New York Notes
New York in November is a hotbed of art action, but in addition to the major shows and events – Picasso at MoMA, Stella at the Whitney, Egypt at the Met and the Print Fair at the Armory – there were the smaller, personal moments that were perhaps even more memorable. Five of them follow: […]
Habsburg Splendor in Atlanta
[fusion_text] I finally caught up with Habsburg Splendor, the touring exhibition that we previewed so memorably with the MIA group in Vienna exactly one year ago, and was hugely disappointed, partly because it paled so in comparison to what we’d seen at the Kunsthistorische but mostly because of the drab display at the High Museum […]
Reimagining Modernism
[fusion_text]I don’t mind it when museums shake things up, to make you look at familiar works afresh and introduce new ones, but what the Met has done with its Modernism collection (1900-1950) is to destroy the context of its art without adding any new focus, leaving pieces dangling like isolated leaves on a naked branch. […]
Egypt at the Met
[fusion_text] The Met’s new show on the art of Egypt’s Middle Kingdom is pretty terrific – for me, not so much for its scholarship, which is largely beyond my ken, but just because Egypt’s art is so terrific. I don’t think the show argues that Middle Kingdom art is any better than art from Egypt’s […]
Picasso’s Sculpture
[fusion_text]Picasso’s paintings reimagine reality in wholly original ways, turning three-dimensional objects into convincing two dimensions. His sculptures then take those wholly original two dimensions and turn them back into 3D, a 3D no longer tethered to any recognizable reality. This trick is not all: every few years he creates in a new material: plaster, bronze, […]