Georgia on My Mind: I finally went to the newly expanded Tatre Modern and I am now thinking a lot about Georgia O’Keeffe. As I walked through the amazing exhibit of her art from 1915 through the 1960s at Tate Modern, I kept thinking about how I could try to adopt some portions of her style to what I am trying to paint. I’ve already started playing around with this idea and have a half finished painting in the kitchen. I really need to go the museums more often. It so often leads to inspiration.

Other than the art itself, the highlight of the exhibit for me was learning more of O’Keeffe’s amazing life story. She knew she wanted to be an artist at the age of 12 and in 1915 she was teaching art in South Carolina and creating charcoal drawings. She sent some of them to her friend Anita Pollitzer in New York, one of her fellow art students, who she had been corresponding with about the art scene there. Pollitzer decided to show the drawings to Alfred Stieglitz, the famous photographer who also ran the most influential, avant-garde gallery in NYC. Stieglitz was blown away and contacted O’Keeffe immediately, starting a professional relationship, love affair and marriage that would last until his death in the mid 1940s. Her charcoal drawings were included in a group exhibit at his gallery in 1916 and she was on her way. (The one below was one of them and was an attempt to express the feeling of a headache.) The first room of the Tate exhibition included both the O’Keeffe’s charcoal drawings that were at that first exhibition and Stieglitz’s photos of the exhibition itself and the room was designed to mimic the original exhibition space you saw in the photos.

This sort of attention to detail continued throughout the exhibit. In the room highlighting O’Keeffe’s New York phase, for example, they had not only her iconic paintings looking down on Manhattan from the 30th floor of the hotel where she lived with Stieglitz but also the photos that he had taken of the same views. Her paintings in New Mexico were accompanied by photos of the same vistas by Ansel Adams, who was often her traveling companion. (Stieglitz decided that New Mexico was O’Keeffe’s place and not his and mostly stayed in New York for her visits to Ghosts Ranch.) The exhibit did what I think a really great artist’s retrospective has to do. It contained numerous examples of her art over the years, including some of her most iconic works. And it also gave you an idea of what Georgia O’Keeffe was like and what drove her to paint in the way that she did. I’ve always loved her work and now I know why.

It’s Only Rock and Roll, but I Like It: On Thursday afternoon, Judie (who really needed a break from the law firm move stuff) and I went to the Saatchi Gallery near Sloane Square to see an exhibit celebrating the Rolling Stones. It had been curated with a lot of input from Mick and Keith (and maybe some of the others) and was a remarkable look back at their career. The Stones appear to have had an unusual sort of self-awareness about what they were doing and saved a huge amount of material over the years. The entire archive must be overwhelming. There were big sections about their music and their extensive studio work in recording (and creating) their music, which actually runs somewhat counter to their image as one of the greatest concert bands ever. In a way, what was even more interesting was how involved they were in all of the design elements of their tours, albums and performances. So there were samples and stories about the creation of their album covers and tour posters and the original designs and samples for the lips and tongue logo. There was a large section about what they wore when performing, with fashion designers and Mick and Keith talking about the various phases they experienced, all accompanied by the actual clothing and videos of them performing while wearing it. There was a period where they were very tight with Andy Warhol, who designed album covers like “Sticky Fingers” and also did a series of striking portraits, which were there of course. And one of the odder parts of the whole exhibit was a recreation of the flat where four of them lived around 1962, when they were all about 20 or so. It was a spectacular mess. The whole thing was very creative and detailed and a real visual and aural treat. It ended with a 3D video of the Stones performing “Satisfaction”. These guys were more than just a great rock and roll band. They were artists. The exhibit moves the New York in November.

“New York, New York”: We’ve been here eleven months now, which is past the halfway point of our stay. I am already starting to anticipate our return and have been feeling a bit sad and nostalgic about the idea of leaving London. At some point, I think I will write a post about all of the things I am going to miss about living here. I’ve even pondered the idea of staying for an extra month or two. Then last night, Judie was playing the Jonathan Schwartz Show (from WNYC) on the Internet and Frank Sinatra came on, signing “New York, New York”. This instantly brought back memories of being at Shea Stadium in 1986. The Mets had just won the World Series and the Mets played that song (which they didn’t usually do) and over 50,000 people (including us) roared along at the top of our lungs. It is the ultimate song about New York (and Frank sings it better than anyone). It really reflects how New Yorkers view their city with the lines like “if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere” (actually like London) and “a city that never sleeps” (unlike London). My little town blues melted away and I realized how much I am looking forward to returning home.

Back in the USA: On Sunday, Judie and I return to America for a little over two weeks. Judie will be visiting her mother in North Carolina, going to a conference in San Francisco (her first appearance as a K& L Gates attorney) and then coming back for “Sister’s Weekend”, our annual family reunion in the Catskills. I’ll be mainly hanging out in Montclair, going to a Mets game, playing a little golf and spending the weekends in Liberty. We extended our stay by a day or two so that we could celebrate Hannah’s 20th birthday with her and we will be going to Philadelphia to visit Alex and Lucy and see their new apartment. Finally, we will hopefully be able to get our new visas, since our current ones are through Bryan Cave and expire when Judie leaves the firm. K&L Gates will have a boutique immigration law firm helping us and will pay for expedited service and says it can be done. The new visa will only be good for six months, which only gets us to early February of next year, over a month before our tenants leave our house. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. So we’ll be seeing some of you soon. My pace of blogging will probably slow or even stop during this period.