New York Notes

Three days in Manhattan in early June gave me a chance to randomly check out galleries and museums – never time enough for all I wanted to see, but enough to provide some insight and inspiration.
Far and away the highlight was the Otto Dix retrospective at the Neue Gallerie, both for the power of his work and the completeness of the exhibition. It was my favorite kind of show: taking an artist I knew something, but not a lot, about and making me feel I have seen everything I need to. Most amazing was the suite of 50 lithographs about War, in this case World War I, where Dix served as a machine gun commander. The label said it compared only to Goya’s Atrocities of War, and I would agree. Blown-up faces, shattered limbs were given the loving attention of a Boucher shepherdess. Upstairs, a gallery of oil portraits was almost as remarkable for its range and the brilliant but frank way the subjects were portrayed. Interestingly, sitter Hugo Simons (Montreal) was shown holding his hands in the same odd manner as Paris von Gutersloh, Schiele’s great painting from seven years before. But the greatest revelation was seeing the MIA’s painting of the blue-veined, naked young girl. In our galleries one tends to look quickly and move on, it seems so out of place and even depraved. In the midst of Dix’s other works, though, it makes sense and is of a piece with the similarly shockingly colored that surround it. I could look at it more closely, and with greater understanding of its artist and the Cabaret world he inhabited.
I spent one morning at Sotheby’s, the day before its Old Masters auction. When I asked why the pickings were so slim, I was advised that the major works were to be auctioned in London in July – and indeed, many of them, of much higher quality, were on display. The main Old Masters sale in New York is held in December. Still, it was fun to see a batch of trompe-l’oeil works from the collection of the bankrupt Fresno museum and a work attributed to Jan Lievens of Sts. Luke and John studying their texts that I thought more highly of than did the bidders. The show’s star was a Quattrocento Florentine profile bust of a lady with an elaborate hairdo. She was not particularly beautiful, except that every Florentine portrait of that style is.
The next highlight was down in Chelsea, where the Gagosian gallery has mounted a museum-quality display of Monet’s late works, principally waterlilies and Japanese bridges. The progession from light to dark is unmistakable, as is the move from recognizable garden objects to almost-abstractions. The Nympheas (waterlilies) in the first room represent one of Art’s high points, and it was fun to see how they subtly differed from each other, and how the different owners had framed the similar works. Many of the later works were not to my taste at all, both for their muddied style and purplish coloration. Of course, everything by Monet is now honored as “a Monet,” but I think it is fair to opine that not all his works rise to the level of greatness, an opinion facilitated by the assemblage of so many pieces in one space.
The Metropolitan is always worth a visit, and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the American Woman fashion show, intriguingly displayed and presenting a real sense of historical development. By contrast, the exhibition of the Belles Heures of the Duc de Berry by the Limbourg Brothers was a letdown. Other than the stories of St. Anthony and St. Jerome, I found the illustrations repetitive, the figures awkward and the compositions busy. The page borders all had the same design, unlike the marvelously varied and inventive borders in the manuscript of Catherine of Cleves I had seen at the Morgan last year.
My tour of the paintings galleries focused on connections to the MIA, and I picked up useful tidbits for Granet, Gerome, Navez and Lehmann. There was also a work by Narcisse -Virgil Diaz de la Pena in the main Salon corridor that confirmed my view of him as the worst painter represented in major museums. My favorite discovery came as I visited the galleries of small European 19th-century works, where the newly acquired Nordic landscapes and gifts from Lock Whitney are mounted. This was a placidly gorgeous landscape by Thomas Jones (Wales, 1742-1802), which reminded me of both Rembrandt and Corot. Jones was new to me, but the next day Bill Griswold, who co-owns the painting with the Met, assured me that Jones was a wonderful painter. I will look for him again.
Speaking of Bill Griswold, he showed us the work being done to restore and renovate the McKim building at the Morgan Library and Museum. Opening in October, it will be one of the most beautiful architectural spaces in America. Appropriately, we then saw the Palladio show, which was remarkable for the state of preservation of Palladio’s 500-year-old drawings.
The rest of my visit was spent at galleries: in Chelsea I saw a Ghada Amer show at Cheim & Read which added depth to my understanding of this very feminist artist whom I talk about on my Until Now tour. L & M had another museum-quality show, juxtaposing works by Tanguy and Calder from the mid-’40s, with the exact biomorphic forms of Calder’s sculptures showing up in Tanguy’s moonscapes. I don’t know which way, if any, the influence ran; I suspect it was more a case of artists in one period speaking the same language (see, e.g., Jean Arp, et al.). Whereas Gagosian was crowded with Monet-lovers, L & M was, except for me, empty.
Will Barnet’s recent abstract paintings, at Alexandre, also used the same vocabulary, which may be why they looked retrograde, a continuation of the work he did 50 years before. Antoni Tapies, at Pace, has been around almost as long (he’s 89 and Barnet is 99, I believe). Some of his works were quite strong, while others were significant mainly because they were “Tapies.” Best of all was the similarity of some to the piece by Father Bill of Pomona that we just purchased in L.A. A more modern master, Thomas Struth, had a major show at Marian Goodman that opened with a stunning view of the sea. The rest were behind-the-scenes views of industrial plants and laboratories that held no interest at all.
Finally, I did some window-shopping, at least, at two American galleries, Questroyal and Menconi & Schoelkopf and brought home images of works I’d love to have the MIA choose from, by James Suydam, William Trost Richards, David Johnson and Edmund Darch Lewis. On that front, hope, if nothing else, springs eternal.