Gallery Shows

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 later works, these just didn’t seem to jell. The comfortable, yet challenging, harmony, was missing. The Early Diane Arbus show at the Met made the same impression: not everyone is brilliant from the start (cf. Frank Stella!).

Another artist whose in-career development was on display was Julie Mehretu, at Marian Goodman. She has jettisoned the detailed architectural underdrawing that was her signature style – although one brilliant six-panel example, Something, Damascus – was included with the new drawings downstairs – and gone to huge “grey” paintings, with multi-layers of wash, broad strokes and fine lines. The viewer feels he is swimming, albeit in a dirty, churned-up pond, and there are allusions to eyes, faces, breasts in the otherwise Jackson Pollock-like overall composition. Where these will go – they are so large! – would be my question. They also don’t adapt themselves to multiple prints, which is the medium that allowed Mehretu to spread so far with her earlier work.

Nudes at Gagosian were rather a disappointment. An older John Currin with perky breasts was cute, but his two recent works bordered on the obscene (which I know when I see it). Tom Wesselman was very present, in his unattractive worst. The Modiglianis seemed second-rate, the Cezannes hardly counted and a few, like Jean-Michel Basquiat were a stretch. Surprisingly (given my taste), Picasso came off better than the others, perhaps because this was such a natural field for him. Mike Kelley, whom I’ve never understood, was both ugly and offensive. In fact, the only piece that made me stop and smile was a triptych by Takashi Murakami, three sweet acrylic nudes on gold leaf background, called “Wisdom, Impression, Sentiment.” It was, in all, mostly a display of the big names Gagosian can summon.

Refreshing, down the hall, was Venus/Manhattan’s show of Billy Al Bengston, especially his 1961 series based on his BSA motorcycle. 55 years later he is doing blue “chevron” paintings, and they weren’t bad, either.