Snapshots from visit with my darling daughter Liv

We walked and took the L everywhere and Liv showed me some of her favorite spots in Williamsburg and surrounding neighborhoods.

184 Kent Avenue, Brooklyn–gorgeous waterfront residential building and one of the few adaptions of Egyptian Revival Style to modern commercialism in the United States.

We saw the fabulously fun and playful Gutai group at the Guggenheim, which is an exhibit about the Japanese avant-garde Postwar artistic movement led by Jiro Yoshihara.

Liv snuck this photo of Atsuko Tanaka’s famous Electric Dress at the Guggenheim (read more about the Electric Dress at the bottom of this post).

Juliette Restaurant Williamsburg

Liv’s record producer friend always recommends the best restuarants. Next door to the utterly charming Juliette Restaurant is the hipster restaurant “egg,” and with an hour long wait for brunch, we decided  to take Dave’s advice and go with Juliette. We were more than delighted–French cooking at its most delicious, from Brittany owner Thierry Rochard. I’d love to go there on a warm spring night and enjoy starlight dining on their roof garden.

Dutch Pancake with lemon zest, blueberries, and creme fraiche

Jeff, the manager, at Juliette Restaurant

More photos of  my trip to Brooklyn to follow.

Atsuko Tanaka wearing her Electric Dress

To Read More About Atsuko Tanaka Electric Dress

“Electric Dress” is a powerful conflation of the tradition of the Japanese komono with modern industrial technology. Prior to her conception of this work, Tanaka had appeared in a larger than-life paper dress that was peeled away layer by layer, not unlike the peeling away of Murakami’s paintings; she was ultimately disrobed to a leotard fitted with blinking lights. Tanaka began to envision ‹Electric Dress› in 1954, when she outlined in a small notebook a remarkably prophetic connection between electrical wiring and the physiological systems that make up the human body. (…) After fabricating the actual sculpture, she costumed herself in it in the tradition of the Japanese marriage ceremony. Hundreds of light bulbs painted in primary colors lit up along the circulatory and nerve pathways of her body.”

(source: Paul Schimmel, «Leap into the Void: Performance and the Object», in: Out of Actions: between performance and the object, 1949–1979, MoCA Los Angeles, New York/London, 1998, pp.28f.)