Hoity-Toity

I'm agonizing over retirement venues. Friend Neil points out that it's silly to stick with New York, since it costs a lot to live here and I seldom go into the city – for example, I haven't yet seen the new Museum of Modern Art. Too true.

Your observation about not going to NYC is on the money. After filling a chair at the office five days a week, and commuting back and forth two hours a day, I'm not eager to commute yet again during my precious weekend hours. Also each visit to the city entails spending a hundred bucks or so. One needs actually to live in a city.

As for MOMA, I just never could warm up to the place. They're too hoity-toity somehow. To me art is something to enjoy, not to worship. Maybe they've changed, but their presentations were, in my experience, a series of false notes. Remember, their long-ago show of Edward Weston was originally promoted as "Edward Weston: Artist." Weston found this unbearably pretentious and made them change the show's title to "Edward Weston: Photographer."

Of course I like the "fine arts," sculpture and painting and the rest, but the arts that most interest me are those that aren't fine, notably photography and comics. They're full of present meaning and feeling, and part of the culture that makes them. Same goes for movies and TV ads and other newish things I don't need to list. There was a time when the fine arts were like that, but now they're very, very self-conscious. That can work too, but art that's about art has grown too big for its niche.