Hiroshige's 100 Famous Views of Edo. The Brooklyn Museum.

 

Yesterday after weeks of feet problems I went out with 2 close friends visiting from France to the Brooklyn Museum to see the great exhibition “Hiroshige's 100 Famous Views of Edo” I have a great fondness for the old Brooklyn Museum itself. This was the museum of my youth,the first museum I ever went to when my uncle Natie would take me on sundays sometimes with childhood friends and we would run and giggle through those great marble halls especially the museum's great hall. Now I don't run so much except to get the hell out of an exhibition I don't like. I remember also many elementary class trips here, after we would pile into the old gift shop and I would always buy the same thing, a small wooden apple that when you took the top off inside would be tiny wooden dishes, no doubt a big influence on me. It's still a majestic building but now with an unfortunate facade added on in 2000 that cut away the magnificent grand staircase. I've yet to meet anyone who likes this horror, and someone I know who lives right across the street from the museum ended her membership because of this crime against architecture committed by Isozaki and Polshek. Anyway the Hiroshige exhibition was superb, a breathtaking series of 100 of his master prints from 1856-58 all from the museum's collection and beautifully installed. Each one is a little gem of perfect beauty of scenes of everyday life in the town of Edo. Things of course have changed so having these “snapshots” of life back then besides being magnificent works of art are also cinematic in his hands. Far away views, along with intense close ups of everday activities. His use of tones and colors and tiny details will hold you in his art probably forever. This is a great great s

how. Don't miss it. Through Aug. 4^th.