Museums
Original Copies: Fu Baoshi adapts to revolution
The title of The Metropolitan Museum’s new Chinese painting exhibit, Chinese Art in an Age of Revolution: Fu Baoshi (1904-1965), is misleading. The painter in question did live through the establishment of the Chinese Republic, the Sino-Japanese wars and the rise of the Communist party, but Fu is far more academic than revolutionary. It is...
Post-Colonial Pictures: Modernist Indian painting liberates the Rubin
I love the Rubin Museum of Art, a jewel of a museum housed in the old Barney’s store on Seventh Avenue. However, since its opening in 2004, the museum has struggled with how to be more than just a historical institution. There have been a few forays into the contemporary art world, all tied to...
The Blur of Modernism: From Japan to Sarah Sze
The advent and subsequent triumph of modernism did much to diminish the role of narrative in the visual arts, insisting, as it did, that the exigencies of craft should take precedence over anything smacking of literature. But modernism is an historical blip—a significant blip, mind you, but a blip all the same. Narratives have dominated...
Turning Journalism Into Art
Djuna Barnes makes news at Brooklyn Museum By Marsha McCreadie We may have been reading the wrong thing all along. Blame it on T.S. Eliot, who proclaimed Djuna Barnes’ stylistically avant-garde Nightwood equal to great Elizabethan tragedy—the novel was canonized by many in lesbian literature as a breakthrough: a lightly disguised version of Barnes’ breakup...
Karma Komix
History of Tibet Pop at Rubin Museum By Renfreu Neff Visitors entering the lobby of the Rubin Museum of Art are welcomed with soothing Eastern music played by live performers nestled in the curved foot of an elegant spiral staircase—the building is itself a landmarked structure created by the noted French architectural designer Andrée Putman...
Lichtenstein in Motion: Three Surprises on Whitney Screens
By Marsha McCreadie They are in town for a just a few more days, but since the only three films by Roy Lichtenstein, of Pop Art and the comic book style, haven’t been screened since 1971, you don’t have to think twice about catching them. Three Landscapes: A Film Installation by Roy Lichtenstein is at...
History Lesson: Leutze
How Washington icon crossed the pond From time to time over years of visiting The Metropolitan Museum of Art, I would find myself in front of Emanuel Leutze’s iconic “Washington Crossing the Delaware.” About 12 and a half feet high and 21 feet long, the huge rectangle was simply and plainly framed, hanging at just...
Modern Masters at Montclair Art Museum
Beginning Feb. 12, Montclair Art Museum, located at 3 South Mountain Ave. in Montclair, N.J., will host the exhibition Look Now: Modern and Contemporary Art from Private Collections. The exhibit will feature multi-media works by 31 modern masters and cutting-edge artists—including Roy Lichetnstein, Andy Warhol, Louise Bourgeois, Rachel Harrison and Ryan McGinness—through June 17. For more...
Cecil Fabulous: Beaton’s New York Years Revived
By Marsha McCreadie One high aesthetic compliment is to call an artist ahead of his time. Yet the real trick is to be of your time and ahead of it, too. Cecil Beaton—photographer, illustrator, set and costume designer, even author—turned that trick, and nicely, too. The fabulous results, even a hint at his motivation, are...
Out of the Past: Peter Sekaer’s signs trace history at ICP
The stunning new exhibition at The International Center of Photography forces you to slow down, ignore the hustle of the city outside, take a deep breath and dive into a world long gone. Signs of Life: Photographs by Peter Sekaer presents the Danish-born photographer’s now obscure work chronicling America under the New Deal, portraying a...
Elements of Art: Cezanne’s wine bottles (1 of 3)
Towering above the other objects in Paul Cézanne’s “Still Life with Oranges and Apples” from 1895–1900 is a wine bottle. There it stands to the left of the frame, dominating the display of comestibles and asserting a curious authority. It is a tribute to thirst amidst the spread of plenty. Cézanne’s painting is one of...
Energy in Blossoms: Benson’s colors and China’s blossoms
Trudy Benson’s painting is full of physical energy. The paint is applied so thickly that it turns into an object in its own right; the stripes and circles on the canvas look like moveable parts. Fittingly, most of the pieces in her show at Mike Weiss Gallery, Actual/Virtual, evoke outer space with their names—“Cosmic Comics,”...
Revolution In and Out
David and Delacroix from Louvre to Morgan Back in the 1990s, the Morgan Library lent some 200 drawings to the Louvre Museum. The Louvre has now returned the favor, and in impressive fashion. David, Delacroix, and Revolutionary France: Drawings from the Louvre, currently at the Morgan, is a stunning selection of 80 of the museum’s...
Wet on Wet
Eva Hesse responds to de Kooning It is rare to encounter an exhibition as coherent and revealing as Spectre, the Eva Hesse show currently at the Brooklyn Museum. Perfectly installed in a well-lit, airy space, this small group of paintings from 1960 was never seen before last year, when it was displayed at the Hammer...
When Snark Was Art
Met’s history of caricature shocks and delights In our current, celebrity-obsessed media, snark is an attempt at leverage, a means of both wielding and flattering power that deflects from the perpetrator. Snark is cowardly caricature, but the Met’s Infinite Jest show provides an enlightening background to what caricature truly is and why modern day snark...
Painting the Times with Color
Whitney’s Feininger show takes art to the edge of the world Some artists respond to the traumas of their time by engaging them; consider Goya’s “The Third of May” or Picasso’s “Guernica.” For others (Matisse comes to mind), art became a kind of sanctuary, a refuge for exploring the transcendent. Lyonel Feininger (1871-1956) falls squarely...
Memorial City
Arts responses as diverse as New York itself There is faith—even among those who do not really believe in the power of art—that 9/11-themed art is as essential to our cultural survival as counter-terrorist police, full-body scanners and TSA pat-downs are to our physical survival; that to endure as a nation we must collectively bare...
Record-Breaking McQueen Exhibit
Were you one of the 661,509 visitors to the Alexander McQueen exhibit? The retrospective was among the Met’s top ten most visited exhibitions in its 141-year history (#8 overall). Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty featured over a hundred ensembles and seventy accessories beginning with the designer’s first collection as a Central St. Martin’s postgraduate in 1992...
Making a ‘Case’ for Mikhailov
MoMA presents the United States debut of a “deeply disturbing” Russian photographer Boris Mikhailov is among the more celebrated artists to emerge from the former Soviet Union since the fall of communism. This is all the more remarkable given that his medium is photography. One of his signature projects, Case History (the original title might...
The Summer100 (Part 2): Museum & Gallery Shows
The Obama Presidency at Leica Gallery Chief Official White House Photographer Pete Souza’s photographs of President Obama capture him during some of his presidency’s most—and least—significant moments. The contrasting severity and lightheartedness of the photos remind us that, at least in some cases, politicians are human beings too. Ends Aug. 6, 670 Broadway, Ste. 500,...
The Summer100 (Part 2)
As the summer heats up, we offer the second half of our must list, taking you all the way through Labor Day. If you’re planning a trip out of the city, make sure to check our “Get Out of Town” section—which has everything from performances to museum shows that you won’t want to miss.
