Beautiful and not so beautiful

The Metropolitan Museum is just one of the museums of New York that houses artworks which America has no right to have. Only the British have plundered the world more successfully to acquire other people's treasure. The British of course specialised in antiquities, whereas the USA seems to own the modern world. Still I am glad I got to see it all. It is like a walk through an art history book. Turning a corner and coming face to face with Vincent in a straw hat, or Degas and Renoir paintings, that even someone who doesn’t know one artist from another and has no interest would recognize is an awe inspiring experience. It was almost too much to absorb.
The Jackson Pollack was great. My favorites were a portrait of an art dealer Vollard by Picasso, a Paul Klee abstract and a painting by Marc Chagall. At risk of exposing myself as an ignoramus I will confess that I had not seen the Chagall painting in any art books or heard of it, but it was truly wonderful. Coming from Australia where there is one great Pollack painting, to a gallery with dozens is a sobering. We still have more galleries to go to, this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Naoli was telling me about how much art changes hands in New York. Big business indeed!. Real masterpieces that we hear about on the news change hands here. Almost everything changes hands here. If you can think of it they sell it. Today we went to the soup nazi shop a la Seinfeld. Indeed the rules were posted up and the soup was great. Later Ben took us all the way downtown to his favorite new shop: the rice pudding shop "From Rice to Riches". Rice pudding is all they sell and it is gross. They had every flavor you could imagine chocolate, coconut, banana, and then some that you just couldn’t imagine: french toast, cookies and cream etc. It looked awful!