TIO NYC: Musing on More Museum Shows!

29 Apr TIO NYC: Musing on More Museum Shows!

The Martha Graham Dance Company returned in triumph to The Joyce Theater: as “spellbinding and prescient as ever” (The New York Times). Program mix included Graham classics enhanced by a bouquet of new works! (Sadly if you missed this happening, however, Graham is only up through April 30. )

But MoMA, MAD (Museum of Art & Design) and The Morgan Library have shows well worth a stop.

Go here for more about TIO NYC.

Image, Alfred Stieglitz. Courtesy, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe.

Museum of Modern Art:

Georgia O’Keeffe – To See Takes Time, (though August 12, 2023)

“To see takes time,” Georgia O’Keeffe once wrote. Best known for her flower paintings, O’Keeffe (1887-1986) also made extraordinary series of works in charcoal, pencil, watercolor, and pastel. Reuniting works on paper often seen individually, along with key paintings, the exhibition offers a rare glimpse of the artist’s working methods and invites us to take time to look,” wrote MoMA, about the extraordinary show. Titled “It Takes Time to See.” The exhibit features 120 works by the renowned artist.

Out of the gate, (circa 1916), one of the Big Apple’s biggest tastemakers, Albert Stieglitz, is sent the work of a beautiful young graphic designer and fine artist by one of her former classmates. The man is so blown away he decides to hang the images on the walls of his avant-garde Gallery 291, (at 291 Fifth Avenue), also the staging ground for an elite fraternity of burgeoning art world alpha males, among them, Rodin, Matisse, Picasso, Duchamp, and Brancusi. Lots of talent – and testosterone. Heady company for a relative newbie.

Back then, Stieglitz also purportedly declared “Finally a woman on paper,” words that might well have been a mixed blessing. They opened the door to a highly sexualized interpretation – however true– of O’Keeffe’s work, particularly her florals. Later, reputation and myth secure, the artist rebuked the claim, declaring it said more about the viewer than her artistic intentions.

“I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way – things I had no words for,” she once upon a time explained.

With her serial, in-your-face paintings of flowers, barren landscapes, and still-lifes, OK clearly played a pivotal role in the development of American modernism.

“It Takes Time to See” is the first exhibition to reunite the artist’s works on paper made in series. It is also the first time MoMA has featured OK’s work since 1946. At that time, her show was the museum’s first retrospective of a woman artist. (Rumor has it now M0MA plans to right that wrong and do more showcasing of woman and minority artists, as are other museums and galleries. In case you hadn’t noticed diversity is in the wind – and on the walls.)

Included in the show are O’Keeffe’s work in portraiture and nude self-portraits, as well as images of friends and fellow artists, some as accurate as photography; others blurry abstractions. A self-portrait in blue, redolent of a Degas bather, was a favorite in that group. As were charcoals of banana trees and eagle claws, bold and beautiful, which read 3D.

Check out Roberta Smith’s review in The New York Times.

Architecture Now, New York, New Publics (through July 29):

This engaging exhibit is two-faced, simultaneously showing art for art’s sake – and art for your sake (if you happen to live in the New York area). If not a denizen, then art for social change.

In a city where many aspects of our social lives are shaped by real estate and economic forces, architecture can play a vital role in fostering participation and belonging. New York, New Publics showcases 12 projects for public-facing spaces across New York City’s five boroughs. In contrast to the violent nature of urban renewal and other disruptive metropolitan initiatives of the past century, recent design approaches propose subtler, nimbler interventions. Considering the city as an ecosystem, these inventive approaches envision a future in which architecture creates more accessible, sustainable, and equitable cities.

This exhibition brings together a wide variety of design proposals, ranging from waterfront parks, networks of public pools, and cultural spaces to local community gardens, subway stations, and virtual monuments for underrepresented populations. They reimagine the uses of civic infrastructure, the sharing of private resources, and the potential for new technologies to create virtual spaces for political engagement. Models, sketches, drawings, and photographs are featured alongside full-scale architectural components, prototypes, and an augmented-reality installation. Each project is accompanied by a newly produced video that provides a glimpse into the daily uses of these architectures, wrote MoMA.

“Architecture Now, New York, New Publics” is a feel-good show, which (blessedly) underlines the notion of connectivity, rather than our great divide.

Ellsworth Kelly, A Centennial Celebration (through June 11):

Over his seven-decade career, painter Ellsworth Kelly committed himself to studying line, form, and color, transforming some of the key concepts and conventions of modern art. His work majorly influenced Pop art, Minimalism, and Hard-edge and Color Field painting or, summing up, the development of American abstraction at large. The artist’s spare, often irregularly shaped canvases offered a crucial departure from the “action paintings” of the Abstract Expressionists that dominated American painting in the mid-20th century.

“I feel that the freedom of colors in space is very much what I’ve always been involved in,” explained the artist.

In addition to showcasing the paintings Spectrum IV (1967) and Chatham VI (1971), this exhibition provides the rare chance to see Sculpture for a Large Wall, which Kelly made for the lobby of Philadelphia’s Transportation Building in 1957. The latter features 104 quadrilateral aluminum panels suspended between double rows of horizontal rods, which allow each panel to be positioned upright or tilted at an angle. It was created nearly a decade into Kelly’s career, when the artist had begun to dream of making work that functioned at the intersection of art and architecture, explains MoMA.

Museum of Art and Design (MAD):

Several shows up at MAD are worth a nod: Funk You Too! HUMOR AND IRREVERENCE IN CERAMIC SCULPTURE, through Aug 27, 2023. The exhibit brings together 50 works from the 1960s to the present day that highlight clay as a compelling tool of critique and satire.

Also Generation Paper. A FASHION PHENOM OF THE 1960s, through Aug 27, 2023.

But Craft Front & Center. EXPLORING THE PERMANENT COLLECTION, through Jan 14, 2024. This show is a must.

Organized around themes of material transformation, dismantling hierarchies, contemplation, identity, and sustainability, the exhibition underlines how the expansive field of craft, once deemed a step-sister of “fine” art (just as photography once was) has broadened definitions of art in general.

While there, don’t miss the 20-minute video featuring black women artists such as Faith Ringgold (US, b. 1930) and Bisa Butler (US, b. 1973).

The Morgan Library:

Sublime Ideas: Drawings by Giovanni Battista Piranesi (through June 4)

The Morgan Library holds the largest and most important collection of drawings by Giovanni Battista Piranesi (Italian, 1720–1778). The nearly 150 works encompass almost every type of study the artist ever made: architectural fantasies, studies for prints, measured design drawings, sketches for a range of decorative objects, a variety of figural drawings, and views of Rome and Pompeii.

With highlights from the Morgan’s collection joined by select works from private collections, the exhibition is the most comprehensive look at Piranesi’s drawings in more than a generation.

“Very few of Piranesi’s drawings were carefully finished works made for sale or exhibition, but in looking closely at the hundreds of working drawings that survive, we not only see the artist devising new ideas and working through problems, but also understand how the archive of drawings served his workshop as a constant source of inspiration,” explained curator John Marciari.

And .if you go and are looking for lunch, head to Chili’s, an authentic Chinese restaurant, 13 East 37. (The Morgan also has a restaurant, which is fine.)