New York, May ’14

On successive days I saw similarly provocative shows, at the Guggenheim and the Museum of the City of New York. Neither contained great art; both raised questions about the role of art in society. Futurism was the kind of exhaustive, indeed definitive, survey in which the Guggenheim excels. Full of loans from Italy, it showed us not only Boccioni, Carra and Severini, but all the others who produced art for 30+ years following the doctrines of Marinetti, glorifying modernity. Unfortunately, we no longer think of machines, industry, automobiles and airplanes as favorite art subjects. (Art Deco, of course, suffers from the same disability.) Rejecting history has a place in art; but, again unfortunately, Italy’s art history is glorious, while the modernity espoused led to Mussolini, fascism and world war (twice). Another shadow is cast by the movement’s anti-feminism, although that was not readily evident in the work. It was useful to see the different art all produced for a political agenda, but I didn’t see much that would stand on its own, outside its historical moment. For me, Boccioni’s The City Rises (from MoMA) could stand for the entire movement, and I wouldn’t miss the rest.
(In fairness to Italy, there are echoes of this art in every other Western country at this period, whether it’s Dada in France, Blaue Reiter in Germany, Constructivism in Russia, Synchronism in the U.S. or the Grosvenor Group in England. The last is lyrical and gentle enough to appeal to me; the others, not so much.)
The City As Canvas was an exhibition drawn from the collection of the late graffiti artist Martin Wong, left to the City Museum prior to his death in 1995. It covers an approximate decade from the late 1970s to 1980s, when a diverse group of New York youths, many with art school training, decorated New York city subway cars, stations, handball walls and other public spaces – all very deliberately in violation of the law. There were other more legal examples, including the black books they sketched their ideas in and later canvases as a few galleries and collectors began courting their work. As contrasted with Futurism, with a restricting agenda, graffiti art exploded with a freedom that was exhilarating, a freedom of style as well as subject matter. (I should note that the reproductions in the exhibition catalogue capture none of the excitement of the pieces themselves.) At the same time, one cannot avoid the question: can art, however expressive, even beautiful, justify defacing public property, requiring taxpayer expenditure to clean the subway cars and chase the artist-vandals? And we have to assume that the art in this show was the best of the lot. Just because we feel kindly disposed toward the markings of Lee Quinones or Keith Haring or Daze, would we be so tolerant of less talented hackers? This same question was posed by the graffiti show at Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art two years ago. I don’t know the answer.
I also did my duty at the Met’s two major exhibitions: Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux and the Lost Kingdoms of Southeast Asia. The former was fine, although absent the context of contemporaries it was hard to see what distinguished Carpeaux. His tiny, sketchy terra cottas were marvels in the emotion they conveyed by a pinch of clay here or there. As for the finished pieces – all fine, if unexceptional – one wondered, as I often do when confronted with sculpture, how the transition was made from the artist’s hand to the finished product. Not only were there examples of the same piece in metal and marble, but it was stated that Carpeaux himself was sickened by marble dust and avoided sculpting in marble relatively early. I vaguely recall that Rodin, while not crafting the marbles himself, would at least add a personal, finishing touch here and there.
I had high hopes for the exhibition of Buddhist and Hindu sculpture from the lands now comprising Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar and Indonesia after a glowing NYTimes review, but I got nothing out of it. It was arranged by subject, so it was near impossible to draw any conclusions related to geography or chronology. While not overtly erudite, the information on labels and in audioguide seemed directed at someone else – neither the neophyte nor, like me, the moderately schooled. The exhibit offered no point of entry: what should we be looking for in these works? There were undoubtedly some beautiful objects, but there was so much of the same thing shown that we got tired of looking. An exhibition of the 20 best pieces would have had more impact, but I still wouldn’t have known what the exhibition was trying to show me.

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