The Renaissance has a, well, renaissance

Michelangelo Buonarroti (Italian, Caprese 1475–1564 Rome).
Archers Shooting at a Herm, 1530–33. Drawing, red chalk; 8 5/8 x 12 11/16 in. (21.9 x 32.3 cm)

ROYAL COLLECTION TRUST / © HER MAJESTY QUEEN ELIZABETH II 2017, www.royalcollection.org.uk

If it was ever out of fashion, the Renaissance seems to be having another big moment. Besides Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman & Designer, at the Met Museum, Walter Isaacson (who wrote Steve Jobs' riveting biography a few years back) has just published a biography of Leonardo da Vinci, who was 30 years older than Michelangelo. And Christie's is auctioning a small da Vinci painting: Salvator Mundi, ca. 1500, which was only determined to be painted by Leonardo in 2011. (Dr. Carmen Bambach, curator of the Michelangelo show, has concurred with the attribution.) The lot is dubbed "The Last Da Vinci," and is part of, oddly enough, the Post-War & Contemporary auction on November 15. 

Shows at the Met, such as Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman & Designer, are reminders of how lucky we are to have access to such a literal treasure trove, and to the exhibitions it has the resources to put together. Collections tapped for the Michelangelo show range from international museums to the Queen of England's private cache.The exhibition, organized by Dr. Carmen Bambach, a curator at the Met, is primarily composed of 128 drawings, with supporting paintings and sculptures by Michelangelo, but also his mentors and colleagues. 

Many of the drawings are small-scale and informal in feel—the sort you might find done on a napkin or perhaps done idly while daydreaming. The imagery sometimes shares paper with handwritten notes, or can occupy both sides of a sheet of paper. Of course, there are larger, more formal drawings as well. But part of the charm of the exhibition is this focus on process, on lively renditions of parts that unite to compose a larger whole.

Michelangelo Buonarroti. Italian, Caprese 1475–1564 Rome.

Cartoon with a Group of Soldiers for the Crucifixion of Saint Peter, Drawing, 1542–46

Black chalk and charcoal; 8 ft. 7 9/16 in. × 61 7/16 in. (263 × 156 cm)

Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples 398

A major focus of the show is an illuminated reproduction of the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Below it are displayed studies for figures in the mural, with a key showing the corresponding finished part above on a small, gridded diagram. It is a thrill to see up close the sketch of the two hands reaching toward one another in The Last Judgment. As a teen, Michelangelo studied with Ghirlandaio, who also has several works on display at the Met. The most engaging compositions are not formal ones, such as portraits either full-length or cameo—but bodies in motion: twisting, pulling, advancing. A large drawing, Cartoon with a Group of Soldiers for the Crucifixion of St. Peter, shows a mass of bodies from the back. You feel like you're amid the scrum of men surging forward.

Michelangelo Buonarroti (Italian, Caprese 1475–1564 Rome)

Studies for the Libyan Sibyl (recto); Studies for the Libyan Sibyl and a small Sketch for a Seated Figure (verso)

Ca. 1510–11. Red chalk, with small accents of white chalk on the left shoulder of the figure in the main study (recto); soft black chalk, or less probably charcoal (verso). Sheet: 11 3/8 x 8 7/16 in. (28.9 x 21.4 cm).  Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, 1924

I coincidentally just read the novel The Improbability of Love, by Hannah Rothschild, which revolves around a small (fictional) painting by Antoine Watteau that finds its way to a junk shop and is bought for a song by a young woman. The painting holds a deep, dark secret which is revealed throughout the book. It is eventually put up for auction, and along the way  captivates numerous prospective bidders as a priceless symbol of pure love. While the central artwork derives from the Rococo period, it's another story of the power of art to endure through time, making immortal human emotions and artistry. 

The story of the Leonardo up for auction now seems like the perfect fodder for a novel about the timelessness of art. And yet it's real, another episode in the painting's sixth century on earth. On it goes as we watch for a brief time.

Get Out the Good China

Gown by Guo Pei. Photo: Susan Yung

China: Through the Looking Glass, the Met's new blockbuster exhibition focused on China's influence on Western fashion design, peppers stunning vintage and new haute couture garments among artifacts from the museum's vast collection, setting both in a resonant light. Details from ancient jewelry sing anew next to a beaded gown. An animated calligraphic rubbing feels practically anarchic next to a silk dress imprinted with characters. And a hall of gilded buddhas becomes a monument to a regally opulent gown with an octopus train from 2007 by Guo Pei, who aims to unite cultures in her couture. (Pei also provided the ball's most stunning gown, a 55-pound gold ensemble with a teardrop-shaped trailing cape, worn by Rihanna, that proved the gala's hottest click bait.) 

Roberto Cavalli, 2005

The sprawling show, organized by Andrew Bolton and Harold Koda and on view through August 16, includes sections such as Saint Laurent & Opium, Perfume, Ming Furniture, Anna May Wong, Communist uniforms, Emperor to Citizen, Moon in the Water (Astor Garden), and Blue & White Porcelain. The latter is one of the more dramatic juxtapositions, placing a vase next to a curvy 2005 Robert Cavalli gown. It also draws into the equation the tradition of blue and white porcelain in Northern Europe, an early example of borrowed stylistic cues.   

Filmmaker Wong Kar Wai is the exhibition's artistic director, and his romantic, elegant eye is evident throughout the extensive show. Clips of films by such directors as Zhang Yimou and Ang Lee are projected in select spots, providing a jarring modern, animated backdrop. The Astor Court houses a tribute to Chinese opera—stone floors are polished to a mirror finish, emulating reflective water; a moon is projected on the ceiling, but the lighting is too dark to clearly see the somewhat distant garments' details. More legible is the Imperial China gallery, featuring yellow and gold finery both ancient and modern. 

Imperial China gallery. Photo: Met Museum

Wuxia Gallery, Craig Green ensemble. Photo: Susan Yung

The Wuxia Gallery, with its magnificent, vast, early mural of Buddhist imagery, also contains the most modern installation—a forest of plexiglass rods, like giant fiber optics, amid which are situated Craig Green's neo-Mao outfits of quilted cotton, and Gaultier's futuristic silk damask getup with a laser headlamp. It's a lot of space to show a few mannequins, but such is the luxury of the Met's huge acreage.

Because the Met is a museum of everything, it has eluded the critical traps that have snagged the Guggenheim when it mounted a show of Armani's oeuvre, or one of motorcycles, and also MoMA, whose cold new building and Bjork exhibition have been favorite critical punching bags. There is no more brazen marriage of commercial and high art than the Met's Costume Institute (oh, sorry, the Anna Wintour Costume Center). Its gala raises millions for the museum, while allowing its future exhibition subjects a vast red carpet on which to display their latest wares—gratis—on the buzziest starlets, who invariably steal the limelight from the art on view. (Read about the influx of money from China in this Wall Street Journal piece.) 

There are few castigations of crassness or decadence, in part because the Met is the grand dame of US museums. With these fashion shows, it walks the fine line between supporting the arts, and abject capitalistic decadence and celebrity worship and exhibitionism—apparently the perfect equation for raising money now.

El Greco—Contextual Immersion

El Greco’s Toledo: Capella de Ministrers at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

Photo courtesy of Met Museum Presents.

The Park Avenue Armory may have a lock on presenting some of the city's biggest cross-genre spectacles, but the Met Museum Presents boasts a vast choice of rooms, and thereby time and culture capsules, in which to host a variety of events. Some are tied to current exhibitions. This past weekend, Capella de Ministrers gave a series of concerts linked to the exhibition El Greco's Toledo, in the Velèz Blanco Patio, from Renaissance-era Spain. When combined with a tour of the El Greco show, it felt like a micro vacation, or being in a  snow globe within a larger snowglobe (the vast cultural riches of the Met) within the city.

Capella de Minstrers comprises five members: soprano Elisa Franzetti, and four on period instruments: director Carles Magraner (viol), David Antich (flutes), Sara Àgueda (double harp), and Pau Ballester (percussion). Franzetti's rich, focused voice permeated the small hall, moving between dancey, playful lines and the haunting lilt of more somber songs. Magraner, on viol, most often provided the steady pulse; the percussion, by contrast, was more embellishment, and Ballester deployed a wide array of small instruments in addition to a handheld, platter-sized drum. Antich's flutes at times engaged with the vocal line, or trailed it, while the harp contributed a delicate wash of notes, at times even taking the lead.

The song selection ranged from a Greek instrumental, with a nod to El Greco's hometown of Crete, to the Italian and Spanish Renaissance period, with longer selections of work by Ceari Negri and Fabrizio Caroso. In "Romerico Florido" by Mateo Romero, Franzetti sang with attack and felicitousness, boldly engaging while spinning a story. In the encore, "La Muerte de Absolan," a Sephardic lamentation, she strolled about while briskly regaling us in song.

The Blanco Patio, just off of the grand lobby, was a nearly ideal setting other than some ambient chatter from passersby and some echoing footsteps from above. The concert demanded a re-viewing of the El Greco in New York show—now degrees richer, armed with a greater context. 

El Greco, The Vision of St. John, 1608—14, oil on canvas, 87.5"x76"
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1956

The show, up through Feb 1, is a gathering of the painter's works from the Hispanic Society of America and the Met. It is surprisingly compact, filling one relatively small gallery. It includes two of the artist's best-known paintings: View of Toledo, in which every object and surface shimmers with electricity, and The Vision of St. John, whose modernist tendencies purportedly influenced Picasso's composition of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. One of the earliest paintings on view, Christ Healing the Blind (1570), with its clinical approach to perspective, is a reminder of just how radical El Greco's subsequent work was, with its unfettered, supernaturally expressionistic brushwork and flattened planes.

The show contains several portraits: of Cardinal Fernando Niño de Guevara, with his searing and judgmental gaze; Saint Jerome as both a scholar and a penitent, his elongated features compounding his otherworldliness; and a tiny cameo cut from a larger canvas, painted with Holbein's exactitude. The collective experience of the art and the music— artifacts five centuries old, yet very much alive with us today—is a surprising gift amid the holiday clamor. 

Punk Goes Uptown

Duchamp would be proud. Facsimile of CBGB's bathroom ca. 1975, now at the Met Museum.

The Met Museum Costume Institute's big spring fashion show opens May 9 and runs through August 14—Punk: Chaos to Couture. No big surprise, but any expectations of an authentic experience should be adjusted upward and toward the trés chic. You'll see how the trappings of punk infiltrated haute couture. The incongruous presence of a "facsimile" of CBGB's infamous bathroom is a superficial attempt by the Met to connect with punk's baseline. Perhaps if it were open to use and functioned (or better yet, didn't)—it might make sense. It's even more alien than when the now defunct Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame branch on Mercer Street exhibited a CBGB building fragment.

John Lydon, 1976. Courtesy Met Museum.
Photo: Ray Stevenson/Rex USA

Junya Watanabe, fall/winter 2006—7, courtesy
Met Museum. Photo: Catwalking 

In any case, apart from some opening references to the roots of punk, where original items can be seen along with their high fashion inspirations (see John Lydon's sweater) curator Andrew Bolton's show pretty much sticks to its theme: street-inspired couture with a whole lot of black with shiny silver stuff—studs, safety pins, zippers. Substitute sequins and rhinestones for hardware and you're halfway there. A variety of dishwater dirty T-shirts treated with scissors and silkscreened or imprinted with defiant slogans or images. Leather. Handknit sweaters. Pleather. Slashes. Slits. Asymmetry. Off-the-shoulder. Patched togetherness. Painted fabric. Spiky hair in pink or black. A general sense, sometimes false, of outré. 

Vivienne Westwood, Malcolm McLaren, Zandra Rhodes, and Katharine Hamnett are amply represented, and there are forays into street style by elegant houses such as Dior, Chanel, and Calvin Klein, and by less expected names such as Ann Demeulemeester and Miuccia Prada. Videos consume walls but are difficult to see at a close distance. Dark lighting and lots of shiny surfaces amplify the "house of horrors" feel. A series of DIY rooms underscore the ad hoc nature of the style, touching on "hardware," "bricolage," "graffiti/agitprop," and "destroy." And of course, music sets the tone, by The Ramones, Richard Hell, John Gosling, The Sex Pistols, Patti Smith, Debby Harry, and others. The show acknowledges these roots, but the dissonance between rebellion and couture is even louder than the music.

Notebook: Tere O'Connor and Henri Matisse

Silas Riener, Michael Ingle, Oisin Monaghan in Poem. Photo: Ian Douglas

Tere O'Connor Dance—Secret Mary and Poem
New York Live Arts, Nov 27—Dec 1

• Two very different sections to which a third will eventually be added
• Secret Mary feels more akin to some of Tere's previous work: movement emanating from gestures, shaded with irony or facial expressions
• Less trained technique that feels accessible
• The dancers seem as if they have lots of secrets 

• Poem feels more virtuosically technical in comparison, 40+ minutes of riveting movement, the five dancers doing ensemble variations, or split into 3s and 2s
• Silas Riener, Cunningham star, dances; his peerless technique frees him to play with any movement, time and space-wise
• Although all of the other dancers (Oisín Monaghan, Michael Ingle, Heather Olson, and Natalie Green) are superb in individual ways. O'Connor has always employed very talented dancers
• The costumes defy gender stereotyping, with Riener in a childlike "sunsuit" and Monaghan in a smock
• A men's trio of Busby Berkeley inspired radial formations shows off the mens' legs in a way more typical for women
• While O'Connor occasionally quotes from code, like ballet, he primarily invents or discovers vocabulary that's familiar, yet also completely independent
• I can't wait to see the entire three parts together when it's done.

Interior with Black Fern, 1948, oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm.
Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel.
c 2012 Succession H. Matisse/Artists Rights Society, NY 

Matisse: In Search of True Painting
Metropolitan Museum, Dec 4—Mar 17

• A stellar assemblage of wonderful Matisse paintings examining the process of painting a subject matter several times, thwarting the idea that Matisse did not carefully plan his compositions
• Includes series of photographs taken during the stages of creating paintings
• It also shows how Matisse was influenced by the work of his peers, notably Cézanne and Signac; several canvases show experiments with pointillism and Impressionist techniques
• There are a couple of paintings that are familiar, but many of these are fresh to New York eyes
• Matisse assembled compositions as much by blocking with color and pattern as with line
• The vibrant Interior with Black Fern (1948) and Acanthus (Moroccan Landscape) (1912), among others, shows his brilliance with color
• Includes loans from a wide range of museums such as Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, Kunstmuseum Basel, Centre Pompidou, and from private collections
• A thorough but not sprawling show of 49 paintings 
• A shocking reminder that Matisse lived until 1954, really not that long ago!

Le Luxe II, 1907-08, distemper on canvas. 28.5 x 54.75". Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen,
J. Rump Collection. c 2012 Success H. Matisse/Artists Rights Society, NY 

The Met Museum—Bernini Maquettes and Medieval Industrial Design

Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Model for the Lion on the Four Rivers Fountain, ca. 1649–50. Galleria dell’Accademia di San Luca, Rome

Photo by Zeno Colantoni, Rome

In the Met Museum's Robert Lehman Wing is a show that perhaps no other institution save possibly the Morgan could assemble: Bernini—Sculpting in Clay, through January 6. On view are 39 small maquettes and 30 charcoal drawings by Bernini (and a few colleagues), in preparation for his large scale sculptures and monuments. Because they're essentially sketches and on a small scale, they exude spontaneity and a liveliness that is lacking in the finished work. Unfinished, fired clay, they look as if they could've been sculpted yesterday.

Bernini (1598-1680) is one of the great sculptors in history, even if (or maybe because) he lived in the Baroque era, when excess ruled. Ample fabric yardage billows around each figure, and he had a particular knack with draping and enlivening fabric as it personified human movement or became an allegory for external forces such as weather, or political or religious turmoil. The maquettes' diminutive size (most are between 10-20" high) allows a small, close spotlight to exaggerate the shadows and creases that would appear on a much larger scale with the sun acting as the spotlight. He was also able to superbly express dense muscularity in both men and animals, particularly his Model for the Lion on the Four Rivers Fountain.

A number of drawings are on view, showing Bernini's deftness with chiaroscuro in two dimensions. The dynamic of a twisting torso is explored in variations; details of the human body are refined and simplified. Photographs of his completed sculptures and monuments are hung strategically behind the related maquettes, giving an immediate real-world context. It's a compact, thrilling exhibition that shows the Met at its best.

Shaffron of Henry II of France when Dauphin Steel, gold, brass
Franco-Italian, ca. 1490–1500 (redecorated 1539) Rogers Fund, 1904

Speaking of, the Arms and Armor Hall has been refreshed. It's one of my favorite galleries at the Met, a self-contained satellite, a display of medieval industrial design par excellence that encapsulates industrial skill, function, and protection, all while evoking superheroes, chivalry, and royal courts. (MoMA's exhibit including bulletproof wear is the contemporary equivalent.) 

A special exhibition, Bashford Dean and the Creation of the Arms and Armor Department (through September 2013) celebrates the centennial of the department, founded by the intrepid Dean. The main Arms and Armor Hall has been refurbished and freshened, and a superb and exotic horse-and-rider installation has given an exalted spot in the main museum entrance's Great Hall, hanging near a rather dour, mustard-hued Warhol Flowers painting—planets colliding at one of the world's great museums. 

Regarding Warhol, Being Regarded

Nine Jackies. Blur your eyes and think of Rothko...
1964, acrylic & silkscreen on canvas, 65"x53". Met Museum, Gift of Halston.
(c) 2012 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. ARS, NY

Is the Met Museum’s exhibition Regarding Warhol, which traces his influence on other artists, so obvious that it need not have been put together? Or is it simply a burning topic that once and for all needed to be made manifest? My mind kept flicking between the two poles while strolling through the large exhibition (Sep 18—Dec 31), curated by Mark Rosenthal with Marla Prather, Ian Alteveer, and Rebecca Lowery.

Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat. A less-seen Warhol!
1984, acrylic & silkscreen on canvas, 90" x 70".
The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh Founding Collection
Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

(c) 2012 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. ARS, NY

The case for just how influential and versatile Warhol truly was is made quite convincingly. His body of work comprises multitudinous series that changed dramatically and frequently: content-wise, from his ubiquitous (and profitable) celebrity portraits, to his flashbulb nightlife snapshots, to macabre sensationalist or quotidien newspaper-divined imagery. And formally—from his essential cameo portrait, to the matrix format, to giant versions of consumer products, to photo-to-silkscreen paintings, to neon-hued bold compositions.

Within these categories, it’s simple and fun to link nearly every peer of Warhol’s, or younger artists, back to his oeuvre. It’s almost like a parlor game for the high (low?) minded. Cindy Sherman’s ever-shifting play with identity, Sigmar Polke’s impressionistic or object-based paintings, Hans Haacke’s subversive merchandising, Jeff Koons’ sculptural sanctification of pop stardom, sundry Robert Gober works. The canon of artists is a compendium of the last half-century; subtract Warhol and you have a perfectly serviceable survey of the major trends in contemporary art.

Most of the 60 Warhols in the show are from the first half of his career; many are the more elegant or dramatic icons of his work, such as Jackie, Elvis, and the disaster images, plus some films (Empire, screen tests of Lou Reed and Nico). Much of it is so familiar (if not household names, household imagery) such as Marilyn and Flowers, that it’s a bit of a shock to see them again in the flesh, in this relatively haughty context. They’re so ubiquitous that they have ceased to have any artistic impact, a trick of multiple subversion that Andy no doubt would’ve found amusing.

To exit the show, you must walk through the modern galleries, and this is what finally provided an epiphany. Past Pollocks, Rothkos, Stills, and De Koonings, old friends that all sung out fresh notes in the wake of a brisk round of art association. I thought, Oxidations, Dollar Signs/Jackies, Triple Elvis, unflattering honcho portrait. (Now that I’m writing about it, the connections seem more distant, but they felt very strong immediately.)

Ai Weiwei, Neolithic Vase with Coca-Cola Logo, 2010
Paint on Neolithic vase.
Courtesy Mary Boone Gallery, NY

Then through the Greek/Roman hallway, past the marble torsos which looked identical to some of Warhol's Torso works, and some of the archetypal urns and vases referenced by Ai Weiwei's Neolithic Vase with Coca Cola Logo that I'd just seen. (A real Neolithic vase. On which he painted a Coke logo—the act upstaging the object. Warhol may have deified the common household artifact, or signed his name to any old thing, but not a Neolithic vase, to my knowledge.)

It begs the question, did Andy come to the Met and tour the galleries as part of his leisure or work, or on second thought, how often? Did he bring his Polaroid, or simply make mental notes? In the end, he emerges as a pack rat of ideas and influences, a time capsule of sociological trends and popular people. Yet instead of just storing those ideas away, he interpreted them and gave them (or sold them) back to us. The world's greatest cipher and salesman, haunting us yet.

Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations

Waist Up/Waist Down gallery, featuring jackets by Schiaparelli and skirts by Prada. courtesy Met Museum

Whether the clothing is art in the Met Museum's Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations exhibition is itself fodder for the dramatized dialogue in filmed scenes by director Baz Luhrman (Schiaparelli is played with spark by Judy Davis) that are strategically projected behind the mannequins. But what can be said is that the Costume Institute takes its big annual exhibition very seriously (recall the Alexander McQueen exhibition, which broke all records), realizing such high-concept formulas and drawing together somewhat loose commonalities between designers in order to create debate and discussion.

Prada, 2005. Photo: Toby McFarlan Pond,
courtesy Met Mus

The show's organizers (Harold Koda and Andrew Bolton) craftily aligned Elsa Schiaparelli, more of an icon to the industry, with Miuccia Prada, a current household fashion name as famous for her utilitarian nylon backpack as her clothing. Both have tested the concept of femininity in women's fashion, moving away from lurid designs toward more modest, elegant, yet still indulgent creations. That said, each has created fantastical whimsies: headgear by Schiaparelli, and shoes by Prada including some with Cadillac tailfin heels, on ample display.

Schiaparelli specialized in the evening jacket, something that seems ripe for re-emergence. (Why shouldn't women be warm in cold weather? Oh, right, that would mean comfortable. Can't have that.) The jackets are usually dark, fitted, with padded shoulders to emphasize the waist, and often decorated with embroidery, elaborate buttons, or appliqued bits of whimsy, relating them conveniently to Prada's own svelte, embellished skirts.

The collection is divided into themes: hard, naif, classical, exotic, surreal. In this latter category, Schiap had the upper hand, actually collaborating with Dali on their famous shoe headpiece. And despite the convenience of having actual Surrealists in her phone book, she made wearable, timeless classics that could still be in production. The way they flatter the female form without being shameless contrasts with Prada's tendency to follow a schoolgirl's uniform's silhouette, with the focal point nearly always a knee-length A-line skirt which sits atop the hipbone. She pairs these slender lines with clunky loafers for a very different kind of timelessness.

The exhibit culminates in a "hall of mirrors" room with plexiglass display cases, achieving the presumed goals of disorientation and making the space seem larger than it is. Each case holds a pair of outfits, one by each designer, plus a photo of Schiaparelli and a peer's artistic influence. It all combines with the beyond-the-grave dialogue enactments for a carnivalesque setting. And it's somewhat in tension with the clothing designs that are radical for being sumptuous, dignified, and ultimately extremely practical in a field that prides itself on objectifying and hobbling women in the name of freedom of choice. Now that's revolutionary.

Surprising Collaborations: Whitney + Met and Ailey + Taylor, 5/19/11

-->

Surprising Collaborations: Whitney + Met and Ailey + Taylor

http://www.thirteen.org/sundayarts/blog/museums/surprising-collaborations%E2%80%94whitney-met-ailey-taylor/1292/

Image of the proposed Whitney near the Highline, courtesy Renzo Piano Building Workshop in collaboration with Cooper, Robertson & Partners.

Two news items were announced last week that seemed to signal a fresh want and need for collaboration between major cultural institutions. In 2015, the Met Museumwill take over for eight years the Whitney‘s home on Madison Avenue, designed by Marcel Breuer. Many battles have been fought over expanding that handsome granite monolith, but now that the Whitney  plans for a May 24th groundbreaking in the meatpacking district near the Highline, it can devote its energy to moving into a much larger headquarters, leaving (at least temporarily) the Breuer building and the numerous landmark squabbles.

A collaboration like this among museums is very unusual, but this deal’s fate may be traced in some karmic way back to Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, who considered donating her American collection to the Met, but instead founded the Whitney. The institution long ago outgrew the Breuer building, which will be used by the Met for exhibitions and support programs.

Alexander McQueen: Tailor Turned Visionary, 5/5/11

-->

Alexander McQueen at the Met

http://www.thirteen.org/sundayarts/blog/museums/alexander-mcqueen-tailor-turned-visionary/1251/

Alexander McQueen (British, 1969-2010) Dress, autumn/winter 2010 Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Photograph © Sølve Sundsbø / Art + Commerce.

To those outside the orbit of haute couture, the industry may seem trite—a lot of bluster and blather about incredibly expensive clothes that are generally impractical, designed for scarecrows, and doomed for obsolescence in a season. But a trip through the Met’s “Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty“ exhibition (through July 31) is a reminder of how fashion design can combine unfettered imagination and trends of the moment with the body’s limits, tradition, and mad sewing skills (notably, his “Oyster” dress). McQueen’s passing last year makes this show of his bravura talent all the more tragic while celebrating him.

Curator Andrew Bolton has organized the exhibition into several rooms, each with its own theme/collection and design motif. “The Cabinet of Curiosities,” built of what appears to be charred wood, houses many head/neck/body pieces crafted of metal, feathers, wood, shells, as well as shoes and other items.  One room looks to be from a decaying Versailles; another (where  his “Highland Rape” collection, a commentary on England’s “raping” of Scotland, is shown), destroyed wooden planks and siding. Also included are a hologram projection, videos of runway shows and related footage, and a re-creation of an installation/runway show inspired by Joel Peter Witkin. His romantic streak is evident in the collection titles which often included the word “romantic.”

Skeletons and Pickled Herring, 6/26/09

James Ensor at Met Museum

http://www.thirteen.org/sundayarts/blog/museums/skeletons-and-pickled-herring/724/

James Ensor (1860-1949) is one of those artists whose name is fairly familiar, but whose work hovers in a mental netherworld of art history. So MoMA’s overview of this Belgian artist offers welcome insight into his weird, intriguing oeuvre that overlapped many influential movements and artists before nestling most comfortably with the expressionists of the early 20th century. The show, which runs June 28–Sept 21 and was organized by Anna Swinbourne, the museum’s assistant curator of painting and sculpture, is ordered chronologically and comprises about 120 works. Most were done in the 1880s and 90s, the decades of his richest output that saw the rapid location, refinement, and evolution of his voice.

It’s easy to play the association game while looking at his early stuff in which he honed his technique—streetscapes/Monet; still lifes/Cézanne; full, flattened figure/Manet; interiors bathed with northern European light/Vermeer; and so on. Paintings that showed he had mastered traditional painting technique featured not society types but regular folk, such as in The Oyster Eater (1882) and The Drunkards (1883).

Finding Bacon’s Demographic, 5/28/09

-->

Francis Bacon at the Met Museum

http://www.thirteen.org/sundayarts/blog/museums/finding-bacons-demographic/713/

If Francis Bacon’s (1909-1992) artwork were a movie, it would no doubt captivate that mythical “ideal” demographic—males 18-49. His work is scary, brutal, graphic, hallucinogenic, and muscular, like so many blockbuster films nowadays. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. That’s partly why the Met’s retrospective of the British artist seems in tune with the moment. The exhibition, on view through August 16, was curated by Gary Tinterow of the Met, and Matthew Gale and Chris Stephens of the Tate Britain, London.

Walking through Francis Bacon: A Centenary Retrospective, it’s striking how many of Bacon’s 66 paintings on view seem very familiar already. Perhaps it has something to do with how accurately he portrayed nightmares of the subconscious, or how quickly those images immediately shot into the part of the brain that files fear. Besides the screaming pope (after Velazquez) and the abattoir imagery, there are the more or less standard Bacon mises-en-scènes—a figure in what appears to be a dark room, often circular, containing a roped-off ring or a cube schematic. You can practically hear the soft, frightening thud of a door sealing off any exit as well as muffling the shrieking pope’s screams in Latin.