A short week in Manhattan gave me a chance to catch up on some shows between the fall and spring blockbusters. I was looking forward to “Beyond the Light” at the Met, because I’m a recent fan of the Danish 19th century, the Golden Age of Eckersberg, Kobke, Rorbye and up to Hammershoi. Unfortunately, the […]
Wolfgang Tillmans MoMA’s “members field guide” compares the emotional impact of a wall of photographs by Wolfgang Tillmans to a “perfect pop song,” which makes me feel not so out of it, as many a “perfect pop song” also leaves me cold. The just-deceased Peter Schjeldahl calls Tillmans a “genius” in his New Yorker review, […]
Two months away from Santa Barbara were never far from art, and although it is excruciatingly difficult to translate visual experiences into words, I can at least record my reactions as I recall them. First, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is my home base away from home, a five-minute walk from our apartment on 79th […]
Our first two weeks in Manhattan post-pandemic put me back in touch with great art. I had no computer and I failed to take notes, so the impressions that follow will be imprecise and subject to correction and emendation when we spend more time in New York in the fall. The Frick Madison. The big news […]
Thomas Cole is a crucial, but transitional, figure in the history of American landscape art, bridging the European world of myth and legend with the American world of boundless nature. This can be seen, most famously, in his five-part Course of Empire series in which the unspoiled world of the Native American gives way to […]
Three days, three modern and contemporary art fairs in New York with no duplication, except for a lot of Warhol at each. TEFAF was far and away the classiest, in a beautifully decorated 67th St. Armory, tulips overhead and white wall hangings. This was not a fair to buy at, except for the very wealthy […]
Mnuchin, a local gallery that presents museum-quality shows, rounded up works from the ’80s by Sean Scully, one of my favorites for his rough, building-block construction works. In the ’80s, however, he hadn’t yet found his winning formula. He was advancing toward it, and that in itself was interesting to see; but compared to his […]
The Met’s second big fall show opened last week, and as usual it is big: something like 40 of the 60 known paintings by Valentin de Boulogne – from the Louvre, above all, plus the Vatican, Indianapolis and several venues in Rome and Florence – have been gathered and, unfortunately, hung together. Unfortunate, because so […]
A quick but labored walk through the Met’s newest blockbuster exhibition, Jerusalem (1000-1400), made me wonder if I was ‘arted out,’ if I was going to museums out of habit or sense of duty and no longer able to truly enjoy myself. Yes, there were a few things that caught my eye, but for the […]
George Schastey The Met built a small show, Furniture in New York’s Gilded Age, around their “discovery” of furniture designer George Schastey, responsible for the Met’s newest period room, the dressing room from 4 West 54th Street completed in 1890 for Arabella Worsham, mistress and later wife of Colles Huntington. Period photographs allowed the Met […]
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