Christoper Wool at the Guggenheim

Christopher Wool's work is self-explanatory.  He makes word paintings, gestural paintings.  A massive sculpture, placed outside the Guggenheim, takes you to his world of swirling, muted gesture painting.  Like other New York School painters he pours paint onto his canvases, rice paper, metal, other surfaces.  Hung abutting each other are a hundred photographs.  Again words.  He sees grays and blacks and light in the urban settings that he has captured with his camera.  As you go up levels, the paintings have color, get bigger, many patterns on patterns.  But there is something about this artist--the way in which he makes a painting--that has a lot of emotion to it.  You connect through form and through his use of grays, blacks, white and then Color!

The Guggenheim is brilliant at drawing families to exhibits.  Anyone can participate in activities that they have created  that bring kids and parents and adults into the work.  All of these activities can be found on the website www.guggenheim.org.

There's a multimedia app you can download that has three short films related to the exhibit.  The show opens October 25th and runs through January 22, 2014.

Robert Motherwell Collages Guggenheim Museum

Opens September 27th.

I  went to the press preview of the exhibit at the Guggenheim of Robert Motherwell's early collages.  Susan Davidson, the curator of the exhibit spoke lovingly about this period in Motherwell's development as an artist.  She noted that in this period, which covers about a decade from 1941-1951, he was probably the most connected to the materials he used.  The materials include paper he bought on Canal Street--5 sheets for $1.50.  And one of the reporters asked what one of the works was bought for--$150.  Makes one wonder how to value the contributions of artists in our world.  Today that collage would be worth . . .  but what is the worth . . . it inspired me, so that is its worth to me.


Motherwell grew up on the West Coast, graduated from Stanford, went to graduate school at Harvard, and attended Columbia where Meyer Schapiro encouraged him to devote himself to painting instead of scholarship.  Motherwell was influenced by his time in Mexico, he he had his first solo show
at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century museum/gallery in 1944.  He lectured widely on abstract painting, and he founded and edited the Documents of Modern Art series.

 In 1948, he began to work with his celebrated Elegy to the Spanish Republic theme, which he continued to develop throughout his life.  Robert Motherwell died in Provincetown, Massachusetts on July 16, 1991.






Robert Motherwell: Early Collages
Venue: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth Avenue, New York
Location: Annex Level 4
Dates: September 27, 2013–January 5, 2014

Art of Another Kind at the Guggenheim

Rothko

Art of Another Kind at the Goog is sponsored by BMW, which is my segue.  The exhibit, which runs until September 12 is a retrospective of non-objective paintings and sculpture.  There are about 100 works by 70 artists inclduing  Karel Appel, Louise Bourgeois, Lucio Fontana, Grace Hartigan, Ybes Klein, Willem DeKooning, Isamu Noguchi, Jackson Pollock, Takeo Yamaguchi among others. The exhibit explores international trends in abstraction in the decade before the Guggenheim opened in October 1959.  It was a time when vanguard artists working in the U.S and Europe pioneered abstract expressionism, Cobra and Art Informel.  It was an exciting and open time in the art world.  Ii thought the exhibit brought these artists back into focus and I was happy to visit old friends and meet some new ones.  Something well worth doing on a hot weekend in the city.  There's a cafe at the Goog and at the church next door where I overheard a guy having a piece of quiche (and he was a real man) say, "Not for nothin' this quiche is pretty good.  For a church?"

Appel

One of the things that struck me was how many of the represented artists hailed from small towns and hamlets.  Jackson Pollock--Cody, WY, Clifford Still--Grandin, ND, Ad Reinhardt--Buffalo, NY (OK not a small town), Mark Rothko, Dvinsk, Russia (I haven't a clue.)

Noguchi

Hartigan

Hope you'll take the time to see this wonderful exhibit.