NEW YORK CITY!

What a joy it was to return. I felt that I could once again breathe; there was oxygen in my lungs! As I walked the street people did not stare at me as they do in Middle America, ogling in what I can only guess to be a mix of awe and horror. To fit within the fabric of the cityscape, and blend in without altering who I am, gave me a profound sense of joy.

I stayed with a friend of a friend on the Upper East Side. They had a gorgeous apartment that provided me with everything I might need during my three week layoff from the tour (read, endless espresso tonics, walls hung with Black portraiture, and all the art history literature that I could possibly consume).

My heart is here, on the filthy streets of this inimitable city. There’s something so special about that: the juxtaposition of the grime of the city and its supreme excellence. To see so many diverse, unique, varied faces, going about their day, accomplishing what they are setting out to accomplish. It’s inspiring to be in an environment of hustlers.

New York City is the only place where I feel that there is a direct reward to the manifestation of my latent potential. It can bear all that I can give. I feel that here, the idea of ‘ask and it shall be given’, is more true than anywhere else I have been on Earth.

Painting tl;dr

1. CITY: New York, NY

2. MUSEUM: Metropolitan Museum of Art

3. PAINTING: The Storm

4. ARTIST: Pierre-Auguste Cot

5. OBSERVATION DATE: Feb 24, 2023

Music tl;dr

1. CITY: New York, NY

2. LOCATION: Metropolitan Museum of Art

3. AUDIO SKETCH: Two Lovers, for Cot

4. COMPOSER: Niles Luther

5. CREATION DATE: Feb 24, 2023

The Museum

I wasn’t planning on going to the Met. I felt that because I was technically laid off of the tour due to Rule 24, visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art would feel like cheating… This museum is, after all, the greatest museum in the country, and arguably the world. It is also the museum that feels like my home.

The Painting

The Storm has been one of my favorite paintings for years. I used to skip class when I was studying cello performance at Manhattan School of Music, and come sit in front of this painting, staring deeply, trying to find my own story in the technique.

I guess it should be no surprise then that the music came quickly as I sat on the same bench from so many years past.

When Cot exhibited this painting at the Salon of 1880, critics speculated about the source of the subject. Some proposed the French novel Paul and Virginie by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1737-1814), in which the teenage protagonists run for shelter in a rainstorm, using the heroine's overskirt as an impromptu umbrella; others suggested the romance Daphnis and Chloe by the ancient Greek writer Longus. New York collector and Metropolitan Museum benefactor Catharine Lorillard Wolfe commissioned the work under the guidance of her cousin John Wolfe, one of Cot's principal patrons. Like the artist's earlier Springtime (2012.575), it was immensely popular and extensively reproduced.

Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Collection, Bequest of Catharine Lorillard Wolfe, 1887 87.5.134

Wall text for The Storm. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Musical Response

The following music NFT is my initial response to Pierre-Auguste Cot's ‘The Storm’, recorded on Feb 24, 2023 via voice memo in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The cover art is a sineprint (a graphed room frequency response) of my room down the street where I was staying.

That’s all for now.

Most sincerely,
Niles Luther