Museum visits

From an email I sent to a friend describing my birthday break in New York City:

First went to the David Smith show at the Guggenheim.The lower circle floors: early work of biomorphic vaguely surrealistic tabletop pieces (the NYRB reviewer of the DS show favorably described them as “European,” and having something to do with Giaocometti, a non-obvious point). They were generally small and fussy, although the Hirshhorn DS chicken was included, a favorite of mine, which I’d photographed at the Hirshhorn a few years ago. And then a wonderful series of tall thin eloquent pieces called “Forgings,” which I’d never seen face-to-face before. Some excellent ideas there: abstract in shape and profile, but with the naturalism of a hand-worked surface. There were also 3 or 4 Cubis, but they sat dead indoors against the studiously uniform warm white walls and florescent lighting; they belong outside as David Smith once powerfully wrote about stainless steel in the sun. The Voltri pieces were as wonderful as ever. DS’s work is amazing but after all these years (I first saw his work at the 1969 Guggenheim show and also visited the leftovers at this studio near Lake George after his death), perhaps I’ve seen it all. So the current brilliant list: Smith’s Cubis, Serra’s Torqued Ellipses at Dia Beacon and Te Tuhirangi Contour (seen only in photographs) in New Zealand, and Judd’s artillery sheds at Marfa, Texas.

The Guggenheim is a fine museum for showing sculptures (at least those under 10 feet
tall); and it is wonderfully different, like the Barnes, from any other museum. Right now my favorite U.S. museums are the Nasher (Dallas), Guggenheim, Barnes, and Dia Beacon. Have not been to Kimbell yet.

Then to the Whitney Biennial. Oh no, or something like that: closed on Tuesdays!

The Whitney Biennial catalog, which I bought at the unclosed-on-Tuesdays Whitney bookstore, was filled with unpleasant, self-conscious work–often based on falsely ominous and falsely knowing photographs. I agree with some of the political stances, but anger is neither a necessary nor a sufficient cause of good art, and some of this artistic passion tends towards political naivete and therapeutic pouting. The anti-war posters, the several hundred posted outdoors at the Whitney, were pretty good; about one-third veered toward earnest commercial art posters, not art. Personal conclusion from catalog only: nothing much to learn, for my no doubt narrow interests, from the last 2 years of contemporary artwork at the Whitney. Am going the Art Fair in Basel this June so I’ll have another look at contemporary work.

Then onwards to MOMA. Oh no, CLOSED ON TUESDAYS! Pre-trip, I confirmed that the Guggenheim was open Tuesdays but didn’t check the Whitney and MOMA.

OK, back uptown to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Met is always interesting. The pre 200BCE and the indeed the pre 2000BCE art is wonderful: abstract but with style, and unstereotyped at least my modern eyes, fresh, different. Then to the classical Greeks and Romans: beautiful, striking, glowing, but centered on an idealized representational (nonabstract) human bodies. On to the Renaissance: looked fussy and heroically show-off (elaborate hairdos cut with tortuous detail into marble) after the abstactions of early Greek and Roman, Assyrian, Egyptian. Then on to many fresh beautiful largely abstract pieces from Africa and the Far East. Saddest image: museum map of one of the “cradles of civilization,” Mesopotamia, now in today’s darkness. All sorts of fine abstract gestural shapes (again, to my eyes) in Chinese calligraphy; other Chinese work too stylized. Favorite works at the Met: small cylindrical stone seals (Sumerian, 3000BCE?), with good text-image integration, similar to the magnificent Assyrian royalty reliefs with writing all over the image in the bottom third. I followed my usual strategy of going to galleries at the Met that were largely unpopulated by visitors, in order to see quietly and without interruption. I learned that you can take photographs at the Met, as long as no flash. So next time to New York, I’m going to stay in a nearby hotel for 3 days and photograph abstract ideas at the Met like crazy. All told, thankful about Tuesday closings elsewhere.

Lunch at Tang Pavilion (home of one of my rare celebrity sightings in New York, Jasper Johns, a while back), then dinner at Shun Lee (about 8 years ago saw Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall there, who ate with forks not chopsticks, waiter showed us the AMEX slip for “Michael Jagger”). Tang Pavilion better, Shun Lee steamed “Chilean Sea Bass” (aka “Patagonian Tooth Fish”) had stayed in the aquarium a bit too long, but Shun Lee’s mapo dofu proved an excellent birthday treat.