New York Spring

Just as Broadway had, for us at least, an unexceptional spring, the art I saw in New York on this visit left few lasting impressions, which I will briefly highlight.
Before we left for Africa we went to the Neue Galerie for the final days of its Klimt Landscapes show. There were a handful of great paintings on display, which confirmed that he was not just a portraitist.  A similar, but lesser, show was the Sonia Delaunay exhibit at the Bard Graduate Center on West 86th Street. She was an artist of an era, more a designer actually, and though there were numerous artifacts on display, a short documentary on her life and work was the show’s core and all we needed to know.
In addition to the “Giants” show at the Brooklyn Museum, there was an exhibition of their entire set of Hiroshige’s “100 Famous Views of Edo,” a series that was so popular it expanded to 119 prints. I had seen a selection of 31 at the Ronin Gallery a few days before, which was a good warm-up. There are a half-dozen to a dozen images that are widely reproduced, most of which were blown up by Takashi Murakami and shown in an adjoining gallery, so it was good to get the full context for the project. There were three books in the store that reproduced the entire series, the newest by Mia’s Andreas Marks. Since there is so much filler in the series, however, I suggested to Andreas that I would rather have a volume of “The 25 best Edo prints by Hiroshige, as chosen by Andreas Marks.” He likes the idea but would expand it to “Best of Hiroshige” in general.
I will be sorry to see the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art disappear, as it will shortly. I had a peaceful visit there. It is, of course, hard to distinguish one Buddhist deity from another, or know what art is “better,” but maybe that’s not the point. The current, and last, iteration mixed in contemporary works by Himalayan-descended artists, mostly from New York, which added spice. There was no need to read the labels or remember what you saw; the takeaway was your immersion in a totally alien belief system.
I made a token visit to the American Folk Art Museum after picking up tickets to a “Patriots” matinee at TKTS, but was largely flummoxed by the academic nature of the featured exhibit about a Swiss psychiatrist(?) who encouraged his mental patients to create art, leading to the Art Brut school of folk art in Europe. There were some appealing pieces, but unless one had the patience to look at old videos and read extensive texts you felt the show was for someone else. They kept one gallery for selections from the permanent collection, which was more what I was hoping to see.
I made several short trips to my neighborhood museum, the Metropolitan. The highlight was Harlem Renaissance, which I’ve discussed in a separate note. I wasn’t interested in the costume exhibit, which is a good thing as there were lines around the corner every time I passed by. The Hidden Faces show in the Lehman Wing had no crowds, and I could see why. I didn’t see much artistic point to the exhibition: it was just a collection of small paintings that had something on the back or had come with a cover. The show started with maybe three absolutely stunning small Renaissance portraits–Memling, van der Weyden, that sort–but quickly trailed off. On another visit I went through the Japan exhibit, grouped around Japanese images of death, sort of like the Asia Society show last year. These shows tend to feature new acquisitions, and it’s fun to see what’s coming in the door. The roof garden exhibition of doodle sculptures by Petri Halilaj from Croatia was light, fun and good for pictures. Lastly, I quickly previewed the newest show, “Collecting Inspiration: Edward Moore at Tiffany,” and was struck more by the Asian art that inspired him–800 pieces of which he donated to the Met–than all the silver bowls and chargers, although some of those were pretty impressive.
Our final art outing was downtown to the Whitney Biennial. The art was all of a piece, and not for the anti-woke. To be included you seemingly had to be BIPOC, if that’s the term, and your art had to reflect your identity or make a statement about colonial oppression or discrimination or finding yourself. Nothing here to take home and put on the wall.  What it showed me is that there are a lot of artists who are making art not to sell, but to express something. Or maybe get into the Whitney Biennial.

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