NY Art Scene ’23

In addition to Manet/Degas at the Met and Ruscha at MoMA, I had a number of other art encounters during our October ’23 in Manhattan. Summary comments follow:

Ruth Asawa at the Whitney was the surprise star of the season. Much as Hilda am Klimt was raised to the modern art canon by her show at the Guggenheim a few seasons ago, Asawa should no longer be overlooked in any reckoning of American post-war modern art.  Her looped-copper-wire hanging sculptures are universally admired and have recently become necessary inclusions in any show of women artists and modern sculpture, but until this show I was unfamiliar with her two-dimensional works. From her student days at Black Mountain College in the ’40s to her death in 2013 she made drawings, prints, watercolors, folded paper pieces–and everything she touched was beautiful. She was not only a creative genius but had a delicate touch that was captivating.
Henry Taylor was the other big show at the Whitney. Whereas I spent an hour scrutinizing every Asawa drawing, I cruised the Taylor in maybe five or ten minutes. The obvious first impression was that he was getting this show because he is a Black artist and his subjects are very Black. His painting style is bold and even primitive; I felt I “got” each picture in a five-second glance. The easy comparison is with Kerry James Marshall, whose recent show impressed me greatly. Taylor’s art seems less subtle, less refined, less allusive–not something you’d want to live with.

A stop at the American Folk Art Museum raised the same question as always: who is a “folk artist,” and what defines the scope of AFAM’s collection. There are obsessive artists who turn doodling into elaborate spider webs which look much like some of Ruth Asawa’s drawings. And there are self-taught, often Southern, Black artists who paint in a naive style that recalls Henry Taylor. There was also a beautiful portrait, recently acquired, by Ammi Phillips that was as stunningly beautiful as anything I saw at the Whitney. It was in a gallery of highlights that showcased the broad range of art held by AFAM, and broad it is. The main gallery spaces were filled with a beautiful display of quilts (not my thing), but again some were very primitive while others were technically intricate and reflected a high degree of art sophistication. Maybe the understanding is that quilts, per se, are folk art, regardless of the maker’s training.

The National Arts Club on Gramercy Park was hosting a display of American art from the Bank of America collection. “Impressionism” was in the show title, but that was for marketing: the show itself ran from the Hudson River School up through American Modernism. The best thing about the show were the section labels, which offered an accessible short course in American art, explaining schools such as Tonalism. Unfortunately, the collection was mediocre. Out of 140 works, there were fewer than a half-dozen I coveted, notably a small Gifford, a large Schofield and a huge Sandzen. A much higher percentage of desirable American paintings was found, as usual, at the Questroyal Gallery. My favorite new addition was a landscape by Jervis McEntee, which hung next to a similarly sized Albert Bierstadt at one-quarter the price! ($95,000 v. $395,000) Old favorites by Kensett, Gifford and Claggett Spangler (!) remained unsold for my viewing pleasure.

A trip to Washington Heights for the Hispanic Society of America resulted in less art than expected, as its renovations are still underway. A central gallery presented highlights, with Old Masters alternating with lesser known and newer artists. Goya, Velazquez, Murillo and Zurbaran stood head-and-shoulders above everything, as expected. A small antechamber of 20th-century abstract art, including Antoni Tapies, hinted at a potential collection strength, but a larger room dedicated to the mural of Spanish regions by Joaquin Sorolla spoke to the downside of a large site-specific commission to one artist not named Michelangelo. The trip also prompted a visit to the Morris-Jumel Mansion, the oldest (1765) remaining residential structure in Manhattan and former headquarters for George Washington and briefly wedding bower for Aaron Burr.

The architectural highlight, by far, was our first visit to the Gilder Center at the American Museum of Natural History. Designed by Jeanne Gang and opened this spring, its organic concrete forms are centuries away–think Star Wars–from the staid sandstone and granite(?) of the earlier buildings begun by Calvert Vaux in 1877. Daringly, most of the space is just that–space. Fun and useful educational exhibits fill one side corridor, there is a restaurant and side halls for extra-admission videos and butterflies and, for free, a gorgeous library/study room overlooking the park along Columbus Avenue. The sensibility couldn’t be further from the musty Halls of Animals, and the experience is exhilarating.

There is always something new and different at the Met, and I was able to take in different exhibitions on different visits, which is a luxury afforded by having an apartment less than four blocks away. Vertigo of Color: Matisse, Derain and the Origins of Fauvism was really a show of just Matisse and Derain and almost exclusively their works from 1905 in Collioures, where they “invented” fauvism. For the most part their works were presented separately, and for me the most impact came from the close study of Derain, an artist I have always resisted. Half the paintings here were quite agreeable, largely because they had depth and open space. The other, mostly later, half still turned me off, with heavy, assaulting colors and no room to breathe. Perhaps my two favorite works, however, were Fauve portraits by Derain, very recognizable in form but with seemingly arbitrary colors that enhanced, rather than distracted from, the subject. Echoing the insularity of their summer together, the portraits were of Matisse himself and Mme. Matisse. Matisse is Matisse, but surprisingly I remember almost none of his works from the show except for Open Window, Collioure, which (on Internet viewing) seems more finished than the other sketch-like works.
As always I toured the Japanese galleries but was disappointed in the current show. Called Anxiety and Hope (not a good sign), it contained works about dying, hell and lots of battle scenes. While these may be important in the history of Japanese art, they did not depict cheery subjects and the subject depicted was always more important than the style or artistry. The same was largely true of Art for the Millions: American Culture and Politics in the 1930s. To begin with, the 1930s was a pretty dismal period for art everywhere, not just in America. The theme of the exhibition, however, put more value on didactics than esthetics. A few pieces by Ben Shahn stood out as being fine art. The rest could have been posters. One final note on the Met: en route to the Lehman Wing for the Fauve show, I passed through a newly installed gallery devoted to European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, 1530-1620 (why those years was not explained). One to four objects per vitrine were cast in spotlights from above in a darkened room, with single pieces and tapestries against a dark green wall. There were also small videos showing details of goblets you couldn’t otherwise see. The whole thing encouraged, even forced, a concentrated look at decorative art objects that generally get passed by.

My final art stop was at the Asia Society for its show of Meiji Modern, a look at the period from 1868-1912 when Japan had just been opened by the West and its artists were both influenced by and selling to European and American markets. This is a period that has been more ignored than overlooked by American museums and collectors, probably because it is seen as more commercial than inherently “Japanese.” The craftsmanship has never been surpassed, but it tended to be expressed in media such as cloisonne and metalwork, and the woodblock prints often showed Western tourists and war scenes instead of temples and sailboats. The first floor of the exhibit largely confirmed my prejudices, with the exceptions of a beautiful peacock kimono and an extraordinary embroidered screen of a seascape. The display on the smaller second floor gallery redeemed the exhibit, perhaps because it featured works of nature, always a strength of Japanese artists, including a pair of powerful tiger screens from the Spencer collection at Mia.