MoMA—Forever Now, or at least until April 5

Kerstin Brätsch, Sigi's Erben (Agate Psychics) (2012) at left; Matt Connors, Variable Foot (2014), at right. Photo: Susan Yung

The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World is the kind of show you'd expect MoMA to do more frequently—a compact survey of young painters expanding the genre, curated by Laura Hoptman, like a biennial (and including a number of artists that were in the last Whitney Biennial). In press materials, the obtusely titled show is parsed into four loose categories: reanimation, reenactment, sampling, and the archetype, which provides intellectual crunchiness if you prefer to go deeper than "I know what I like."

Some highlights:

Dianna Molzan, Untitled, 2012. Photo: Susan Yung

Kerstin Brätsch—some of Brätsch's "Blocked Radiant" paintings sit outside the gallery, like either greeters or warnings; frittery shapes surround fuzzy orbs. The large installation inside, Sigi's Erbe (Agate Psychics) (2012) is composed of a metal framework off of which hang panels made of glass or aluminum with imaergy, or of agate segments arranged into compositions, all meant to be seen from both sides. 

Mark Grotjahn—his carefully arranged psychedelic compositions of layered arcs, such as Untitled (Circus No. 6 Face 44.22) (2013) could be biological snapshots, or dense jungle. They are hermetic new worlds.

Julie Mehretu—she has relaxed somewhat from her hypothetical utopias that approach architectural renderings into scribbled graphite-hued fog banks that will be unavoidably compared to Cy Twombly, such as Heavier than Air (written form) (2014).

(Here, take note of the penchant for parenthetical titles. What gives?)

Amy Sillman, Untitled (Head), 2014. Photo: Susan Yung

Dianna Molzan—what she does—playing with the traditional format of painting—may not be entirely revolutionary, but it is entertaining and beautifully done. In the example pictured here, she has painted on sheer silk, which is then stretched onto bars so that both the canvas and stretchers are visible. In others, she slices the canvas, or reduces it to a net, whose strings receive the paint.

Amy Sillman—among the more traditional-seeming painters, which is perhaps the most ambitious. Her still lives and portraits resonate for their reductive shapes and gorgeous palettes.

Oscar Murillo—his extensive representation within the show is enough to make a statement. He pieces together canvases, using primarily dark hues with looping scrawls and dense occlusions.


The exhibition, through April 5, is on the sixth floor, next to the Matisse Cut-Outs. Catching both might give you a sense of the ongoing continuity within art.

Matisse Takes Manhattan

The Snail (L’Escargot), 1953. Gouache on paper, cut and pasted, on paper, mounted on canvas. 112 ¾ x 113” (286.4 x 287 cm). Tate. Purchased with assistance from the Friends of the Tate Gallery, 1962. © 2014 Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs, at MoMA through February 8

This large exhibition of Matisse's late phase paper cut-outs shows the artist's brilliant use of negative space, the reduction of a form, and his vibrant palette. It's one of those shows when words don't do justice.

Two Dancers (Deux danseurs), 1937-38. Stage curtain design for the ballet Rouge et Noir. Gouache on paper, cut and pasted, notebook papers, pencil, and thumbtacks. 31 9/16 x 25 3/8” (80.2 x 64.5 cm). Musée national d’art moderne/Centre de création industrielle, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. Dation, 1991. © 2014 Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 

Is it worth it, amid all the hyped and timed tickets? Depending on your capacity to endure crowds, yes. But investing in a catalogue might be smarter, and there's also a new children's book as well, and a dedicated, insightful website that includes such gems as this: 

Studio assistant Annelies Nelck with tracing of Apollo on the floor of the Hôtel Régina, Nice, c. 1953

Sigmar Polke—Artistic Chameleon

Supermarkets, 1976, Gouache; metallic, enamel, acrylic paints; felt-tip pen; collage on 9 sheets of paper on canvas
Liebelt Collection, Hamburg

Sigmar Polke was an artistic chameleon, moving from one medium to another, one style of painting to the next, this sphere of public discourse to that one. Organized by MOMA with the Tate Modern (London), this show is a type at which they can excel—guided not by a blockbuster or blatantly populist sensibility, but with an eye toward revealing the many layers of an important contemporary artist's work. MOMA's survey, Alibis: Sigmar Polke 1963-2010, demonstrates how extensive and deeply rooted his influence has been.

Polke (1941—2010), German, had a wry, satirical streak. Early works include a painting of a cabinet indicated by one vertical line surrounded by two dots. He also recorded things in the news, such as a seemingly incomplete raster (benday dot) drawing of Lee Harvey Oswald—an incomplete, distorted portrait of an enigma—as well as banal objects, such as socks, sausages, biscuits, and shirts, which connect to Pop Art. His eye for pattern was expressed in dot paintings, as well as compositions using patterned or textured fabric as a canvas. 5 Dots (1964) depicts five blobs on a calico background; one of the green dots with a tail becomes a balloon, immediately conjuring a sentimental context amid a pleasing abstraction. 

He absorbed influences, and no doubt emitted his own that were refracted in the work of others. His rasterized pieces summon Roy Lichtenstein; his dots, Damien Hirst. He cited Cezanne, Gilbert & George, and Malevich—hilariously, as in Higher Beings Commanded: Paint the Upper-Right Corner Black! (1969). His self-reflection materialized in studies of himself as an astronaut, a test-tube drug, and in a mock-serious diptych, glamorous lurex portraits of his palm's lines as read by a fortune teller. He connected to Fluxus with inventive elastic band rendering of a bunny; a folding-ruler composition; and in Carboardology (1968—69), an oddly riveting index of cardboard samples.

Raster Drawing (Portrait of Lee Harvey Oswald), 1963,
poster paint & pencil on paper, 37 5/16 × 27 1/2″, 
Private Collection, Photo: Wolfgang Morell, Bonn

His identity as a German found its way into his work with regularity; swastikas and military symbols recur. Potato House (1967) combines two national icons—the root vegetable and the garden shed. In this chronological installation, double-exposed photographs of mushrooms share the year 1972 with Mao, an absorbing painting representative of his complicated technique of layering multiple images, perspectives, and subjects.

Supermarkets (1976) is a prime example of his major paintings—a complex 2D layer cake of an army of Supermen clones painted atop a jammed supermarket aisle, supported by cartoon and graffiti-like characters. He would also sew several types of fabric together—canvas, sunglass-and-deck-chair-print, and pink quilting—to form a canvas, onto which he layered freighted imagery, as in Watchtower with Geese (1987).

Videos and sculptures mix in with the two-dimensional pieces. Sketchbooks and multiples show his concept and color experimentation. And his later work, such as The Young Acrobat (2000) shows a curiosity for producing intentional technical flubs—stretching or contorting an image—thereby subtly twisting the narrative context and subverting the predictable reliability of technology. The soaring atrium serves as the starting point for the 10-gallery installation; it's a fitting entree to the output of a vast imagination. On view through August 3.

Rain, Rain, Everywhere

Agnes Denes, Wheatfield, 1982.

It seems that New York got few showers in April, but Earth is making up for it in May; I'm drying off from a deluge as I write. Ironically, I was en route from the Joyce Theater, where artificial rain fell during Cedar Lake's performance of Andonis Foniadakis' Horizons as storm clouds gathered outside to wait for me to release torrents in a tempestuous thunderstorm. And yesterday I experienced MoMA's Rain Room, by Random International, amid an otherwise lovely day. 

It is part of Expo 1 at PS1, an exhibition organized by Klaus Biesenbach on the theme of "ecological challenges" in today's world. It sprawls throughout MoMA PS1 and takes as its theme "dark optimism," perfectly reflected in Rain Room. There are some smaller exhibitions nested within, including a fairly extensive selection of Ansel Adams photographs curated by Roxana Marcoci, and a smart group show—ProBio—put together by Josh Kline; highlights include Dina Chang's creepy Flesh Diamonds, pink flesh-like faceted things with hair; Ian Cheng's strange, intriguing installation of twitchy "live" machines inhabiting a tide pool ecosystem; and a flexible cloth of LEDs that received imagery of a CGI concert, by Shanzhai Biennial. A group of photographs documents Agnes Denes' Wheatfield, which at the time felt far closer to crunchy environmentalism than a last cry before development and terrorism swallowed up lower Manhattan.

Expo 1 also has the requisite ancillary elements of film, education (organized by Triple Canopy), a daily special dish by restaurateur M. Wells, and a "colony" of trailers in one of the courtyards. Meg Webster has installed Pool in the lobby, which basically just looks like a fancy fountain in a skyscraper lobby, and Adrián Villar Rojas has been given a ginormous amount of room for La inocencia de los animals, with a broad grand staircase where classes will meet, and rooms of ruins—columns and giant amphora—all the hue of dusty grey concrete.

Rain Room is situated in an annex in the parking lot next door to MoMA, complete with its own retro-mod, airport-style lounge in the queue area, which I guess is supposed to make the anticipated long wait entertaining. When I viewed Rain Room, people seemed reluctant to walk into the rain; perhaps to encourage this, several dancers had been deployed to move dramatically under the deluge (although it might not have helped that they were drenched. A word of advice—as you enter the rain, extend a hand forward to keep your head dry.) This project seems to work as well in concept as in practice, and whether you choose to participate or simply watch emerges as a key precept.

Kylian's Indigo Rose. Photo: Paula Lobo

Meanwhile, back at the Joyce, the small rainburst took place over a rectangle of red carpeting that the Cedar Lake dancers dragged onstage in the premiere of Horizons by Andonis Foniadakis. The piece began with rubber-limbed Jon Bond bounding across the stage, each turbocharged move tweaked with a contortion, robotic effect, or caffeinated jolt; many moves elicited gasps of shock. Pairs danced frantically on the rug to driving rhythms; a final twosome writhed frantically, life affirmingly. Joaquim de Santana crashed to the floor on his knees and shins, the violence exaggerated by his large size. The work purports to address the concept of finding inner peace amid urban frenzy; a voiceover intoned calls to action and ponderous observations. While the adrenalized movement becomes a bit numbing after awhile, Foniadakis  has a unique, daredevil means of physical expression.

Jiri Kylian's Indigo Rose (1998) suits Cedar Lake to a tee—articulated lines, hyper-pointed toes, a dramatic flair in every pose. Two pairs danced on the stage bisected by shapes of light, one dim, the other bright. A billowing white wedge of sail cloth framed the dancers; in particular, Matthew Rich, a company veteran, has matured into a riveting, confident performer. Filling out the program was Crystal Pite's Ten Duets on a Theme of Rescue, a well-paced concatenation of duets and solos by just five dancers, but that feels like three times as many. It has become a staple in an ever-growing repertory that showcases mostly European choreographers, and who benefit from the impressive skills of the dancers. 

Dance in Museums: Up Next, MOMA

MOMA announced a new dance program for the fall, Some sweet day, to be curated by Ralph Lemon, who over the last decade has become a kind of Yoda in the field. It will team up Jérôme Bel & Steve Paxton, Dean Moss & Faustin Linyekula, and Deborah Hay & Sarah Michelson. Per the press release, the pairs will theoretically be "engaged in an aesthetic, generational, and historical dialogue about each other's work and dance in particular."

Paxton/Bel will present older pieces (including, respectively, the popular Satisfying Lover and The Show Must Go On), while the latter two pairings will create new work for the atrium. The Linyekula/Moss collaboration also includes a "two-day interstitial performance by American artist Kevin Beasley." Wow.

This comes hot on the heels of the Whitney Biennial's ramped up dance program, which coincidentally featured Michelson as well. (Michael Clark's performances begin tonight and run through April 8. I blogged about this newfound emphasis on serious dance at the Whitney recently.) It also evokes Danspace Project's platform series, wisely rekindled in recent years; 2012's—curated by Ishmael Houston Jones—is just coming to a close, fittingly with an all-day event on Mar 31 put together by... Ralph Lemon.

The Whitney turned over its fourth floor, normally galleries, to dance/theater/music residencies and performances. MOMA's program differs from the Whitney's; although the performances will occupy the ominous/awesome atrium, they won't occupy gallery space normally dedicated to exhibiting a quantity of art, although it is often given over to one large-scale installation.

MOMA's best-known featured performance in recent memory has to be Marina Abramovic's in The Artist is Present, when visitors waited hours to sit across from her and be stared at. It was part of her much-hyped retrospective, which felt alternately elegiac and glib, with its live recreations of her historical performances that to me, begged to be left as one-time events, marking a moment in time and space. On the outset, Some sweet day avoids the aura of provocation and sensationalism that Abramovic's events had.

Of course both museums have had performance programs in the past, it's just that now they seem to be more prominent. It may take real estate and energy away from visual art, but it's good for dance, and it gives the museums some of the (literally) poor dance world's priceless cachet. And in fact, choreography that tilts toward the conceptual might fit better in a museum context than a theater.

Can't buy love, but at least you can borrow it.

De Kooning at MoMA, 9/15/11

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De Kooning at MoMA

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Excavation, 1950, oil and enamel on canvas, 81x100". The Art Institute of Chicago. Mr. and Mrs. Frank G. Logan Purchase Prize Fund; restricted gifts of Edgar J. Kaufmann, Jr., and Mr. and Mrs. Noah Goldowsky, Jr. (Click to Enlarge)

Willem de Kooning (1904—97) is routinely portrayed as an “artist’s artist,” perhaps the paramount painter among a generation of geniuses. By simply looking at his most iconic “Woman” series, I’ve never fully understood why. But a pass through MoMA’s comprehensive exhibition, De Kooning: A Retrospective, curated by John Elderfield and on view through January 9, pretty much elucidates why he’s considered so great.

De Kooning reinvented his painting style many times along the way, but the amazing thing is, if he had stopped evolving prior to his golden “Woman” period (basically beginning in the late 1940s through the early 1950s), he might still be considered atop his generation. One of the most striking canvases at MoMA is Excavation (1950), with its jigsaw puzzle composition that hovers between pure abstraction and representation; the palette, dominantly cream colored but with shots of color indicating a volatile inner life; and the sheer technical prowess of the painting, all combining into a giant visual symphony that gives Pollock’s great One a run for its money. A preceding series of primarily black compositions with white lines shows the value of such an exercise; each line is forced to have true meaning in the overall context, like a solo vocal line.

Chelsea Galleries: Limbs, Clouds, and Excess, 12/3/10

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Chelsea Galleries, and Lee Krasner at MOMA

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Lee Krasner, "Flowering Limb," 1963 Oil on canvas 57 3/4 x 45 3/4 inches, 146.7 x 116 cm. Pollock-Krasner Foundation. Courtesy Robert Miller Gallery.

Two of the most compelling gallery shows on view in Chelsea resonate with simultaneous museum exhibitions at MoMA. One is Lee Krasner Paintings 1959-1965 at Robert Miller Gallery through January 29, a great complement to the AbEx show at MOMA, where she is represented. The paintings in the Miller exhibition were created by Krasner during a long period of insomnia, when she worked primarily at night under artifical light. They tend toward black & white and monochromatic palettes, since she preferred to work with color in daylight. However, one painting in particular (Flowering Limb,1963), bursts with the pink, yellow and red hues of its subject, anomolous for Krasner also because the subject is closer to a depiction of nature, rather than an abstraction. It sits at the fascinating tipping point between being inspired by nature, and being a stroke of inspiration — a source revealed.

Tomas Saraceno’s exhibition at Tonya Bonakdar,Clouds Cities Connectome (through Dec 18) relates strongly with the concepts in MOMA’s On Lineshow, in which he is not included.) Saraceno has created clusters of multi-sided spherical shapes, a bit resembling chemical molecular diagrams, using fine black rope (which defines the shapes) and nylon monofilament (which supports and disappears) miraculously arranged and held in tension by grommets in the surrounding room surfaces. Also on view are drawings and a tree-shaped work titled Space Elevator/Spark 460 (which incidentally relates to Roxy Paine’s impressive show at Cohan, an extension of his Met roof opus). There is ample scientific theory behind Saraceno’s works, which evoke Bucky Fuller’s utopian visions, but absent the theory, they are visually and structurally sublime.

Perfect Match: Venue + Content, 11/12/10

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White Light Festival and MOMA's Ab Ex show

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Adolph Gottlieb, "Blast"

This week I experienced two events that pointed up how a venue can be as integral as content to the complete success of a show. (And, once more, how lucky we are to live in this town!) One was a concert by the Tallis Scholars at the renovated Alice Tully Hall, part of Lincoln Center’s White Light Festival (through Nov 18); the other was MoMA‘s mammoth exhibition, Abstract Expressionist New York: The Big Picture.

The Abstract Expressionist exhibition (through April 25, 2011) pointed up how closely related the genre is to MOMA, even though the museum was opened in the 1920s. This show, curated by a team from MoMA led by Ann Temkin and dating primarily between 1940—60, comprises more than 250 works drawn solely from the museum’s inventory. That fact alone boggles the mind—so many of the works are paragons, key building blocks in the history of modern art. While much of the work is textbook familiar, certain revelations emerged. Adolph Gottlieb’s contributions came across as perfectly structured and witty. Joan Mitchell’s shines, finally juxtaposed with her far better known (mostly) male counterparts. And the size of many of the walls in MoMA’s galleries? Tailor-made for Pollock’s iconic horizontal paintings, such as One: Number 31, 1950.

Matisse’s Sneaky Abstraction, 7/23/10

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Matisse: Radical Invention at MOMA

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Is there any artist more pleasing than Matisse (1869-1954) — his intoxicating palette, his depiction of life’s basic delights and joys, his simple approach to the human form? Probably not, but he also pursued abstraction with rigor, as evident in MoMA‘s exhibition, Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913-1917, on view through October 11. During this period, he experimented with a stronger move toward abstraction — to stretch his legs artistically, and perhaps in part resulting from a change of location, but the war may also have had a sobering effect on his work. The show of 110 drawings, paintings, and sculptures is curated by John Elderfield (MoMA) and Stephanie D’Alessandro (Art Institute of Chicago).

It’s sometimes difficult to remember how radical Matisse was in his time, since his work is so familiar to us. For reasons listed above, among others, his paintings are pretty loveable. They burst with delectable fruit and gemstone colors, with exotic locales, with simple, child-like celebration. And yet, his compositions often exclude structural elements, leaving blocks of color to define the space and narrative. He counted on our minds to be able to construct what he left out, to make sense of his world of shapes essentially as abstract as musical chords.

The Ever-Present Marina Abramovic, 3/16/10

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Marina Abramovic at MOMA.

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It’s natural to associate MoMA with cutting-edge. But a visit to Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present retrospective on view through May 31 is a reminder of just how staid the institution is, nominally ignoring performance art. Here are actual live people doing re-performances of the artist’s original works, which have nearly always involved herself and her ex-partner, Ulay. So wherever you look there’s an often naked person, usually a woman, pinned to the middle of a wall, lying under a skeleton, wedged in a doorway. And in between are many small, medium, and large video screens showing recordings of the original performances. Although in an understandable, if toothless gesture, the museum has added an alternative passageway toImponderabilia (1977/2010), in which a naked woman and man line a narrow doorway, causing viewers to brush against one or the other.

Despite all the live elements, the most powerful artifacts in the show, curated by Klaus Biesenbach, are the wall labels. Without them, we most likely wouldn’t get the point of all the action. Besides provocation and shock, this is one consequence of conceptual/performance art, and a testament to the power of language—the ideas are so powerful that the re-enactments can be secondary. It was curious how unaffecting the re-performances of Point of Contact(1980) and Relation in Time (1977) were; perhaps it was the sterile enclosed white cube setting, the inherent stillness, or the necessity for the audience members to spend more time. And I only felt sympathy for the naked woman in Luminosity (1997)—straddling a bicycle seat, suspended high in the middle of a wall, she engaged viewers’ attention, only to have them hurry away in embarrassment. And yes, part of the point is to make people confront their own limitations, so mission: accomplished.

Kentridge at MOMA, 3/5/10

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William Kentridge at MOMA

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William Kentridge’s drawing style is so bold and lively that it hardly needs animation to bring it to life. And yet his animated films crackle with energy, just like anything he creates, despite the fact that it is nearly entirely done with rare, hence extremely effective, daubs of color. A survey of his work is at MOMA through May 17, entitled William Kentridge: Five Themes, covering major themes and periods in his oeuvre—Ubu, Soho Eckstein/Felix Teitlebaum, in the studio, and his operas. The artist appears frequently as subject matter as well.

The installation’s flow and layout work well with the material at hand. Videos are screened on full walls in cube-shaped rooms with wide doors, integrating them into the larger installation, rather than ghetto-izing them, as often happens with curtained video projection spaces. The scale of his two-dimensional work ranges from intimate to grand. Many of the modest-sized charcoals and prints feature lone figures, but they always seem to be straining the bounds of the paper edges—leaning, marching, caged, melded with some non-human object like a tree, waiting to burst out.

Bauhaus—Art Everywhere, 12/14/09

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Bauhaus at MOMA.

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Bauhaus 1919-1933: Workshops for Modernity at MoMA doesn’t knock you over with huge 

masterworks (despite the presence of some big name painters), or with pop culture bribes, likethe Tim Burton exhibition elsewhere in the building (recently reviewed for the SundayArts blog here). What this kind of sprawling survey does convey is how that design movement—which officially lasted just the duration of Germany’s Weimar Republic—has insinuated itself into our lives so much so that it’s frequently taken for granted. This may be the highest compliment to pay the artists and designers, many of whom worked in applied arts. The exhibition, which runs through January 25, was organized by Barry Bergdoll and Leah Dickerman.

The movement’s influence is pretty much unavoidable in our daily lives. Boxy glass and metal skyscrapers, industrial furniture design, streamlined designs of functional items. (And perhaps foremost of importance around holiday gift buying time, the MoMA and Muji stores.) It was begun by Walter Gropius in 1919 in a period that was reacting to emotionally wrought expressionism by pursuing rational objectivity, and moved from Weimar to Dessau to Berlin under the subsequent directorships of Hannes Meyer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, before it was closed by the Nationalist Socialists in 1933.

Tim Burton—Gothic Imagination, 11/24/09

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Tim Burton—Gothic Imagination, at MOMA

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We should thank our lucky stars that Tim Burton (b. 1958) doesn’t seem to be a compulsive cleaner, otherwise we might not be able to see the wide range of his drawings and doodles—from recent to back when he was just a kid, predating the several years he spent at Disney—that are part of MOMA’s retrospective of this director’s oeuvre (November 22 through April 26). Even back when, his boundless, macabre imagination came across like a laser beam.

MOMA clearly had fun with this installation (organized by Ron Magliozzi, Jenny He, and Rajendra Roy), evident in the showier elements of the exhibition. You enter through a giant gaping mouth set piece, passing several monitors showing the disturbing-yet-endearing animatedWorld of Stainboy. Then comes a room lit by black light, including a recently-made space module-like sculpture of an older sketch, and neon works that pop in the black light, prior to entering the main gallery hall. It’s closer to an amusement park than a museum, which is entirely appropriate.

Arad—No Discipline, 8/27/09

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Ron Arad at MOMA

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If Ron Arad’s name isn’t familiar, then chances are his work is, especially if you’ve ever been in stores such as Moroso or Moss in Soho. Arad specializes in seating, designing the familiarRipple chair, shaped like an infinity sign, and the stacking Tom Vac, a sort of ribbed oval half cocoon. Arad can clearly design simple, elegant pieces with wide appeal and function. But for every VW, he has designed a Ferrari. In No Discipline, MOMA shows 140 examples of Arad’s work, including some of these Ferrari-type chaises.

The beauty (or curse) of being an industrial designer is that you can create the exhibition environment, in addition to filling it up. The main structure is called Cage sans Frontières, a freestanding unit of cubbies whose walls undulate, ribbon-like. Arad favors organic, flowing lines akin to a skate’s wing, and juxtaposes these soft contours with his materials’ strengths. Although it’s impressive by itself, it makes the exhibition feel like a bit like shopping.

Kippenberger: Rogue at MOMA, 3/3/09

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Martin Kippenberger at MOMA

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It’s plain to see what Martin Kippenberger (1953 – 1997) did, judging from MOMA’s fairly comprehensive overview of this German artist. The question is, what didn’t he do? At various stages of his sadly brief life, he had the ambition to be an actor, writer, musician, and artist. He met each with varying success, but surely it is his body of artwork that best reflects the larger-than-life man who seemed to view the world as his playground and art history as his palette. He located his place in the universe for us by attaching tangents to other artists/artworks or historical items.

Subtitled The Problem Perspective and assembled by Ann Goldstein, senior curator at MOCA in LA, with Ann Temkin, MoMA’s chief curator of painting and sculpture, the centerpiece of the show is an installation that sums up Kippenberger’s madcap vision and breadth of ambition. Located in MOMA’s cavernous atrium space, entitled The Happy End of Franz Kafka’s “Amerika,” it is the ostensible set for a scene from Kafka’s unfinished book. On an artificial turf football field sit dozens of seating/table arrangements of every stripe, each unique unit a stand-alone artwork—a setting for so many simultaneous interviews made into a spectator sport by bleachers at two ends.

MOMA—Station Domination!, 2/19/09

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MOMA—Atlantic Station advertising domination!

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Remember the sad time when MoMA closed its headquarters for renovation, forcing legions to cross the god-forsaken East River to Queens, where it shattered the space/time continuum in a hangar-like aluminum shed? It’s not exactly the same, but some masterpieces from MoMA have transplanted themselves, via giant plastic decals, into the Hades-like Atlantic/Pacific transit complex in Brooklyn in what has been dubbed a Schwarzeneggeresque “station domination.” (The catacombs have NOTHING on this monstrosity of tunnels and stairs, although Manhattan’s Fulton Street subway complex surely does.)

In fact, MoMA/AP is way better, because it catches folks by surprise, at least it did me. MoMA has put up nearly 60 different “artworks,” most of which are familiar, and some of which are new. Icons include Meret Oppenheim’s Object(“fur teacup”), Picasso’s Demoiselles D’Avignon, and van Gogh’s Starry Night reside next to fresher names such as Wangechi Mutu and Bill Morrison. Also included are works of industrial design, such as John Barnard/Ferrari’s Formula One racing car and flower printed fabric by William Morris.

The Riches of Morandi, 9/25/08

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Morandi at MOMA

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The Met Museum’s exhibition, Giorgio Morandi, 1890-1964, is like a primer on how to appreciate painting. It’s also the first comprehensive retrospective on the artist in this country, unbelievably.

Morandi has a reputation as an artist’s artist, lionized by art students and scholars, but in the shadow of household name artists. This most likely would have pleased a man who gave two interviews in his lifetime. Like a bottle in the back row of one of his still lifes – essential to the overall picture, but obscured.

He created relatively small-sized works, concentrating on unsensational subject matter, most often still lifes of bottles and geometric shapes. Similarly, he used a sedate palette, the mid-range colors of a desert’s four seasons.

But make no mistake, a tour of this unflashy but major artist’s work is not only pleasurable by the basic technical standards of art appreciation – color, composition, execution – it is an amazing chronicle of the development of artist finding his distinct voice and trusting it. This, even though the heart of his oeuvre, the still life, is an artworld trope.

Home Delivery: Pre-Fabulous, 7/22/08

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Home Delivery at MoMA

http://www.thirteen.org/sundayarts/blog/city/home-delivery-pre-fab-ulous/596/

MoMA’s new exhibition, Home Delivery, is satisfying but kind of perverse for New Yorkers. They’ve installed five pre-fab, temporary homes in the parking lot adjacent to the main museum, between 53^rd and 54^th Streets. The lot has been used to accommodate queues of people waiting to enter, though that was primarily when the renovated museum opened a few years ago. But the irony for Gothamites is that open lots like this are largely distant fantasies, putting any realistic local application firmly out of reach.

But it’s fun to dream. The houses range in size from tiny to multi-story. One of the most successful designs is the “micro compact home,” not much bigger and just as functional as a railway sleeper car (from what I’ve seen in the movies!) or small trailer home. It’s well detailed, sleek, and looks completely ready to move into. And amazingly, it took just two hours to install, according tothe exhibition’s blog. The architects are Richard Horden, Lydia Haack, and John Höpfner.

A bit larger is “System3,” a beautifully designed and finished compact exercise in wood by Austrians Oskar Leo Kaufmann and Albert Rüf, with inviting furniture and detailing. Packed inside of a shipping container and about the double the width, but feeling more akin to Philip Johnson’s Glass House, it is easy to picture this plopped down on a country half-acre for a totally livable, if somewhat spartan, weekend home. Looks like a quick installation, from this video:

A project titled “Digitally Fabricated Housing for New Orleans,” by MIT’s Larry Sass, was conceived prior to Katrina, but became germane for potential use in flood-prone zones or places that require quickly built housing. This is a potent combination of digital design, rough surfaces and small town charm. It boasts a porch with ornate ornamentation, yet the inside is less than 200 square feet. Living in the city and treasuring every square inch of interior space, it’s a bit hard to remember that in warm climates, indoor bleeds into the outdoors, so the porch is akin to the sitting room, expanding usable footage. This house uses no nails for its vertical construction, instead using laser cut interlocking wood pieces like a jigsaw puzzle. Each panel is numbered, giving the structure a gritty conceptual feel as well, prior to (or if) applying finishes.