Fricking on a Sunday afternoon

The Frick Collection (70th and Fifth Avenue) has Sunday "Pay what you wish" day, and while I wished I had the wherewithall to pay the $15 regular admission, I could only pay $5 and spent a couple of hours wandering yet another former abode of the very, very rich and very, very dead.

This time it was the New York City home of Henry Clay Frick, who made his money in steel and union busting. His artistic tastes leaned to portraiture and Romantic frippery (including five J.W.M. Turner pieces that I liked, having a frip of the romantic in me when it comes to sailing vessels). But, most of it zipped past me, even though I tried really, really hard to like looking at paintings of rich old people.

There were a couple of standouts, though. One, El Greco's "Purification of the Temple", was the reason to show up. I kept moving away and then finding myself drawn back into it. The link above doesn't do the piece justice. The color is gone. The energy in Christ is muted, as is what I perceived to be a wicked sense of humor in El Greco's mind when he painted Christ as gleeful.

Another nice work worth spending a little time in front of was Jan Vermeer's "Officer and Laughing Girl", which according to the Frick web site will be on display until Nov. 2. The sun in this piece grabs the wall from the other two Vermeer on display. There's also room in the piece for you to imagine the backstory ... one of Vermeer's hallmarks.