook PCs last year. The flagship 24-inch iMac has twice the memory size and twice the storage of the previous generation 20-inch iMac, but is priced at the same $1,499. The new desktop PCs are not aesthetically different from the old iMacs, but bring much more bang for the buck.

Apple has taken the top spot in Fortune's list of most admired companies for 2008. Above is my capture of the Apple Flagship Store on Fifth Avenue, across from the Plaza, taken in December.

March Comes in Like a Lion with a Snow Storm

Heavy snow blanketed much of the Northeast yesterday. This is Central Park’s Sheep Meadow and a dynamic panoramic view of New York City's midtown skyline.

CHARGING BULL (WALL STREET BULL): Symbol of Financial Optimism and Prosperity

The sinking economy again dominated the news headlines today, with the Dow Jones industrial average falling below 7,000 for the first time in 12 years. This is a good time to post this photo of the CHARGING BULL (sometimes called the Wall Street Bull or the Bowling Green Bull). A favorite tourist photo op in Downtown Manhattan, this is a 3,200 kg (7,000 pound) bronze sculpture by Arturo Di Modica that sits in Bowling Green park near Wall Street in New York City. The sculpture depicts a bull, the symbol of aggressive financial optimism and prosperity, leaning back on its haunches and with its head lowered as if ready to charge.

The sculpture, one of the city's most photographed artworks, has become a tourist destination in the Financial District. It has also come to be an unofficial symbol of the Financial District itself, and it often appears in the local news media to punctuate stories about optimism in the financial market. (information from Wikipedia).

The RUBIN MUSEUM OF ART: Showcasing Art from the Himalayas

Facade of the RMA Building

Andree Putman's Steel and Marble Staircase of the RMA Building, a metaphor for traversing the levels of meaning in Himalayan culture

Earlier this afternoon, I visited the Rubin Museum of Art (RMA), home to a comprehensive collection of art from the Himalayas and surrounding regions. The museum is located in the heart of Chelsea, at 150 West 17th Street (Tel 2126205000). Their art collection consists of paintings, sculptures, and textiles. Although works of art range in date over two millennia, most reflect major periods and schools of Himalayan art from the 12th century onward. Current exhibitions include Color and Light (South Asian embroidery) and Patron and Painter (Tibetan paintings). I enjoyed viewing The Last Nomads, a collection of gelatin photographic prints by A Yin of Mongolian nomads.

About the RMA Building (from the RMA website):

The 70,000-square-foot museum occupies what was formerly a portion of the Barneys department store in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood. It was acquired in 1998 and renovated extensively from 2000-2004. The renovation and new design elements were the results of a collaboration headed by the architectural firm of Beyer Blinder Belle and including Atelier Imrey Culbert (associate museum designers) and Milton Glaser Incorporated.

Many of the most important details within the building have been retained from its previous life, most notably Andree Putman's steel-and-marble staircase that spirals dramatically through the seven-story gallery tower. In addition to spacious yet intimate galleries for featured exhibitions, the museum includes space for contemporary and historical photography, an art-making studio, a state-of-the-art theater for multimedia events and performances, a cafe, and a gift shop.