Roll Over Mondrian, Tell Kandinsky the News

Mondrian plus Pacman equals Pac-Mondrian!
Read all about it and play the game! KAZAM! An incredible blend of high and low, the sum is even greater than the parts. Too much? Just right.

Another Favorite Mondrian game:
Mondrimat
We’re all artists on this bus.

There Are No Straight Lines: Noguchi@ The Whitney:
I finally got a chance to see the show of sculptures by Isamu Noguchi at The Whitney Museum. Most impressive were the room of his Kouros. These sculptures look like 3- dimensional personages taken straight out of the paintings of Yves Tanguy, especially when grouped together as they are in this show. Also seen at the Whitney: the Romare Bearden show, a stunner; a slow-moving, strange and surreal Video installation by Bill Viola. All-in-all a thoroughly stimulating array of exciting and varied art works at "the uptown bunker for difficult art."

Image Processing and Art History

"Art historians have long used scientific tools to help them decide whether drawings and paintings are real or fakes, like counting isotopes in lead-based paints to spot anachronisms or shining X-ray and infrared radiation on oil portraits to discover what lies beneath.

Now researchers at Dartmouth College have introduced a forensic tool appropriate to the digital age: they have fed digitally scanned artworks into a computer, and then used image-processing techniques to create statistics describing the pen and brush strokes.

Like a connoisseur - a blend of Bernard Berenson and HAL - the computer analysis detected subtle differences in these strokes that might help distinguish an artist from an imitator."

-Who Really Wielded the Paintbrush?
By ANNE EISENBERG

NY Times, December 23, 2004


If you are interested in image processing, take a look at ImageJ:

powerful software developed at the NIH and available as a free download far any platform (Jave, Unix, Mac and PC). This software is as powerful as Adobe Photoshop (with many similar features) in addition it has may features that make it a perfect forensic tool to aid art historians in the analysis of images.
The most famous example of digital imaging software supporting art historical suppositions is the superimpostion fo Leanardo’s Self-Portrait over the face of the Mona Lisa. The Aha! Moment this caused has spurred many other speculations about the master from Vinci, leading invariably to The Da Vinci Code.

A Few "Museum Mile" Moments

Went to the Museum Mile today to check off a few items on my short list.
First, took the long downward spiral ramp at the Guggenheim to savor “The Aztec Empire.” Aside from some minor misgivings such as “I thought the Guggenheim was devoted to non-objective art? …Contemporary Art?”

"The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation was incorporated in 1937, and the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, as it was then known, was established two years later. The museum ...took as its basis the radical new forms of art being developed by such artists as Vasily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and Piet Mondrian."

-from The Guggenheim Museum History

But, then again, this is where “The Art of the Motorcycle” drew record crowds of visitors not usually associated with the genteel and upper-crusty museum mile.
Cranky misgivings aside, once inside I was mesmerized by the sheer quantity of arresting sculptures, vessels, jewelry and statuary produced by this pre-Columbian culture. For sheer weirdness and necromancy this exhibit should also appeal to the bikers, tattoo artists, and alternative lifestyle crowd usually absent form mainstream gatherings of the art set.
Kudos to the curators for pulling off a surprising success from out of the proverbial hat.

Schlepped further on down Fifth Avenue, to the Metropolitan Museum to see the recently installed masterpiece by Duccio. At $45 million, this little gem is the most expensive piece of real estate to be seen in Gotham City. Let’s see… the painting is a little over 10 x 8 inches and cost a cool 45 million clams, that makes it about half a million per square inch. Donald Trump eat your heart out, better yet, go to the Guggenheim and let the Aztecs eat your heart for you.


Read about the painting here in The Art Newspaper.

Pop Artist Dies, Changing-of-the-Avant-Guard

Tom Wesselman passed away last Friday, joining Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein in the Pop Pantheon of "Past Masters Who Passed Away".
This from the NY Times, today 12/20/04

"Along with Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, James Rosenquist and Jim Dine, Mr. Wesselmann belonged to a generation of artists who gave American art and culture a new sense of itself. They found inspiration, source materials and even working methods in areas beyond art - in advertising, movies, food labels, household appliances, newspaper front pages and in commercial art techniques like silkscreen, Benday dots and billboard painting. The changes they wrought continue to reverberate through contemporary art and life."

This is almost the final stage in the changing-of-the-avant-guard, leaving James Rosenquist and Claus Oldenburg very much alive to carry the Pop torch. If you haven't seen J.R.'s "F-111" at his Guggenheim show last year, then hurry to MoMA and see it in a setting that seems made for it. Claus Oldenburg is busy turning his studio/loft/residence in SoHo into a gallery/museum.

Did I forget to put the Rubin Museum for Himalayan Art on my short list? I love the very Zen quote on the exterior of this newest museum in Chelsea: "Walls Are Doors".
I like that, if walls are doors and doors are mirrors and mirrors are windows and toys are us and wednesday is sunday at Carvel...

If De Kooning Still Mattered

Don’t get me wrong, I love early-to-middle de Kooning painting (from the forties through to maybe the late-seventies). I remember being challenged, perplexed and thrilled at the Knoedler Gallery in 1975 with de Kooning's outrageous complexity and anti-aesthetic aesthetic. But soon thereafter, the fire went out…it was well-known that Bill had lapsed into a dementia or senility brought on by alcohol abuse, Alzheimer’s or something else and anyone with an eye could see that his paintings became simpler; thin and anemic and lacking in any vigor, rigor or lust that characterized the painting of the previous decades.
Yet, galleries and even museums showed these pseudo “De Kooning” paintings alongside his truly great masterpieces as if the proximity to the real thing would rub off on these dribblings by his sycophantic assistants. Schlock, mock and dreadful as these paintings are, I’m sure many people were taken in.
Now comes a new book De Kooning: An American Master by Mark stevens and Annalyn Swann
I look forward to reading it, I may even give to myself for xmas…

Full Disclosure: As a painting student of Joop Sanders ( a fellow Dutch ex-pat) we were tutored in the formal exigencies of De Kooningism which boiled down to a few simple dictates:
-Try using things besides a brush to “paint”
-Never make all four corners of a canvas the same
-Never close off your forms, literally or figuratively:
all shapes should be ambiguous and open to interpretation and also open in shape so as to shift from foreground to backgound in a constant dance
-Draw with the brush, avoid drawing and then “filling in the drawing with color”
That's it, now you too can paint just like De Kooning, which is what a lot of my fellow students were doing at that time. I found it hard to resist the strong pull of the sort of mystical regard and cultish fervor surrounding De Kooning and yet, following Groucho Marx's famous dictum "Whatever It Is, I'm Against It".

Related Reading (sort of)
"If Jackson Pollock Wrote Music"

Philly Cheese Steaks and Van Gogh To Go!

"Does It Matter Where This Painting Hangs?"
By ROBERTA SMITH, NY Times 12/15/04

Yet, while one art-world hand is wringing, maybe the other should be doing its Zen-like best to clap. The decision is a triumph of accessibility over isolation, of art over the egos of collectors and, frankly, of the urban over the suburban.

Great quote from Roberta Smith in today's NY Times article. It seems that the fabled Barnes Collection is most likely going to move to downtown Philly: Cheese steaks and Van Gogh! I'm all for it. What do you think?

The Short List: What Art to See in NYC

The Short List: Art in NYC Galleries and Museums
Always lots to see in NYC
Here is the absolute shortest list of "must-see"

Old Masters:
Duccio @ the Met
NYT article about the painting
Mucho dinaro for this little gem, no?

Raphael @ the Frick
Raphael's Mona Lisa?

Modern Masters:
Picasso / Beckman @Richard L.Feigen & Co.
A battle royale by two titans toe-to-toe and head-to-head.
34 E.69th St. through Jan. 31.

Isamu Noguchi / Romare Bearden / Jacob Lawrence @the Whitney: a triple threat at the uptown concrete bunker for difficult art during difficult times.
Bearden through Jan 9th. Noguchi through Jan. 16. Lawrence through Jan. 31.

Pre-Columbian Masters:
The Aztec Empire @ the Guggenheim Museum through Feb. 15
Aztecs in "Wrights revenge?" Sounds corny but it works.

Architecture:
Frank Lloyd Wright: The Vertical Dimension @ the Skyscraper Museum through Jan. 9.
FLW designs for a "Mile-High Building" downtown. This new museum has been on my list, but FLW is a must-see anywhere, anytime.

Design:
Josef and Anni Albers: Designs for Living @ the Cooper Hewitt through Feb. 9. Long Live the Bauhaus!

And don’t forget:
Alfred Leslie @ Allan Stone Gallery Seems Al liked to paint like De Kooning before switching to figuration... go figure.

Snowflakes @ Davis & Langdale

I've always been a sucker for photos of microscopic phenomena of any kind; it seems that many people respond to immediacy of the art/science connection. These images elicit a child-like sense of wonder that is often dormant in our day-to-day "just the facts, 'maam" existence. I am planning to see the snowflakes in the next few days before it closes.

Davis & Langdale Company, Inc.
231 East 60th Street, New York NY 10022
telephone: 212 838 0333
hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 10am until 5pm

"Snowflake" Bentley: Vintage Photomicrographs by Wilson A. Bentley (1865-1931)
November 20 through December 18, 2004

"SNOWFLAKE" BENTLEY: VINTAGE PHOTOMICROGRAPHS BY W.A. BENTLEY (1865-1931) will consist of seventeen vintage photographs of snowflakes, taken by Wilson A. Bentley, better known as "Snowflake" Bentley. It includes two examples from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

WILSON A. BENTLEY coined the phrase "No two snowflakes are alike." He grew up in Vermont, and developed a life-long fascination for snow. His parents indulged his interest, buying him a special camera to photograph the flakes individually. The process was difficult, made more so by the temporary nature of the subject – many snowflakes melted before BENTLEY could capture their images on film, making the photographs extremely rare.

BENTLEY's work will be featured in House & Garden magazine's December 2004 issue. He was the subject of a Caldecott Medal-winning book, Snowflake Bentley, by Jacqueline Briggs Martin (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998), and a biography by Duncan C. Blanchard, The Snowflake Man: A Biography of Wilson A. Bentley (McDonald & Woodward Publishing Company, 1998). BENTLEY himself published numerous articles about his work in magazines such as Harper's Monthly, Popular Science, and The New York Times Magazine, as well as a book, Snow Crystals, later republished as Snowflakes in Photographs (Dover Publications, 2000)."
- The Art Dealers Association of America

Gilbert and George @ Sonnabend

The latest offerings by this witty pair of kooky artists are by turns interesting, intriguing but ultimately disappointing. Interesting in the use of graffiti-like lettering, scrawls and scribbles; intriguing in the use of bi-lateral symmetry; but I found the works to be cold and distant in part due to the "low-tech" tiling of smaller panels to make up each larger image In person the work look like Kinko-produced knock offs.
Gilbert and George on Artnet
I still smile when I think of their "most appealing painting" created by polling the likes and dislikes of many people to create the image. And don't forget their work with the paintings by elephants...

$23,000,000. Smackeroos for Sargent Painting

According to the NY Times:

"Art prices are setting records again. In early November "No. 6 (Yellow, White, Blue Over Yellow on Gray)" by Mark Rothko was auctioned at Sotheby's for a record $17.4 million, almost 50 percent above the top end of Sotheby's estimate. "The Ninth Hour," a room with a lifesize wax pope felled by a meteorite, by the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, fetched $3 million at auction at Phillips, de Pury & Company, also exceeding its top estimate by half."
By EDUARDO PORTER, December 1, 2004


A record price for a John Singer Sargent has been set at Sotheby's at the recent sale.


PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF RITA AND DANIEL FRAAD
JOHN SINGER SARGENT
1856-1925
GROUP WITH PARASOLS (A SIESTA)
ESTIMATE 9,000,000—12,000,000 USD

Lot Sold. Hammer Price with Buyer's Premium: 23,528,000 USD

There it is, yet another art work sold at more than twice the estimate and a record for the artist. $23,000,000. smackeroos. Art is hot right now, right here.

GUY PÈNE DU BOIS Exceeds Estimates!!!

Whew, what a day for Mr. Du Bois at Sotheby's today. A painting, "Paris Railroad Station" by Guy Pene Du Bois has sold at more than twice the estimate of $150,000—250,000 for a whopping $512,000. It's my guess that this is a record for a Du Bois painting. Something to check out, but I wouldn't be too surprised if that is a record.
Guy's brother Rene was a noted Broadway Set Designer and I would bet that his prices are on the rise as well, although clearly not in the same range - since oil paintings always fetch higher prices than the " workaday" renderings, sketches and designs for the theater in any case.

Auction results for "Paris Railway Station"

American Art Auction @ Sotheby’s 11/30/04

American paintings, drawings and sculpture
including property from the collection of Rita and Daniel Fraad
Sotheby's Auction House

I stopped by to see the exhibit and I was surprised by both the amount and the quality of the art on view. Especially impressive were the number of Winslow Homer paintings, several of very high quality. I was particularly struck by a painting by Guy Pene Du Bois (an old favorite of mine). His work reminds me of a bygone era, of “olde New York” where dinner jackets, five-o clocktails and pre-theater dinners were the order of the day.
Paris Railroad Station
I am planning to stop by tomorrow to catch the auction in the late afternoon. More to follow...

Duccio, the Met just had to have one...

Well, what would you do if you needed just one more painting by a great progenitor of western painting to "fill-out" your collection? And it was only 45 million dollars? Buy, of course. Which is just what the Metropolitan Museum did a few weeks back.
"More than a few eyebrows went up when the Metropolitan Museum of Art confirmed this week that it had bought a painting by an early Renaissance master, and the price was reported to exceed $45 million. The price is interesting, and so is the painter -- Duccio di Buoninsegna..." NY Times, 11/13/2004

Duccio and the Art of Siena

This site provides a good intro. to Duccio's style comparing his work with that of Giotto - also a great progenitor of western painting...

Duccio

Great images of major works by the Sienese master.


More images of paintings by Duccio
There is a "Madonna and Child" on this web site that is similiar in look and feel to the painting recently purchased by the Met.


The Art Newspaper The full story of the Met's purchase, with an image of said painting.

BTW (By the way), this painting is slightly smaller than the 8 1/2" by 11" paper in your ink-jet printer...IMHO (In my humble opinion), this is a great purchase at any price. But then again, I didn't buy it ... but I'll be happy to visit it. I hope you will too.

Raphael's "La Fornarina" @ The Frick

I almost forgot to add Raphael's "La Fornarina" to my list of must-see art this Fall. This is a no-brainer, the Palazzo Barberini in Rome being too far a trip. This enigmatic (Raphael's "Mona Lisa"?) painting is traveling to this hemisphere for the first and probably last time.
Raphael's Fornarina on View in the United States for the First Time: Three-City Tour Begins at New York's Frick Collection
I haven't been to the Frick in quite some time as it has a stiff adimssion fee but I did regret not seeing four versions of "The Purification of the Temple" by El Greco at the Frick when they were there a few years back. Luckily for me the four paintings were included in the subsequent El Greco show at the Met.
Also, kudos to the Met on the purchase of a delicate Duccio, the first to grace their collection. More on this later...

The Greatest Showplace on Earth!

"Chelsea...the greatest showplace for contemporary art on Earth" Roberta Smith - NY Times 11/28/04
Wow, there it is. I am amazed and astonished that it has happened so quickly but then "Chelsea is SoHo on crack" as the saying goes. It's the go-go eighties all over again with a group show of the tragically unhip - David Salle and his gate crashers from way back when: Clemente, Haring and Basquiat. Planned for the Tony Shrafazzi gallery, this show should be telling: will it be well-recieved? I hope not. It was bad enough the first time around to have all these over-inflated egos commanding all the high prices and prestige. What is happening in Chelsea right now owes nothing to the eighties.

Like it or not, much of what is on view in Chelsea galleries is of the twenty-first century: high tech materials, digital video and projection, post-post-modern thinking and wildly idiosyncratic excess characterize an emergent new art that moves at a rapid clip and morphs in a dizzying array of styles, attitudes and persona owing in equal parts to science fiction, the internet, and late-stage capitalism. Not to say that we are in a "Golden Age" but definitely one that is fresh, vibrant and in some way, promising.

Just a quick stop in Chelsea...

On my way to play some basketball at Chelsea Piers, I stopped by the Elizabeth Dee Gallery. I was annoyed by the cloying and simplistic images of Christoph Steinmeyer. On the other hand I admired the craft and wit of Chris Sauter. There is a full size four poster bed with a gash in the mattress that, on closer inspection, turns out to be a minature sort of Grand Canyon/Hoover Damesque diorama - weird as a beard, man.

This from the press release:
"Just Married, an installation by Chris Sauter in Gallery 2, will comprise a bed with a system of canyons carved into its foam mattress. Tiny dams, telephone poles, and electrical towers punctuate this Lilliputian expanse with the evidence of humanity’s presence."
545 WEST 20TH STREET. Until 12/18/04

After basketball, on the way back I peeked in at the Gagosian Gallery on 24th St. I was impressed with the sheer virtuosity of paint handling in the new work by Mark Tansey. From upclose these paintings are really loose and painterly yet the images coalesce into surprisingly realistic seas, rock faces and glaciers when viewed from across the gallery. The classic game of near/far that was perfected by Velasquez and the Impressionists is here given a fresh new shift. The images on the web really do not do these paintings any justice, They are huge paintings that need to be seen close up to really get a sense of their charms.
555 WEST 24TH STREET. Until 12/18/04

MoMA is "All That"

It's definitely bigger and better, and more crowded. Of course there are crowds; people are excited to see their "old friends" Vincent, Henri, Pablo and Jackson again. Membership has its privledges: skip the lines and feel free to return whenever you feel like it for only $75. Another tip: don't bring an umbrella unless you like standing in long lines for mandatory check-in (another line I skipped since I got wet on the way it was a compensatory perk).

Walk, don't run to the refurbished MoMA.
There is a new reading room where you can browse through their offerings, like in Barnes and Noble. I discovered a new publication: "Frank Lloyd Wright The Interactive Portfolio" a must-have for me. This book inclubes many facsimile reproductions of drawings, plans, memoralbilia and correspondance. A great teaching tool.

Highlights:


The Kandinsky's never looked better. His four canvas Panels for Edwin R. Campbell No. 1, No. 2, No. 3,and
No. 4 of 1914 have pride of place. I have always looked at these paintings as abstract representation of the four seasons: Fall, Winter, Spring and Summer.

James Rosenquist"F-11" looks resplendent in a space that seems like it was made for it. Click on "full view" from this page to see an interesting view of this immense painting.

The view from all of the bridges in the upper floors of the immense atrium.

VIVA and the Skyscraper Museum

"Visual Index to the Virtual Archive" ... VIVA is a great resource for exploring NYC neighborhoods online. VIVA was created by the folks at the Skyscraper Museum:
"an innovative visually-based interface that uses a 3-D computer model of Manhattan as a click-on map, allowing Web visitors to view the city, present and past, and to access the Museum's collections through an on-line, searchable database"
Now, this is what I'm talking about...this is what the wide weird web is supposed to provide: rich, interesting, interactive information for the taking.
****Four Stars****(Five when it gets more complete!)
The Skyscraper Museum

Have you been to DIA Beacon? See the "enviro-architectural-envelopments of elemental and vertigo-inducing behemoths"

If you haven't been to the DIA Beacon yet, go. The Dia:Beacon is a museum for Dia Art Foundation's renowned collection of art from the 1960s to the present. With only a $10. admission fee (MoMA has set up a new paradigm where $10. is now a bargain) and a scant 50 mile ride up the east side of the Hudson River by train or auto from NYC, there is no excuse to not check it out. On a recent trip I was thrilled to see the torqued ellipses of Richard Serra in a space that is ample and complements the rich and varied surfaces of the rusted Cor-ten Steel plates that have become a signature aspect ot his work. Sculpture is too small a word for these enviro-architectural-envelopments of elemental and vertigo-inducing behemoths.
The DIA web site:
For Info. and directions
For someone else's humble opinion:
"The New Hudson River School"
Here's a good review by John Haberman, this site has plenty to whet your appetite for a day trip to DIA:Beacon.

Best New Media art in NYC: "The Street"

That's right, a 6-minute animation by Lars Arrhenius "The Street" at Feigen Contemporary (535 West 20th St., Chelsea, through Dec.23rd) is absolutely the best new media work I've seen in quite some time. It is based on a simple premise:
"What if the blocky universal symbols for man and woman, like those designating public restrooms, had lives of their own?" -Roberta Smith, NYTimes
Go see this show if you like your art in an amusing yet thought-provoking form. Animation is not just for kids and the latest 3D Pixar project notwithstanding, this is a must-see. "The Street" can only be seen in one place and it's here, right now.
See it and keep those cards and letters coming.
Lars Arrhenius
C-prints by Lars


London Underground, also by Lars
Check it out, fresh and funky C-prints of the London tube.

Feigen Comtemporary site.
The Quicktime video doesn't do it justice, but that's all there is, so you have to get out the house and see the real deal.

The Twenty-Dollar MoMA? Take Your Mama!

Well, I'm gonna hafta weigh-in on this one:
"Yes, twenty dollars is a whole lotta dinaro to get in to the new MoMA but if you're serious about modern art you can become a member for only $75. and have unlimited free admission for a year: it's the best bargain in New York!"


Yeah, yeah, I know. You're not convinced. Read More and don't forget to respond.
FrEEMoMA.org
Local Brooklyn painter gets indignant and publicity mad!
MoMA's $20 Admission [Felix Salmon]
More on the Bru-ha-ha
Open Letter to Greg Allen [Todd Gibson, From the Floor]
The Homeless Museum
Does this museum need a home?
$20: Such An Easy Target [Modern Art Notes]
Blah, blah, blah
Y Tu MoMA Tambien [Modern Art Notes]

The final word on this tangled web we weave:
The Twenty-Dollar MoMA? Take Your Mama, it might do you both some good.

Marilyn Monroe @ the BMA

Went to the Brooklyn Museum of Art today to see portraits of children by John Singer Sargent, and also to see an exhibit of photographs of Marilyn Monroe at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Sargent was singularly spectacular in his usual fashion, yet it seemed to be all surface and nuance... but what a surface!
The stunner of the day were the images of Marilyn which were riveting, revealing and rapacious providing depth, intimacy and intimations of mortality and morality. More on this later.
Stopped by the Elizabeth Dee Gallery earlier in the day, after a romp at Chelsea Piers. The installation by Virgil Marti in the small space on West 20th St. seemed contrived, tacky and a little too retro for my taste. Although I was lucky to see the show as it was being dismantled ( it closed yesterday) but I was disappointed by the yard sale nature of the presentation. Let's just say I don't get it.

What Art to see in NYC : Fall 04

Wowie-zowie! Fall in NYC and the Art world is in full swing after a sleepy summer. It is like springtime for art in the autumn in nueva york.
Here is my "to do" list, check back to see reviews and postings related to this rejuvenating and refreshing encounter with the best in museums, galleries and off-beat locales not-just-for-locals.
My short-list (not in order of prominence or priority):
Frank Lloyd Wright: The Vertical Dimension @the Skyscraper Museum, through Jan. 9.
FLW designs for a "Mile-High Building"downtown. This new museum has been on my list, But FLW is a must-see anywhere, anytime.
Picasso-Beckman/Beckman-Picasso @Richard Feigen & Co. 34 E.69th St. through Jan. 31.
Ditto for Pablo and Max, two giants in a tete-a-tete.
The Aztec Empire @ the Guggenheim Museum through Feb. 15
Aztecs in "Wrights revenge?" Sounds corny but I've heard it works.
Romare Bearden @ the Whitney through Jan 9th. Also Isamu Noguchi through Jan. 16.
Two perrennial favs. at the uptown concrete bunker for difficult art during difficult times.
Josef and Anni Albers: Designs for Living @ the Cooper Hewitt through Feb. 9.
The Bauhaus is Dead! Long Live the Bauhaus!
There's a lot to "gosee" in the next two months (this is just the short list, long list to follow).
My taste is neatly encapsulated here with Picasso/Albers/Wright in the forefront and Bearden/Noguchi/Beckman as a backdrop. Did I fail to mention John Singer Sargent at the Brooklyn Museum of Art? So it goes...
PS-I'm reading Ada Louise Huxtable's elegant and emminent biography of Frank Lloyd Wright,
can't put it down yet I want to savor the fine writing and delicious story.