Spent some Time with Lorca in New York, & glad I did, because I, too, wanted a
fresh angle on America’s city. Spent some Time with Lorca in New York,
noticing who exits the Escalades, & who freights the garbage & heavy boxes
down grates of sidewalk dumbwaiters. Spent some Time with Lorca in New York
uncovering Dutch power structure in faces of individuals’ smiles of pride under
blonde hair, above stiff, grey suits, while opposite, the obviously downtrodden
glower, continuing to make you wonder if justice is possible, or that a man of
color could ever become president in this Godforsaken country, as the Spanish
poet wrote, “a world shameless & cruel enough to divide people by color when in
fact color is the sign of God’s artistic genius.” Spent some Time with Lorca
attending the Abstract Expressionism: A World Elsewhere exhibit, curated by my
friend, compassionate genius, incomparable critic, David Anfam, who reiterates
the importance of revolt, fresh perspective, genuine sincerity of artistic endeavor
way too soon sucked up, formalized, & used by the power structure, so that when
I stood at an angle, as oblique & marginal, as out of the way as I could, absorbing
the lines & forms & colors, juxtapositions, flow, lacunae, majesty, & detail of
one particular painting, Motherwell’s, Elegy to the Spanish Republic, indeed,
another version of which I visited on a daily basis working for four years at the
National Gallery, where upstairs in a plaster, windowless cave David slaved for
ten years over the Rothko Catalogue Raisonné it paid to have spent some Time
with Lorca in New York, because slowly from all the way across the room I
suspected that Goya, Picasso, & Lorca lurked on the surface & at the depths of
the massive rectangles & ovoids, linear pillars & ellipses, when all of a sudden
the Elegy took voice in the form of visual chorus, sung, whispered, & screamed,
Goya’s black-lace mantillas, Picasso’s Guernican heads, arms, & torsos asunder,
Lorca’s plaintive song of struggle, pain, & blood soared across the gallery room,
the cry, cry of injustice continuing unabated skyscraper top down to underground
homeless since the Time Lorca spent in New York.
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