Moma, Muslim Modernism, and Munch. Or "Mmmmmm!"
Or they meet at parties of the friends of friends who they never know
Will you pick me up or should I meet you there or shall we let it go?
Did you get my message? 'Cause I looked in vain
Can we see each other Tuesday if it doesn't rain?
Look, I'll call you in the morning or my service will explain...
--Stephen Sondheim, "Another Hundred People"
Urgh, Crimson Sweet fucking rocked last night. Great seeing everybody, talking engineering with whod81 and talking about the Bugaloos and Lidsville with Phil Park and Bob Starker at the afterparty and terrorizing Ed and Amy's cat. Also good seeing everybody out at Dick's Den, thoguh I'm a little more torn about the music. Just stopped being hung over around 1:30. Of course, I didn't get home until almost five in the morning.
I'm going to use Sondheim quotes for the museum parts of this, 'cause only Lou Reed and maybe DMX say New York more to me than his songs.
I love the new Museum of Modern Art. I like the food in the cafeteria, I even like the atrium which has been the source of much debate and argument (yeah, it's a big open space, and maybe there should be some specific installation to maximize effective use of it, but it's a big friendly space where you can say "meet me underneath the obelisk at 4:00"). Basically, there are two floors of principally the permanent collection arranged by timeline and movement -- the downside to this is if you aren't fond of Picasso, he keeps showing up like a chainsaw killer in a '70s grindhouse movie -- along with the design/architecture floor and the special exhibitions. Everything's clearly marked and delineated and in a number of cases the placement is really cute, with an early Pollock non-drip abstraction on one center wall in the middle of a room and on the other side of that free-standing wall is a beautiful Lee Krassner.
For me, I find it almost too much to take in at once, so my advice is to block out a good four or five hours, hit two floors, go to the cafe, get a glass of wine (the Valipocella they have is *nice*) and a sammich or salad (they make a great panini with proscuitto I had last time, this time I had some roasted cauliflower in a sweet and sour tomato ragout that was more delicious than I thought cauliflower had the potential to be), relax and let it all sort of sink in then hit the rest of it. Of course, if you don't like post-1900 modern and contemporary art, don't waste your time or the time of those of us who do enjoy it.
The three special exhibitions this time started up high with On-Site: New Architecture in Spain. Wow. Just seeing models of these things and photographs of the completed buildings, a downtown building awash in glorious reds and blues, an airport with a curving metallic roof reflecting a rainbow of colors, a building on a beach that looks like a collision of harsh geometric shapes like it should house a bad guy in a Mad Max movie, every one of these is unassailably cool and they're all designed to be part of your day-to-day cultural landscape. They're meant for the people and they're functional buildings, either built or scheduled for completion in the next year or so, not like seeing a car show full of wild space cars which never make it to the streets.
Without Boundary: Seventeen Ways of Looking is a collection of contemporary art work of the Islamic diaspora (I doubt that term's entirely correct, but it's artists born in Lebanon, Turkey, Iran, India, Egypt, etc. who have live and work in the US or Europe) and it covers a variety of modes and forms from a white cylindrical piece with gaps in it designed to blur into the room around it so you can't clearly see the edges from a distance, to a carpet based loosely on what we'd identify as patterned oriental rugs but made of human hair in all black with spaces that's really chilling. Comic books also get repped with a few original pages from Persepolis which was awesome. It's beautiful to see an exhibit like this meant to throw you off with a wide range of work, not tie everything up in a neat package or show how alike people are just because of the color of their skin or tell one simplistic story. Very cool.
The Modern Life of the Soul, a survey of the life and work of Edvard Munch, was also eye opening for someone familiar with The Scream and The Kiss but not really versed in his work at all so kind of assumed everything else was in that same mode. It is and it isn't. From the portraits it's clear he knew to some extent writers like Strindberg and Nietzsche, the portrait of F. N. done almost entirely in browns seems beautifully appropriate, and you can kind of feel the vibration of that artistic era throughout his work.
In the first painting of The Kiss, the couple performing the act in question are to the side, there's a window with a very distinct, bright background through the window, like they're trying to hide themselves from the world. The man is taller than the woman, and more clearly defined, like she's being absorbed by him and by the action of the kiss. In the second, the couple is center, she's even less defined, and the curtain is drawn to the extent that you can only see a blur of very bright colors through the corner representing the world outside. They exist as real, everything else is being shut away. The third is a woodcut, both "people" subsumed by the act of kissing, they're one solid shape in the center. So throughout these three, details matter less, it gets pared down to what the title promises, the kiss.
For Madonna, the earlier lithograph shows her, topless, pale skinned and all in black and white, very harsh, with reds and blues above her head, I know this is going to peg me as the dabbler that I am, but it reminded me of a 1960's poster, the really interesting part of which was the bottom left-hand corner featured a pale, small child with an enormous head and big eyes, looking terrified. I assume that's to be Christ? The painting was very similar, though in colors and without the child. Mary is not visibly pregnant in this but she's also not pictured with the Christ child (again, except for its appearance in the lithograph but even there he is separate and distinct from her in the field of the picture).
I love the attention to psychological detail like the 1907 piece of a man on an operating table, or Self-Portrait in Hell which hurts just as much as you'd think it would, clearly someone who didn't take a breakup well, or particularly Golgotha where the crucifixion isn't as interesting as the people gathered around the cross. Their faces are a whole gamut of expressions and they're divided between staring up at the cross and facing away, some of them look like they're running from the horror, distraught, and some of them look like they're celebrating and a few of them just look like they can't be bothered to give a damn. Probably as close to how I imagine the scene actually was as anything else I'll ever see.
My personal favorite was Separation from the same Frieze of Love as The Kiss and Vampire, on the left, in dark colors as though he's "real", is a man clutching his chest. Underneath where he's clutching, his hand is surrounded by red which could be blood but is a little too neat and a little too precise, probably just drawing the viewer's attention, and underneath it is a glow. Equally bright is the woman leaving, all white with gold flowing through her hair and tracing a line back to his wound, so she looks like a dream or a ghost. You (and by you I mean I) doubt she ever existed in the first place, or at least you're convinced that's how it feels to her. The separation takes a part of him, the part that was bright and glowing and life-full, and leaves like it wasn't ever even real.
So basically, another "fuck yeah" in my NYC trip. Next installment, the Whitney Biennial (and a word or three on that David Smith thing at the Guggenheim I didn't like). I need to shower before the Rhys Chatham/Tony Conrad show. And eat something.
Will you pick me up or should I meet you there or shall we let it go?
Did you get my message? 'Cause I looked in vain
Can we see each other Tuesday if it doesn't rain?
Look, I'll call you in the morning or my service will explain...
--Stephen Sondheim, "Another Hundred People"
Urgh, Crimson Sweet fucking rocked last night. Great seeing everybody, talking engineering with whod81 and talking about the Bugaloos and Lidsville with Phil Park and Bob Starker at the afterparty and terrorizing Ed and Amy's cat. Also good seeing everybody out at Dick's Den, thoguh I'm a little more torn about the music. Just stopped being hung over around 1:30. Of course, I didn't get home until almost five in the morning.
I'm going to use Sondheim quotes for the museum parts of this, 'cause only Lou Reed and maybe DMX say New York more to me than his songs.
I love the new Museum of Modern Art. I like the food in the cafeteria, I even like the atrium which has been the source of much debate and argument (yeah, it's a big open space, and maybe there should be some specific installation to maximize effective use of it, but it's a big friendly space where you can say "meet me underneath the obelisk at 4:00"). Basically, there are two floors of principally the permanent collection arranged by timeline and movement -- the downside to this is if you aren't fond of Picasso, he keeps showing up like a chainsaw killer in a '70s grindhouse movie -- along with the design/architecture floor and the special exhibitions. Everything's clearly marked and delineated and in a number of cases the placement is really cute, with an early Pollock non-drip abstraction on one center wall in the middle of a room and on the other side of that free-standing wall is a beautiful Lee Krassner.
For me, I find it almost too much to take in at once, so my advice is to block out a good four or five hours, hit two floors, go to the cafe, get a glass of wine (the Valipocella they have is *nice*) and a sammich or salad (they make a great panini with proscuitto I had last time, this time I had some roasted cauliflower in a sweet and sour tomato ragout that was more delicious than I thought cauliflower had the potential to be), relax and let it all sort of sink in then hit the rest of it. Of course, if you don't like post-1900 modern and contemporary art, don't waste your time or the time of those of us who do enjoy it.
The three special exhibitions this time started up high with On-Site: New Architecture in Spain. Wow. Just seeing models of these things and photographs of the completed buildings, a downtown building awash in glorious reds and blues, an airport with a curving metallic roof reflecting a rainbow of colors, a building on a beach that looks like a collision of harsh geometric shapes like it should house a bad guy in a Mad Max movie, every one of these is unassailably cool and they're all designed to be part of your day-to-day cultural landscape. They're meant for the people and they're functional buildings, either built or scheduled for completion in the next year or so, not like seeing a car show full of wild space cars which never make it to the streets.
Without Boundary: Seventeen Ways of Looking is a collection of contemporary art work of the Islamic diaspora (I doubt that term's entirely correct, but it's artists born in Lebanon, Turkey, Iran, India, Egypt, etc. who have live and work in the US or Europe) and it covers a variety of modes and forms from a white cylindrical piece with gaps in it designed to blur into the room around it so you can't clearly see the edges from a distance, to a carpet based loosely on what we'd identify as patterned oriental rugs but made of human hair in all black with spaces that's really chilling. Comic books also get repped with a few original pages from Persepolis which was awesome. It's beautiful to see an exhibit like this meant to throw you off with a wide range of work, not tie everything up in a neat package or show how alike people are just because of the color of their skin or tell one simplistic story. Very cool.
The Modern Life of the Soul, a survey of the life and work of Edvard Munch, was also eye opening for someone familiar with The Scream and The Kiss but not really versed in his work at all so kind of assumed everything else was in that same mode. It is and it isn't. From the portraits it's clear he knew to some extent writers like Strindberg and Nietzsche, the portrait of F. N. done almost entirely in browns seems beautifully appropriate, and you can kind of feel the vibration of that artistic era throughout his work.
In the first painting of The Kiss, the couple performing the act in question are to the side, there's a window with a very distinct, bright background through the window, like they're trying to hide themselves from the world. The man is taller than the woman, and more clearly defined, like she's being absorbed by him and by the action of the kiss. In the second, the couple is center, she's even less defined, and the curtain is drawn to the extent that you can only see a blur of very bright colors through the corner representing the world outside. They exist as real, everything else is being shut away. The third is a woodcut, both "people" subsumed by the act of kissing, they're one solid shape in the center. So throughout these three, details matter less, it gets pared down to what the title promises, the kiss.
For Madonna, the earlier lithograph shows her, topless, pale skinned and all in black and white, very harsh, with reds and blues above her head, I know this is going to peg me as the dabbler that I am, but it reminded me of a 1960's poster, the really interesting part of which was the bottom left-hand corner featured a pale, small child with an enormous head and big eyes, looking terrified. I assume that's to be Christ? The painting was very similar, though in colors and without the child. Mary is not visibly pregnant in this but she's also not pictured with the Christ child (again, except for its appearance in the lithograph but even there he is separate and distinct from her in the field of the picture).
I love the attention to psychological detail like the 1907 piece of a man on an operating table, or Self-Portrait in Hell which hurts just as much as you'd think it would, clearly someone who didn't take a breakup well, or particularly Golgotha where the crucifixion isn't as interesting as the people gathered around the cross. Their faces are a whole gamut of expressions and they're divided between staring up at the cross and facing away, some of them look like they're running from the horror, distraught, and some of them look like they're celebrating and a few of them just look like they can't be bothered to give a damn. Probably as close to how I imagine the scene actually was as anything else I'll ever see.
My personal favorite was Separation from the same Frieze of Love as The Kiss and Vampire, on the left, in dark colors as though he's "real", is a man clutching his chest. Underneath where he's clutching, his hand is surrounded by red which could be blood but is a little too neat and a little too precise, probably just drawing the viewer's attention, and underneath it is a glow. Equally bright is the woman leaving, all white with gold flowing through her hair and tracing a line back to his wound, so she looks like a dream or a ghost. You (and by you I mean I) doubt she ever existed in the first place, or at least you're convinced that's how it feels to her. The separation takes a part of him, the part that was bright and glowing and life-full, and leaves like it wasn't ever even real.
So basically, another "fuck yeah" in my NYC trip. Next installment, the Whitney Biennial (and a word or three on that David Smith thing at the Guggenheim I didn't like). I need to shower before the Rhys Chatham/Tony Conrad show. And eat something.