Claude Monet's Impressionism

Monet was fascinated by reflections found in his pond at Giverny

This morning I headed to the Vancouver Art Gallery to check out Claude Monet: Secret Garden that just kicked off late last month and is on until October 1.

Another painting of the waterlilies

Luckily I had a free ticket and got to literally walk in -- there was a pretty long line at the entrance to buy admission tickets.

This exhibition features 38 paintings from the Musee Marmottan Monet in Paris. The museum has the biggest collection of Monet's works in the world, as well as other Impressionist painters like Edgar Degas, Camille Pissaro, Paul Gaugin and Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

The museum is currently undergoing renovation, which is why Monet's works are touring around -- with Vancouver as the only North American city stop.

In the show, the paintings focus on his impressionist style and in particular when he lived in Giverny, France, where he lived from 1883 until his death in 1926. We see his enthusiasm for painting in situ as much as possible, to capture the moment, and how he would paint the same subject over and over, studying how the light affects it at different times of the day and seasons.

He once said that he never used the colour black because nature didn't use it, and instead used other colour combinations to paint shadows.

My picture of the pond in 2015, with the bridge at the back

You also see the progression of his work, from the beginning of his impressionist style that becomes more abstract as he gets older, mostly because his eyesight was deteriorating and the frustration of not being able to see the colours as well almost put him off painting.

However, Monet could not not paint -- as a result his colours become more bold and farther from reality, moving away from pastel colours to more burgundies, browns, oranges, and ochre.

This progression was illustrated in his series of paintings of the Japanese bridge at Giverny. In reality the bridge is a pistachio green, with a canopy of wisteria hanging overhead, as well as some weeping willows.

However, in his later years, the colours change and become a more autumnal palette, the brushstrokes aren't very definitive in terms of identifiable shapes, but still strong and determined.

This painting of the bridge was done in 1918-19...

He and his two sons moved to Giverny, a country home he rented with his patron's widow, Alice Hoschede and her six children. They later married. When they moved to Giverny, he set about designing the gardens, and showed his green thumb expertise and enthusiasm.

There he planted many different kinds of flowers and made a pond where he could set up his Japanese-style bridge. It was the reflections in the water that fascinated the artist, inspiring him to paint his most well-known works, the waterlilies.

"These landscapes of water and reflections have become an obsession. It's quite beyond my powers at my age, and yet I want to succeed in expressing what I feel," Monet remarked in 1908.

At the end of the show, there is a small room, where American photographer Stephen Shore took pictures of Giverny, giving visitors a better idea of what the gardens looked like in reality.

... while this one was done 1918 to 1924 that is more abstract

I had the privilege of being at Giverny just over two years ago, and I loved every moment being there, knowing that Monet had wandered the same grounds and we saw the same flowers he planted in the late 19th century.

It is interesting to speculate what kinds of paintings Monet would have produced if his eyesight wasn't so bad -- what would he have done?

After his death in 1926, he did not have a will, but all his possessions were inherited by his younger son Michel. When he died in 1966, he bequeathed what he had to Musee Marmottan Monet.

We are very lucky to see this show and be up close to Monet, who taught us to see things in another way.

Claude Monet: Secret Garden

Until October 1, 2017

Vancouver Art Gallery

750 Hornby Street

Vancouver

www.vanartgallery.bc.ca

Super Healthy Breakfast at abcV

A soft by otherwise delicious dosa with yoghurt and greens

When in New York, there's not only sightseeing and show watching, but also lots of dining.

One place we were very curious to try was abcV, a vegetarian restaurant opened by celebrity chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten.

I met him in Hong Kong a few months ago and when I asked him about abcV, he told me about the menu, and boasted the restaurant had "the best congee in New York City".

The restaurant's interior is sparse yet very modern

When a gweilo chef claims he has the best congee in town you have to check it out, right?

My New York-based friend made a reservation for July 4 for breakfast -- and we were told the only time available was 9.30am sharp, even though breakfast is served until 10.30am.

So we arrived a bit earlier than the appointed time -- no traffic because of the public holiday -- and hardly anyone in the restaurant either. We could have come at 10am... or did the staff forget it's a public holiday?

The decor is quite sparse -- a white modern room with a mish mash of chandeliers suspended from the ceiling, a bakery at the front, and kitchen at the back.

We noticed the pieces of cutlery were all different -- a kind of eclectic hipsterish feel that's kind of artsy, which is what the crowd was mostly made of, except for us.

Poached eggs and mushrooms underneath

The menu lists dishes that sound super good for you. Coincidentally the New York Times had tried the restaurant and the review came out just before we went, but I didn't read it until afterwards.

We agree with the assessment that the atmosphere is quite pretentious, but the reviewer showed the menu to a dietician, who proclaimed the dishes really were healthy -- though the portions were on the delicate side.

One of the first dishes we shared was the dosa with yoghurt, avocado and sprouts (US$14). It arrived in a beautiful presentation, but we have to say the dosa was hardly crunchy, but thinner than a pita bread texture. We liked the combination of yoghurt and avocado.

A winner was the wild mushrooms with poached farm eggs, shallots and herbs (US$15). How can you go wrong with runny yolks that explode onto the meaty mushrooms like a comfort sauce?

Testing out the congee dish with six condiments to choose

So the congee, or as listed on the menu: forbidden rice and millet congee with savoury condiments (US$10) that included pickled mushrooms, ginger, ponzu sauce, finely sliced nori, chilli sauce and spring onions.

The congee itself wasn't white, but more pinky brown thanks to the black rice, though it was more savoury than sweet. We threw in a bit of each of the condiments and they certainly perked up the congee. It was also quite a shallow bowl, so we savoured each bite (and more dosa), and sides like kale and potatoes.

In the end we were full, but not overwhelmingly so, which is probably the point -- portions are everything and just feeling sated is probably healthiest too.

Would we come back? Probably for lunch, not dinner.

abcV

38 East 19th Street

New York
(212) 475 5829

www.abchome.com/eat/abcv/

Ai Weiwei's Modern Take of Hansel & Gretel

Visitors being tracked by cameras up on the ceiling of the armory

We managed to catch Ai Weiwei's intriguing interactive installation on surveillance called Hansel & Gretel, in collaboration with Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, who you may remember designed the Bird's Nest in Beijing.

At the time Ai also worked with them on that Olympic stadium, but later pulled out, stating that he didn't want to be a puppet of the Chinese government in its coming out party in 2008.

Called the "thinking person's 'Rain Room'"

So it's interesting to see this prominent collaboration again -- maybe Herzog and de Meuron want to repent for what they did? Or they now understand why Ai didn't want any part of the Bird's Nest project? Or perhaps they sympathize with what he went through when he was held for 81 days without any official charges, though later it was for "economic crimes".

In any event, we went to the site of the show, the Park Avenue Armory, and were promptly instructed by one of the staff to go to the back of the building to purchase tickets and enter from there.

We were led to a door into a very dark space and told the exit was where the blue light was. At this point we didn't know what to expect.

Why were we in such a dark room where the floor seemed curved? And what was happening on the floor?

Soon we realized there were images of us taken from above and projected on the floor, and we looked up and saw a bunch of lights lined up systematically across the ceiling of the 55,000-square foot armory, but we couldn't exactly see what they were. They were drones that were recording our movements, literally following us around with photographic evidence of their surveillance.

Being tracked is simultaneously cool and disconcerting

At first it seemed like a novelty, having machines tracking and taking picture of us. How did they do that? Infra-red cameras attached to 56 computers. But why were they doing this to us? What had we done to deserve that?

It also dawned on us that this is how Ai probably felt when he was under surveillance in Beijing, when he returned home from his unofficial incarceration to find cameras all over his home to track his movements, which is unsettling and scary how easily one can be followed at all times.

There were also at least two drones that wandered around ceiling hovering over people that gave an uneasy feeling.

After a while we emerged from the giant space and back into the sunlight, where we were instructed to go back to the front entrance of the Armory.

When we entered the doors, we were told to look at a series of red lights, which we later found had taken a picture of us that was projected onto screens in the hallway. We looked like zombies, our pupils were blank, making them haunting images.

A peephole view of the installation from a distance

Here there wasn't much to see except a kind of library space where people could sit down and browse through the Hansel & Gretel website that chronicles the history of surveillance over the centuries.

You can also take a picture of yourself on the iPad and then it will try to find the earlier picture of you when you walked through the entrance. In my case it was a successful (and creepy) match.

There was also an area where you could look through a peephole back at the armory space to have a more bird's eye view of the project, though you still couldn't clearly see what was going on.

What to do about it?

In the gift shop you can buy special foil bags or plastic case to put your smartphones in to stop others from tracking you, or buy a giant magnet that says #resist, as well as giant tomes of Ai's body of work.

There's also a phone case that says "The NSA has all your selfies" -- which pretty much hits the nail on the head.

The title of the show is a reference to the Brothers Grimm fairytale of two children tempted by sweets by an old woman who holds them hostage. Some critics have surmised from the show that the more you post online, the more Big Brother knows about you and your friends.

Will that stop you from posting on social media? Probably not, but don't say you haven't been warned.

Hansel & Gretel

Until August 6, 2017

Thompson Arts Center at Park Avenue Armory

643 Park Avenue

New York

www.armoryonpark.org

Book of Mormon

Mormon Elder Cunningham tries to convert Ugandans to Jesus Christ

We saw another show that I have been wanting to see for several years -- Book of Mormon.

Again it was a packed show at the Eugene O'Neill Theater, but we didn't have to line up around the block just to get in.

The premise of the story is funny -- a do-gooder Mormon missionary called Elder Kevin Price is considered the most qualified to go on his mission and hopes he'll be posted to Orlando, but he is sent to of all places -- Uganda -- with Elder Arnold Cunningham -- who likes to embellish things... a lot.

Everyone looks up to Elder Price as the model Mormon

It starts off hilarious, with side jokes here and there, but then things start getting really crass -- lots of f-words and outrageous lines that are definitely sung and spoken to get attention and cheap laughs.

But after a while when you swear too many times, the audience gets numbed by it and loses its effectiveness, let alone shock value.

We still enjoyed the storyline, but was the excessive amount of profanities that necessary? We were pretty much cringing towards the end and wondered how it would all end...

Both the leads were fantastic strong singers and the leader of the Mormon group in Uganda was really funny as he had gay tendancies he tried to hide. The most hilarious song had to be Turn It Off, when Elder Price is told to "turn off" his concerns about confronting a Ugandan warlord, much like the Mormon leader being attracted to men.

The lyrics are written by Robert Lopez, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the latter two famous for South Park, and so you know you're probably in for some crass humour, and took seven years to finally get performed on stage.

Funny satire on Mormons but a lot of swearing in it!

Stone and Parker grew up in Colorado and so they were very familiar with the Church of Jesus Christ Latter-day Saints. When they were researching for the musical they went to Salt Lake City and interviewed missionaries and former ones, so in a way the audience can tell the musical may poke fun at Mormons, it doesn't slam them completely, that faith, hope and optimism are really important to everyone.

When the musical came out in 2011, the church issued a "measured", saying: "The production may attempt to entertain audiences for an evening, but the Book of Mormon as a volume of scripture will change people's lives forever by bringing them closer to Christ".

There isn't much the church can do since it was a Tony-award winning show and has traveled around to several countries. Doubt it would make it to Hong Kong though!

Book of Mormon

Eugene O'Neill Theatre

230 West 49th Street

New York