June in New York

Just as you can’t judge a painting by an auction catalogue, it’s hard to predict from press notices which shows will catch your attention or linger in your mind; thus, the days I spent going to galleries and museums in New York this June held surprises, both favorable and un-. First, then, the winners and losers: in the museum category, Bye Bye Kitty at the Japan Society was the happiest surprise, while the Cone Collection at the Jewish Museum was most disappointing. Conrad Marca-Relli’s work at Knoedler was the most positive gallery revelation, while Jane Freilicher at Tibor de Nagy was the keenest letdown. Now, a little more analysis:
The Japan Society, with an American curator, presented 2-3 works by each of 15 contemporary Japanese artists, using various media, allied by a post-post-modern sensibility: i.e., non-Murakami and anime, often harking back to traditional Japanese arts. I didn’t like them all, but finding six out of 15 whose work inspired is a pretty good average. Yamaguchi Akira (born 1969) painted a beautiful four-panel screen with traditional figures from Hokusai riding moto-horses. Makoto Aida (1965) had three totally different pieces, including Harakiri Schoolgirls and a detailed acrylic wall drawing of mountains made of gray-flanneled salarymen. Manabu Ikeda (1973) did amazingly detailed pen-and-acrylic ink-on-paper drawings that were self-contained worlds, each taking about a year to complete. Tomoku Shioyasu (1981) did a wall-size paper cutout that flowed with energy. Tomoko Yaneda (1965) had a suite of stunningly beautiful photos that came off as abstract squares but were all taken at an abandoned building of the Korean Intelligence Agency. Representing video art was Hiraki Sawa (1977), with animated scenes of his childhood home. I only list these artists in case they show up again, maybe even when we visit Japan this fall.
Baltimore is the major American art city that I haven’t visited, but between hosting highlights from the Walters Collection last year at the SBMA and now seeing the Cone Collection from the Baltimore Museum of Art I feel it is less a hole in my resume. The Cones were amazing historically, especially in their friendship with Matisse, and they certainly collected all the big names of modernist Paris. Almost none of the examples on display at the Jewish Museum, however, knocked my socks off, or even rose to what I would call the first level. The only painting that wowed me, in fact, was Gauguin’s Woman with Mango; its brilliance put the rest, even the Matisse odalisques, in perspective.
In contrast to those two smallish shows, I spent two days at the Metropolitan Museum. My main objective was Rooms With A View, small 19th-century paintings of interiors from northern European museums, largely German. This is one of my favorite genres – the subjects and the style are both so realistic. The figures usually have an indeterminate expression, so you can imagine your own story and, unlike a history or church or royal painting, the world they inhabit hardly seems dated. Caspar David Friedrich was given credit for inventing the genre, although the distance he traveled was not that far from Vermeer’s Officer and Girl, which I admired once again at the Frick. The discovery for me was George Friedrich Kersting, whose half-dozen interiors were the backbone of the exhibition.
Pastel Portraits was also a lovely show, although surprisingly the reproductions in the Bulletin were almost as effective as the originals. Maybe the glass that necessarily cover exhibited pastels robbed them of some life; more probably it was the lack of depth that goes with the genre. These were all society portraits, meant to flatter; and what was often most interesting was the ruffles and lace that bedecked the sitters. Far more captivating was Manet’s Boating (1874), which could qualify as a perfect picture. As familiar as it is, it still rewards prolonged looking. What are they doing? Why did Manet choose this pose to paint? What is that black thing? It seems complete, but is clearly simplified, as all great compositions must be. And the strong colors read from across the room as clearly as any Abstract Expressionist work. As I’ve noted before, in connection with Boudin, this was about the best time ever to paint women, given the fashions of the time. There was also an early Turner I had never seen, or noticed, before – Saltash with Water Ferry (1811) – that was all brown and very different from the swirling palette of his later paintings, but just as beautiful.
My other museum stop was the Morgan Library, but neither the Elegant Drawings nor Illuminating Fashion shows caught my interest. The latter was a wonderful idea: tracing the progress of medieval fashion through illuminated manuscripts. My interest in fashion, however, wasn’t sufficient to gear up my attention sufficiently to pore over the details; and I realized I would rather be looking at works that were chosen for their artistic worth, not the clothing they depicted.
I mentioned the Vermeer at the Frick, the most engagingly pleasant scene in all art, a painting that inevitably sucks me in whenever I visit. Looking at other familiar works, I was struck most by Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait, specifically the left hand in that portrait. For some unknown reason (at least unknown to Tom Rassieur and me), it is much bigger than the right hand, even though it is closer to the picture plane. Was he emphasizing his active hand, the one holding the paint brush, implying its relative importance? Unfortunately, it took some of my attention away from the face, where the viewer’s eye should truly rest. Coincidentally, I had a problem with another left hand by an equally great master, Velazquez. In his painting of Philip IV, the index finger is flesh-colored, while the rest of the left hand is silver. I was told by a woman giving a private tour that the underpainting is coming through. Something like that would keep me from buying a painting (as I experienced with a painting at Questroyal); but then again, this was Velazquez. Another idiosyncracy that unduly bothered me was the Duke of Osuna’s lack of shoulders in his painting by Goya.
Of the uptown gallery shows, I was most pleasantly surprised by Marca-Relli’s City and Town show at Knoedler. I had known Marca-Relli for his collage version of Abstract Expressionism and was unprepared for these cityscapes. He maintained a limited color palette and presented the vertical boxes of apartment buildings as Morandi-like still lifes. There was some De Chirico, as well. These paintings and collages were all peaceful and hauntingly beautiful.
Less peaceful, but also revelatory, was a joint show of Soutine and Bacon at Nahmed. It turns out that Bacon not only admired the work of Soutine, a generation older than him, but painted some of the same subjects, and this show juxtaposed those works. Of course, no one would mistake a Bacon for a Soutine, or vice versa, but their respective styles stand apart in a similar way.
The other ‘plus’ show I saw was a collection of Kota reliquary figures, organized by a leading French dealer and exhibited upstairs at Friedman. The form, along with the chi wara, is my favorite African motif, and the variety of expressions and materials employed in this form is staggering. I should also give a shout-out to Guillermo Munoz Vera, whose show, Terra Australis Incognita, had just moved from Forum to the Four Seasons lobby area. He’s a brilliant painter, and these works – especially the Cartographer and the Geographer – combine mystery and history, Caravaggio and Vermeer, and the kind of philosophy that went into painting a few hundred years ago. One hesitates to praise him because he is so un-modern, but then you think of Terence Malick’s film, The New World, which I saw only recently, and you think, what is the difference?
In addition to being disappointed by the Freilicher show, which was just boring floral still lifes, not the landscapes I admire, I found little of interest at the Gorky display at Gagosian – there was one painting I liked – and the collection of Warhol’s colored soup cans left me with my usual ambivalence at Warhol. For the record, I also made stops at Boerner (drawings), Feigen (European Romantics) and Erik Thomson (Japanese lacquer). And somewhere in here I have forgotten to mention the China Institute, which had a remarkable exhibition, from Yunnan in southern China, of Shang and Chou-Dynasty bronzes in forms and styles very different from the classic form of the north.
Lastly, I made two stops at Godel, not intending to buy anything at all, but ending up with my own personal “Chardin,” a still life of a copper pot and ceramic bowl by one George Brenneman. Although we seem to be phasing out of American 19th-century collecting, this work fills a gap, as they say, in our holdings, and is just very sweet.