New York- the Museums

(Starting today I will upload all of my photos to my mobile.me account and keep a link here for all those that want to see. I take too many photos to publish the all on a blog. It appears that I am having trouble placing photos in the middle where I want them.)


I visited three museums on my two days in New York, the Museum of Modern Art, the Frick and the Whitney. Here are a few of my reflections.

Wednesday, June 10, 2010

(The three Picasso's here are quite large and you can click on them for detail. My apologies for the reflection.)







The Museum of Modern Art

Again my love / hate affair with Picasso was challenged once again. On and off I have thought that he is by far the greatest artist of the twentieth century. I idea lized him as a youth perhaps just because he was universally thought the greaest artist of the time. In 1973 on my first trip to Europe, France and Avignon, I saw an exhibition of the last paintings that he did when he was alive at the Palis de Pap. I was entirely enthalled by the exhibition- big canvases full of color and energy as I remember. In the late 1980's I saw a film Le Mysterie de Picasso. We watch as he paints for two hours and it is brilliant. He paints on glass, so we can watch his painting change before our eyes. He works in fast assured strokes. He creates materpiece after masterpiece and proceeds to erase it once its done. Now out on DVD I highly recommend it. Then in 2001 I visited the Picasso Museum in Paris. I expected to be enthralled once again. As I gazed at peice after piece I became a little weary. I knew of course that he was a notorious womanizer, but I got the impression that he was actually a woman hater. Some pieces had nails driven into female genitals. Some comments were openly misogynistic. Yet I knew that he had tempestuous affairs with many women, it never affected me with such emotional power as it did in that museum. Can one be a macho Spanish ass-hole and still be the greatest artist of the twentieth century? There is no doubt that on a sensual level, he is without equal. He presents male and females - children and animals naked with an uninhibited freedom. Now I have seen a great exhibit of prints from his entire life in art. It begins with early twentieth century, to near his death. I expecially loved several peices where he does three or four with a theme. See the Minitar at the top of the page. Also some great creations of bulls. I think that he’s back on my good side.
Just a few other high points of the the Modern for me: lucscious landscapes by Cezanne. The beauty with which the man uses paint is unequaled in my opinion, just lush gorgeous paintings. Jackson Pollack is represented with a wide variety of painting styles. Also he had a lovely drawing in another part of the museum. Only in a small part of his life is he know for those splatter painting- with which I am not so impressed. There was a Japanese painter who was doing much the same at the turn of the century. Speaking of the turn of the century, on one big wall four large Kandinsky’s sat. The Russian, Kandinsky, was doing these large abstracts at the turn of the century, long before anyone else could be so daring.
There was the famous Motherwell- the man who along with Clement Greenberg, the New York Times Art Critic pretty much created the New York modern art scene after World War II when all of Europe was on its knees.
There was a lovely painting of a pregnant woman by Klimt; two of Rousseaux’s puzzling pieces, the works of the Italian futurists always beautiful.

The Frick

Of all the museums in New York City one of my favorites is the Frick. The last time that I was there was probably eight years ago. I remembered it as small, but it is really not so small. Perhaps small in comparison to the Modern or the Met. Within its wall are some of the greatest pieces of the Renaissance to the nineteenth century art. Frick, an iron and steel magnet at the end of the last century had an eye for beautiful ladies and he collected some wonderful Van Dyke's, Gainsborough's and Reynolds. He also has three lovely Vermeer's, two Rembrandt's, two Turners, two David's, three Corot's, some by Goya, Hogarth, Ingres and one Degas that I noticed. In this collection is also the one most stand out beautiful portrait in the entire history of art (in my humble opinion) : Sir Thomas More by Hans Holbein, the Younger.

Memory is a strange thing and I held what I now consider a false memory from my last visit to the museum. In the entry way is a long hall, still there, and I thought I that I remembered a collection of small Carot landscapes. On the wall were two of the Vermeers, but no Corots.

Here are a sample of the collection:








The Whitney

I had meant to give more space to Whitney. I was frankly a little disappointed. Really the Whitney is the museum most responsible for promoting the modern New York Art scene. It is also the museum most avant gard in presenting works by innovative young artists. One of the pieces that I loved on exhibition was "Watermellon Woman" a totally fictionalize photo essay of a black celebrity woman to have grown up in the the twenties and the thirties. It follows her career as an actor in plays then in motion pictures playing the usual stereotypical rolls of black women. I found it totally believable and beautifully done.

One room of the archives lets readers browse though the fifty years of Whitney Shows and the hundreds of artists that it has featured. My pet project has been to help my uncle's name known. Then I see the hundreds of New York artists who have had a brush with success at the Whitney. So few are famous. One of my peeves is that New York is at the center of famous modern artists- because of all the money backing art. Looking through the books I saw hundreds of New York City artists, a few from New Jersey and Pennsylvania and perhaps 2 from California. Art is a strange business.

One last thing- In the Whitney sits one lonely and seemingly out of place painting by Edward Hopper. It is off in a corner and many have missed it, I am sure.