city lights

today's blog began with this picture

a cool alignment of city lights, i thought

which, inevitably reminded me of  

Mondrian's Broadway boogie woogie...[1942-43]

which appropriately lives at MoMA

here's some real life boogie woogie, or 2011 equivalents by Navid Baraty, first found here  

intersection by Navid Baraty

whenever i think of the Mondrian painting, i remember it as capturing New York at night, but it doesn't - funny how the mind plays tricks

Manhattan Midtown, from New York at Night - a book of aerial photos, by Evan Josephreview in the Telegraph

This is New York (obviously)

Miroslav Sasek's take on New York from Brooklyn

I used to think Sasek was the last word on New York

that was before I met Paul Auster... and his New York Trilogy

City of Glass has passages of walking New York,

 New York was an inexhaustible space, a labyrinth of endless steps, and no matter how far he walked, no matter how well he came to know its neighbourhoods and streets, it always left him with the feeling of being lost. Lost, not only in the city, but within himself as well. Each time he took a walk, he felt as though he were leaving himself behind...reducing himself to a seeing eye...


On his best walks he was able to feel that he was nowhere. And this, finally, was all he ever asked of things, to be nowhere. New York was the nowhere he had built around himself.



 It's been re-interpreted as a graphic novel

A live action version of the "walking" chapter, Chapter 8 of Paul Auster’s City of Glass as as slide show and PDF:

another graphic NY image by Navid Baraty

Karen O'Leary's cut out maps - NY as positive and negative 

available for sale on etsy

Says O'Leary, "Imagine all the sounds and smells and feelings of being in a large city; then try to transfer that to paper without using words, only by using a knife or a pen."