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Questioning the Past at Rojas' The Theater of Disappearance. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Roof Garden. All photos Robert Ruben and Yvonne Korshak.

Art Review | The Theater of Disappearance by Adrián Villar Rojas | Metropolitan Museum of Art Roof Garden

On April 21, 2017

… the party’s over …

It looks like a party — all those banquet tables (my heart lifted as I thought we’d be served refreshments!) But don’t try to take a seat. Only one figure is seated at a table, and his plate is empty (left).

As you move through this world of white, you see the tables are cluttered with elegant but toppled empty goblets, plates and platters with ancient imagery, askew, moldy rolls, chicken bones and scavenger crabs. On others tables are recumbent figures, alive and dead, writhing humans entwined with tomb effigies. Black sculptures, with chalky white dust drifted onto them, surround and punctuate the “banquet.”

The Theater of Disappearance is saturated with paradox. The banquet tables are both tactile and ghostly, sensuous and without gratification. The interrupted meal is timeless, littered with artifacts from a conglomerate past. One thinks of tomb burials with beloved artifacts to accompany the deceased to the afterlife: like the Chinese Emperor Qin in the museum’s current exhibition three stories down in the museum.

Rolls with “faces”

Rojas has drawn on the world art collection below the roof of the Metropolitan Museum — underfoot you can say. You’ll find works of art and parts of works you may recognize., a South Sea Island house post, ancient Greek coins, goblets, fruit scraps, chicken bones and half-eaten hard rolls, heads, arms, bits and pieces of art conjured up here by the artist through computer photo digitizing and laser scanning, milled or 3-D printed, and then arranged, compressed, stuck together in a new world of shocking impact and visual fascination. Some images are drawn from living models, including the artist himself, and treated with the same techniques that create a fascinating realness. The sculptures are actually formed of urethane foam, and painted, the white ones bringing to mind the plaster casts which were the first objects in this museum’s collection.

Pride? Victory over the past? An African woman holds head of Tutankhamen as a victory trophy. Theme of black and white is carried through to the floor tiles, designed by the artist.

African woman with her trophy head of Tutankhamen, straddling an ancient Egyptian scribe as she covers his eyes with her fingers.

That color theme of black and white signals that this work contains the artist’s commentary on a current political issues including racism, gender inequalities, sexual preferences, colonialism — in general, the inequalities based on a history of oppression. For example, in a black statue (left and below) an African woman holds a trophy — the head of the Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamen, from a sculptured head of Tutankhamen in the Metropolitan Museum (directly below). It looks like she’s just decapitated him and is holding his head up in triumph. She also seems to be displaying his head to sell — hawking her wares in the market. She’s intact and alive in the sense of created from a living model while in symbolic contrast, the pharaoh’s head is fragmented and from a “dead” sculpture.

Head of Pharaoh Tutankhamen, sculpture, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo: Museum

African Woman with the head of Pharoah Tutankhamen, detail.

The African woman sits with her legs straddling another Egyptian figure, an ancient sculptured scribe. What a humiliating image of a man of a profession so often honored — scribe, a man of learning, a preserver of history.

A. Villar Rojas, The Theater of Disappearance, Metropolitan Museum Roof Garden, Summer 2017

Detail from sculpture of African woman holding head of Tutankhamen.

To top off his humiliation, her fingers, alluringly delicate, cover his eyes. conveying through ages-old symbolism that he is blinded to truth. She owns the truth now, she owns the past.

The powdery “dust” that covers the black figures, and that links them visually with the white banquet vignettes, calls to mind Duchamp’s embrace of the dust that settled on his groundbreaking The Bride Stripped Bare of her Bachelors, Even — one of many thought-provoking touches of conversation between artists in The Theater of Disappearance. Each of these vignettes is a full sculpture in itself.

An effigy lies atop a table serving as a sarcophagus, with a sleeping figure beside him, and a mask with tongue sticking out on hischest.

Vitality marks the black figures: in contrast, walking among the white tables is like visiting Romeo and Juliette’s crypt. The “banquet” tables become sarcophagi topped with effigies. One effigy lies with a sleeping though “live” cloaked figure beside him (right). The mocking mask on his chest sticks out its tongue.

Past and present. Taking in the sun. Photos Robert Ruben and Yvonne Korshak

A Musical Decomposition.

The Theater of Disappearance, Rojas' rooftop installation for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC, Summer 2017

A Musical Decomposition, detail.

One of these — my favorite — suggests a state of decomposition like early “transi” tomb sculptures that show the transition from intact body to a decomposed state — only instead of worms and beetles crawling in, out and over him, there are musical instruments, leading to what I take as the artist’s musical pun — I’ve tried to bring home the point and highlight the artist’s wit by captioning the photo “A Musical Decomposition.”

“Sasanian Plate” from The Theater of Disappearance, with bare animal bone.

Comparing a banquet vignette (right) with a Sasanian (ancient Persian) silver plate of the 5th century A.D. (below) shows a way the artist alters art objects to make his points, here about our exploitation of the planet and its resources — the way we’ve bled them dry. In the ancient plate, the King, dominant, central and

King Hunting Rams, silver plate, Sassanian, 5th century A.D., Metropolitan Museum of Art

Huge in scale, hunts wild rams under the auspices of the sun and moon — the gods. The scene applauds his mastery, shows his nearness to the gods and conveys his might, skill and control. Two rams are hit, and he’s about to kill the other two. It’s a celebration of mastery over the wild. Rojas incorporates that plate into The Theater of Disappearance (above) but there’s nothing left to celebrate — just a single animal bone — eaten, finished, done. We’ve exploited the wild until all that’s left are the bare bones –and the memory of it. The party’s over. and we’re left with empty plates. At least at the all-white banquet that, Rojas tells us, has lasted too long. Among the black sculptures, live appears more juicy and promising.

Couple, with masks, kissing

Which raises the question: is it possible in 2017 in the middle of New York City at the Metropolitan Museum to mount an exhibition with the color theme of black and white that doesn’t address issues of race, racial history, racial animosities as well as other concerns of social justice? The emphatic answer given by this exhibition, at least, is “no.” (And how the NY Times in its two reviews of The Theater of Disappearance missed it is beyond me.)

This sculptural ensemble has the fascination of ancient Pompeii, a living moment captured for all time — but in reverse. Drawing upon art from many periods and places, it captures all time for the moment. Ambiguities are everywhere. The past disappears, yet we can’t escape it. Every inch of this exhibition is alive with insight and stimulates thought.

The Theater of Disappearance will be on exhibition of the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC, through October 29,2017. For more information on the exhibition and on visiting the museum, click here.

Art Review | First Look and The NY Times got it all wrong | The Theater of Disappearance | Adrian Villar Rojas | Metropolitan Museum Roof Garden

By Yvonne Korshak

On April 15, 2017

In Art Exhibitions

The New York Times got it All WRONG.
I kid you not.
* Friday, April 14, 2017, Weekend Arts II, “A Mini-Met Mashup on the Roof” by Jason Farago

It’s no mashup. My own review will follow as quickly as I can write it. Meanwhile, have a look …

For my full review, go up one or click here.

A Musical DEcomposition (my title)

A Musical Decomposition. Rojas' The Theater of Disappearance, Metropolitan Museum of Art Roof Installation Summer 2017

A Musical DEcomposition — detail

Strongman, Qindynasty (221-206 B.C.), Terracotta, H. 61 3/4 in. (156.8 cm), Lent by Emperor Qinshihuang's Mausoleum Site Museum.

Art Review | Age Of Empires: Chinese Art of the Qin & Han Dynasties (221 B.C.-A.D.220) | Metropolitan Museum of Art

By Yvonne Korshak

On April 1, 2017

In Art Exhibitions

… when China became China …

Here is an opportunity to see some of the most remarkable objects of art and archaeology excavated in China. Because some are so lavish, and in some cases unique, a number have been featured in Western publications including newspapers and magazines, but most have never been seen outside of China.The Qin and Han dynasties together make up the classical period of Chinese art and culture, when the basic forms of political organization and intellectual and artistic paradigms were formed. The key theme of this period, and of this exhibition, is unification of the vast territory of China under the powerful Qin emperor, Qinshihuang, and its maintenance and expansion in the Han dynasty.

Kneeling Archer, China, Qin dynasty (221-106B.C.), terracotta with traces of pigments,H 48 in. (121.9 cm), lent by Emperor Qinshihuang's Masoleum Site Museum. Photos Robert Ruben and Yvonne Korshak

Kneeling Crossbow Archer, China, Qin dynasty (221-106 B.C.), terracotta with traces of pigments,H 48 in. (121.9 cm), lent by Emperor Qinshihuang’s Mausoleum Site Museum. All photos Robert Ruben and Yvonne Korshak

It takes a powerful army to unify a large and disparate territory. When Qinshihuang died, he took with him to his tomb an army of life-size terracotta warriors, over 700 archers, cavalry, infantry and officers, all in full armor made of stone (representing the iron armor used by the emperor’s army), buried with him in the emperor’s mausoleum. In the first exhibition gallery, you’ll find several of the emperor’s army including the archer (right). Crossbows are difficult to draw — the archer had to shoot from a kneeling, rather than a standing, position. A modern replica of crossbow such as he would have held is near by. Through this elaborate terracotta army, we glimpse the emperor’s thoughts: he made sure he had in his mausoleum everything he needed and most enjoyed in life: the army was high priority. Images standing in for live people and animals certainly improve on human and animal sacrifice (a cultural practice replaced by including replicas in tombs here and elsewhere in the world of powerful leaders). In creating the terracotta army, molds were used, in different arrangements, to compose the bodies of the warriors but the faces were created with life-like individuality.

Chariot Model (Modern Replica, half-size of original), China, Original Qin dynasty (221-206 B.C.), Bronze with pigments, lent by Emperor Qinshihuang’s Mausoleum Site Museum.

Qinshihuang also made sure to have his chariots with him in the afterlife. In the first gallery, along with the warriors, are bronze chariots complete with braces of well-matched horses – though these in the exhibit are detailed modern replicas created half the size of actual chariot groups found in the emperor’s tomb. The chariot seen replicated here (left) was probably used in battle or on the emperor’s inspection tours. The emperor probably sat and perhaps slept in the other one with a covered enclosure while touring of the territory he had unified: and at his death that chariot likely carried his body to his tomb.

Inscribed weight, Qin dynasty (221-206 B.C.), Iron and bronze, H 7 1/2 in. (19 cm); Diam. 9 13/16 in. (25 cm), Wt. 69.7 lb (31.6 kg), Lent by Gansu Provincial Museum.

Inscribed weight, 221 B.C., Qin dynasty (221-206 B.C.), Iron and bronze, H 7 1/2 in. (19 cm); Diam. 9 13/16 in. (25 cm), Wt. 69.7 lb (31.6 kg), Lent by Gansu Provincial Museum.

Since political and economic unification go hand-in-hand, the standardized iron weight, also from the emperor’s tomb is as dramatic a demonstration of the determination to enforce imperial unification as military might. This exceptionally large weight weighs “1 shi,” translated as one “stone,” nearly 70 pounds. Significantly, the inscription dates it to 221 B.C., the year Qinshihuang, having completed his vast project of unification, assumed the title of “Emperor,” and it was so important the Emperor made sure this, and other standardized measures, were in his tomb (he died in 210 B.C. and his tomb was complete by 206 B.C.).

Strongman, Qin dynasty (221-206 B.C.), Terracotta, H. 61 3/4 in. (156.8 cm), Lent by Emperor Qinshihuang’s Mausoleum Site Museum.

Strongman, view from the back.

Found in a pit linked with Qin Shi Huang’s tomb is a lifelike terracotta sculpture of a “strong man,” excavated with ten other figures that evidently represent a troupe of acrobats. They would have performed for the amusement of the Emperor and his court, and through replicas were on hand for him after death. Strongman, and another like him once held steady a pole for another acrobat performing gymnastics at the top of it. The fleshy realism of his body, with the fatty rolls pushed up by the waistband (above left) , is unusual to Chinese art and the suggestion is made that it may represent some influence from Hellenistic art, notable for realistic depictions. On the other hand, it may serve to witness the careful eye of the Chinese sculptor impressed by the formidable anatomy.

The prosperous Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-220 A.D.)

Mirror, Han dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 220), Broze, Diam.7 5/16 in. (18.6 cm), Lent by National Museum of China.

Mirror, Han dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 220), Bronze, Diam.7 5/16 in. (18.6 cm), Lent by National Museum of China.

that succeeded the Qin expanded China’s borders, developed the archetypal Chinese bureaucracy, and consolidated and maintained the political centralization of the Qin. These themes are expressed in a portion of the inscription on the elaborately designed back bronze mirror of the Han period: “May the Central Kingdom [China] be peaceful and secure, and prosper for generations and generations to come by following the great law that governs all.”

Mirror, detail showing once reflective face.

Mirror, detail showing the once reflective face.

Although today the once-polished surface of the mirror’s face no longer reflects images, the inscription also bears this comforting thought: “When you see your face in the mirror, it dispels all harms and woes.” (I take it that was on a “good hair day.”)

Another object (not illustrated) gives a glimpse of the Chinese reverence for elders, a wood and bronze walking staff, with the image of a partridge on top, found with inscribed wood slips stating the special privileges the emperor accorded to elders. If you were over 70, this staff would enable you to enter government offices freely and not only that — you could walk on the side of the road otherwise reserved for the emperor. Great value would have been placed on keeping the emperor’s ceremonial side of the road clear so evidently there weren’t a lot of people over 70 in China 2,000 years ago – today the emperor’s side of the road would be crowded! But embedded in the wooden staff is an attitude: respect for elders, a tangible reminder of the value placed on respect for elders that to this day reverberates in China.

Hanging Lamp, figure with “Foreigner’s” features, Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 A.D.), Bronze, H 10 7/8 in. (27.6 cm), Lent by Hunan Provincial Museum. An attitude toward foreigners as inferior may be expressed in the figure in this lamp.

Works of art can surprise you by revealing attitudes you might not expect to find in them. This lamp is an example. The figure holding the bowl of the lamp has non-Chinese facial features: deep eye sockets and a notably large, high-bridged and outwardly curved nose (apologies that these features are not seen more clearly in the photo). He also has curly hair. Like these physical features, this type of lamp with a chain also points beyond China. This is a unique example of a chained lamp found in China but, on the other hand, chained lamps were common in the Greco-Roman world. In the Greco-Roman lamps, the human figures often have face and body features describing inferiors as they are held to be in that culture. they are servants or a slaves and — and there’s a joke here — within the artistry of the lamp, they are shown doing what servants do all the time: they ‘re carrying things for other people: the weight of the lamp. In parallel, the big-nosed foreigner bearing the weight of this Han period Chinese lamp likely expresses a cultural attitude that sees foreigners as “inferiors” — not proved, that’s my hypothesis.

The figure’s hollow body held the lamp’s oil which flowed from a small hole in his chest into the round bowl.

Burial Ensemble of Dou Wan, Western Han dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D.9), Suit: jade with gold wire; pillow: gilt bronze and jade; orifice plugs: jade. H. 67 11/16 in. (171.9 cm), Lent by Hebei Provincial Museum and Hebei Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics.

Burial ensemble of Dou Wan, detail.

Among the many ways the art found in the tombs – here and throughout the world — expresses the desire to live forever, Dou Wan’s jade burial suit is among the rarest. The hand wrought jade plaques, held together with gold wire and following the shape of her body, along with other jade plugs and disks, conferred immortality. The burial outfit included a gilded bronze pillow. Gold, used with jade in this burial, is precious for its rarity and brightness and also because, since it doesn’t tarnish, it “lasts forever”: thus it’s a symbol, and sometimes a guarantor, of immortality. This burial suit is unique and so valuable I am surprised it was allowed to travel outside of China.

With 160 objects, this is quite a large exhibition that drives home two themes: politically, the unification of China and, in terms of human hopes and fears, the desperate desire for immortality. In some ways, it’s an old-fashioned kind of exhibition, focused on articles from lavish tombs and the elite class. Perhaps to preserve some fugitive colors still present on some of these ancient works, such as the terracotta warriors, the lighting of the exhibition is low which does not bring out the inherent drama and beauty of some of the works of art. Still, this is an exhibition not to be missed. Many of the works are from provincial museums and museums far from the largest cities so that even if you lived in China, you might never see them all, and to see them here is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. There are many surprises and much to learn about the art and history of China’s formative classical dynasties which shaped the forms, institutions and values that are in many ways alive today.

Elephant and Groom, Western Han dynasty, 2nd century B.C., gilded and silvered bronze, Elephant H. 7 7/8 in. (20 cm), Groom H. 2 13/16 in. (7.2 cm), Lent by Nanjing Museum. Elephants were no longer present in this part of China (hunted out, climate change) so this group, from a prince’s tomb, represents a fascination with exotic animals.

Age of Empires: Chinese Art of the Qin and Han Dynasties (221 B.C.-A.D.220) will be at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from April 3rd through July 16, 2017. For more information about the exhibition and visiting the museum, click here.

Max Beckmann in New York, exhibition at Metropolitan Museum, NY, October 19-2016 -February 20, 2017

Art Review | Max Beckmann in New York | Exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum, NY | October 19, 2016 – February 20, 2017

By Yvonne Korshak

On October 19, 2016

In Art Exhibitions, Dance | Ballet

… great expressive power …

Max Beckmann was one of the greatest artists of the 20^th century. In a way, his tragic vision was the truest.

The exhibition includes works made during the three years he spent in New York at the end of his life and works that may have been made elsewhere but are in New York collections. The focus is on paintings — Beckmann was also a draughtsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer — and though not comprehensive it brings to the viewer the full range of Beckmann’s painting.

Max Beckmann in his NY studio on East 19th Street, with Hanging Man (1950). Exhibition photo.

Beckmann (1884-1950), a German painter associated with German Expressionism(though he rejected that association), was essentially squeezed out of Germany by Hitler and the rise of fascism. He was one of those “Cubists, Futurists and Expressionists” who were all, for Hitler, “degenerate artists” and “corrupters of art”.

Marginalized and persecuted in his own country, Beckmann with his wife weathered World War II in a self-imposed exile in Amsterdam and after the war, came to the United States, first to Washington University in St. Louis, that has the distinction of being the first to offer him a post-war opportunity to teach, and then to the Brooklyn Museum in New York which became his favorite city — the first being Berlin in the Weimar period following World War I.

Max Beckmann, Departure, triptych, o/c, 2932-2933, Museum of Modern Art, New York

Max Beckmann, Departure, triptych, o/c, 1932-1933, Museum of Modern Art, New York

For me, Beckmann’s Triptych, Departure, stands out as a masterpiece. The two side panels are agonized images, the central one offers a sense of escape. It seems prophetic, as if the artists understood the persecutions to come and sadistic tortures perpetrated in Nazi concentration camps. Hitler seized full power in January 1933.

Max Beckmann, Departure, left panel, detail

This was during the period Beckmann was working on Departure, and there appears to be a direct reference to the Nazi take-over and totalitarian directing of art: the hotel bell-boy beating the drum to announce the horror in the lower part of the right-hand panel (above) looks like Hitler’s propaganda minister and Beckmann’s enemy, Joseph Goebbels, charged with purging the “degenerate elements” out of German art and artists.

But the physical mutilations and agonized world view in this and other of Beckmann’s painting, though they look forward, also are rooted significantly in Beckmann’s experiences as a medical orderly during World War I which brought

Max Beckmann, Departure, right panel, detail

him into direct contact with physical pain and loss of life and limb, an experience so horrific that it led him to a nervous breakdown, today PTSD. It also remodeled his artistic psyche, leading him to abandon his earlier academic naturalism to powerful, unflinching emotional and philosophical expressiveness. He painted what he’d learned about existence and human nature in the university of violence and war.

Beckmann said that one can see in the right panel of Departure “… the corpse of your memories, of your wrongs, of your failures, the murder everyone commits at some time in his life … “ but the center panel, which he called The Homecoming,” offers a glimpse of hope. “The King and Queen have freed themselves of the tortures of life … Freedom is the one thing that matters – it is the departure, the new start.”

Max Beckmann, Quappi in Bllue in a Boat, 1926-1950, gouache and oil on paper and cardboard, 89.5 cmx 59 cm, private collection

Max Beckmann, Quappi in Blue in a Boat, 1926-1950, gouache and oil on paper and cardboard, 89.5 z 59 cm, private collection

Max Beckmann, Quappi in Blue in a Boat, detail

In an unexpected, and rare contrast, Beckmann’s painting of his wife. Quappi, in a blue bathing suit (left) strikes a delightfully positive mood.

A number of Beckmann’s major self-portraits are in this exhibition and one of the greatest brings with it a poignant story. Self-Portrait in Blue Jacket (below) was included in an important exhibition of painting in America at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Max Beckmann, Self-Portrait in Blue Jacket, 1950, o/c, 55 1/8 x 36" (140 x 91.4 cm), Saint Louis Art Museum, Bequet of Morton D. May, c. 2016 Artists Rights Society, NY/ VGBild-Kunst, Bonn

Max Beckmann, Self-Portrait in Blue Jacket, 1950, o/c, 55 1/8 x 36 in (140 x 91.4 cm), Saint Louis Art Museum, Bequet of Morton D. May, c. 2016 Artists Rights Society, NY/ VGBild-Kunst, Bonn

But, as the exhibitions’ curator, Sabine Rewald recounted, he did not attend the opening. Instead a few days later, he set out walking to the Museum to see his painting and on the way, was struck by a heart attack and died.

Rewald speculated with a trace of amused irony that if Beckmann were alive today, he would say of this exhibition, “Nice little show.” Perhaps she said that because he did so much. Beckmann painted and painted and painted – in Germany during the freedom of the Weimar period, under siege when Hitler took power, under siege again in Holland, occupied by the Germans where he was seen as a foreign enemy, and in the final liberating years in the United States. There’s nothing little about Max Beckmann in New York – it’s magnificent, and brings us close to the mind, heart and expressive power of this profound artist.

An illustrated and descriptive catalog accompanies the exhibition.

Max Beckmann in New York will be at the Metropolitan Museum, NY, through February 20, 2017. For more information and tickets, click here.

Max Beckmann in New York, exhibition at Metropolitan Museum, NY, October 19-2016 -February 20, 2017, two masterful triptychs, left, Beginning, 1949, right, Departure, 1932-1933

Parker's Transitional Object (PsychoBarn) reflected in the glass of Temple of Dendur gallery while museum Director Thomas Campbell speaks at the press opening

Art Review | Cornelia Parker’s Transitional Object (PsychoBarn) | Metropolitan Museum Roof | Summer 2016

By Yvonne Korshak

On April 24, 2016

In Art Exhibitions

… they never promised us a “real” garden …

Cornelia Parker, Transitional Object (PsychoBarn), site specific installation on roof of Metropolitan Museum, summer 2016

When is a house not a house? When it’s a Transitional Object (PsychoBarn) by Cornelia Parker, site specific installation for summer 2016, Roof Garden of the Metropolitan Museum

When I first saw photos of Cornelia Parker’s Transitional Object in a newspaper, I thought oh no, why do they have to stick an eyesore on the museum’s lovely roof garden. When I went to see it actually I found that it’s an intriguing eyesore, not what I’d like best to see on the roof but it does get you thinking.

Cornelia Parker's Transitional Object (PsychoBarn), view of the back showing scaffolding and water tanks used for ballast.

Cornelia Parker’s Transitional Object (PsychoBarn), showing scaffolding and water tanks used for ballast.

As you step from the elevator outside to the roof, you see in the far corner something like a house — but no, that can’t really be a house. First off, it’s not being glimpsed along the road on a drive in the country – it’s on the roof of an art museum (alert there), surrounded by the Central Park and the skyscrapers of Manhattan. And, if you had any thoughts this was some quaint touch for the summer roof garden, you fast find out from moving around it that the façade is a cover for a web of scaffolding, pipes and water tanks. The water tanks are practical as well as expressive: they are ballast to keep the structure in place in high winds. Adding to Transitional Object’s disquieting effect, the shiny mansard roof looks inconsistent with the heavily weathered siding which, we learn, came from an old red barn in up-state New York.

Artist Cornelia Parker sitting on the steps and chatting with a visitor.

Many associations and philosophical ideas are embedded in Transitional Object, as the artist, in person and in abundant accompanying written materials is quick to tell you. As a house facade with an insubstantial and old fashioned look, it recalls a movie set and it was in fact designed after the house in Alfred Hitchcock’s film Psycho, which like many movie sets is a façade with struts holding it up and no real back to it. Hitchcock designed the house in Psycho after one in a well known work of art, Edward Hopper’s painting, House by the Railroad in the Museum of Modern Art, NYC. “Psycho House” looms so large in the popular imagination that a version of it is a tourist attraction at Universal Studios but, for the sake of visitors, Universal built it not just a façade but a complete structure (click here for a terrific series of photos about “the house”). So we have a kind of conversation across culture, in which four of the “same” house, all differently constructed, all have something to say. There’s the Hopper painting, the movie set in Psycho, the intact Psycho House at Universal Studios, and now Transitional Object — to which we can add a fifth, the archetypal old house, haunted or otherwise, of the rural and small town American landscape, that rests in many of our memories and imaginations.

And then there are reflections …

Parker’s Transitional Object (PsychoBarn) reflected in the glass of Temple of Dendur gallery while museum Director Thomas Campbell speaks at the press opening

Which is the “real” house? In tossing into our thoughts the house with a history, Transitional Object shakes us up to think about what is really “real.” That philosophical questions underlies Transitional Object, moving it beyond amusing associations to a work with depth of meaning.

The artist is also interested in the view of the psychoanalyst, D. W. Winnicott, and it’s from his theories that she drew her title. For Winnicott, a “transitional object” refers to objects children seize upon, such security blankets and teddy bears, to provide comfort and enabling their developing independence from their mothers.

British artist Cornelia Parker, the artist, sits on the steps of Transitional Object (Psychobarn)

Artist Cornelia Parker taking the sun on the steps of Transitional Object (PsychoBarn)

As Parker commented, Norman Bates in Hitchcock’s Psycho failed to make that transition and so, taking on the persona of his own dead mother, he became a murderer of women. In this connection, the artist feels that Transitional Object, as houses in general, take on a symbolism referring to the womb. Visually, the array of pipes and water tanks in the back do suggest an external view of the inner parts of the human body, the things that we don’t ordinarily see, that we shouldn’t see, but are always with us. As a rich work of conceptual art, Transitional Object is loaded with ideas, more than I’ve said, perhaps even more than the artist has thought, some you may discover yourself.

And speaking of the living-dead — the stately decrepit structure with its guts exposed brings to mind Salvador Dali’s surrealist painting, Burning Giraffe. Have a look also at Dali’s Spectre of Sex Appeal. But Dali’s work is small, Burning Giraffe is 13.8 in x 10.6 in, and hangs on a wall, and through that alone is less in your face. Although not literally a public space, the roof garden of the Metropolitan Museum of Art functions much like a public space.

My preference for this outdoor summertime space is for a work of art that matches and enriches the loveliness of the setting, one that offers some of those emotions and sensations associated with “real” gardens (I know, I know, What is Real anyhow?). My all-time favorite — so far — is Tomas Saraceno’s Cloud City, on the roof summer of 2012. I like the installations that, like Cloud City, engage visitors physically while, with Transitional Object, we mainly look. To me, it kind of spoils the view … but, thinking about something rich and challenging is a worthy activity. This is a good place to go with a date – lots to talk about! And refreshments are available on the roof too.

Cornelia Parker’s site specific installation Transitional Object (PsychoBarn) will be on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum through October 31, 2016. For more information about the work, and about visiting the museum, click here.

Art Review | “Roof Garden Installation” by Pierre Huyghe | The Metropolitan Museum of Art | Summer 2015

By Yvonne Korshak

On May 27, 2015

In Art Exhibitions

… only there’s no “garden”…

Paving stones are uprooted and water is tricking in and around — is the maintenance crew working on a leak? No. This is the new art installation on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum.

Huyghe’ roof garden installation, schist boulder

The site is magnificent, nestled in Central Park and among magnificent New York skyline views, but this installation, which has no title, is dull.

In the midst of it all, there’s a large, unworked boulder of Manhattan schist, the stone that forms the familiar outcroppings in Central Park, and supports Manhattan’s skyscrapers. Some stone dust scattered around the boulder is said to have shaken off during the stone’s transport to the museum, and the artist chose to leave where it settles.

Huyghe roof garden installation, the aquarium element

Huyghe ‘sroof garden installation, the aquarium element

The other major element is a large rectangular aquarium: inside it is a floating boulder of lava about the size of the schist boulder. Below that is a mound of sand with small swimming fish — lampreys, and tadpole shrimp we’re told in the written information accompanying the installation.

One can think about contrasts: the unworked boulder contrasts with the worked paving stones. Schist is more dense than lava. The yearly change of roof installation contrasts with the relatively unchanging genetics of the fish. The inclusion of the accidental grit near the boulder to the roof recalls Marcel Duchamp’s incorporation of of accident — the glass cracked in transport — into his work of art, The Bridge Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass) about a century ag0 (click on live link to see it). He even incorporated the accumulated dust. What a wonderfully challenging work it is!

Conceptual art focuses on thought. But there’s nothing in this roof top installation that enlarges thought. Nothing is shared with particular insight, let alone wit or irony.

We might well have had something to enjoy in a more immediate, sensuous and inspiring sense. The Metropolitan Museum’s gorgeous roof installation of Cloud City by Tomas Saraceno three summers ago springs to mind — and other summer projects as well.

What a disappointing way to treat a summer oasis!

Better go downstairs and see Van Gogh: Irises and Roses.

Pierre Huyghe’s roof garden installation will be on exhibit through November 1, 2015, weather permitting. For information on visiting the exhibition and on current exhibitions, click right here.

Art Review | Van Gogh: Irises and Roses | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

By Yvonne Korshak

On May 21, 2015

In Art Exhibitions

… together and apart …

Van Gogh, Irises, 1890, o/c, 36 1/2″ x 29 1/8″ (92.7 cm x l73.9 cm), Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art

This is the first time the two paintings of irises and two of roses are exhibited together, the way van Gogh conceived them and in the order he painted them, four paintings, but monumental in terms of their importance for the history of art – like just about everything van Gogh did in his short life.

Yellow and violet, pink and green — complementary colors. How strong an intensity can I achieve by cramming together colors at the opposite end of the spectrum? is a question van Gogh asked himself. And behind that: how can I convey the clashing intensities of experience? He answered with these four great flower paintings.

Van Gogh, Irises, 1890, oil on canvas, 29″ x 36 1/4″ (73.7 cm x 92.1 cm), Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC

He had just recovered from one of his violent epileptic-like attacks. Gathering the flowers in the garden of the asylum at St. Rémy — a spare room in the men’s ward was his studio — he painted them in early May 1990 just before heading north to Auvers, where he (most likely account) ended his life two months later.

Near death and full of joy: in this as in everything, “van Gogh concerned himself with the holding together of things that are most fully opposed.”*

Van Gogh, Roses, 1890, o/c, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Photo: MMA

You may be surprised, then, that the effect of the exhibition is not one of thrilling color juxtapositions: the paintings have faded considerably, and the colors are now far from van Gogh’s original intent. He noted that paintings fade like flowers but these have survived with less of their original color intensity than others of his works because he used some particularly fugitive pigments — how quixotic. How paradoxical: he knew, but did it anyway.

Van Gogh, Roses, 1890, o/c, 36 5/8″ x 29 1/8″ (93 cm x 74 cm), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC.

And they faded fast: as early as 1907, when his mother died, the once pink roses in his painting of Roses on a wall in her home were described as “white.” The fading of colors over time is clear in a montage (below) included with the exhibition of several dated images of the Roses. Dated photos show fading from pink to white of van Gogh’s roses (apologies for the violet tint in the photo but you can see the progressive fading in relative terms). Because of their linear strength as well as color, the Irises have maintained their power better than the Roses, particularly the vertical Irises in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

Dated photos show fading from pink to white of van Gogh’s roses

The combined composition of the four paintings, together as conceived, is a counterpoint of rhythms and a teasing play of opposites. Vertical horizontal horizontal vertical, a b b a, plays off against irises irises roses roses, a a b b. He unifies the four paintings with a table edge, like a horizon line, but, as with the background, he varies the color of the table, a clear example of his sacrifice of naturalism for his expressive, even abstract, use of color.

Oppositions of violet and yellow, pink and green, vertical and horizontal, spiky “male” irises and fluffy “female” roses “of a hundred petals,” linear and painterly. And life and death. Weary stalks veer off from sprightly new blooms. Through color, composition, subject content and the touch of the brush in paint, all of van Gogh’s paintings are a, symbolically, paradoxical compression of the obdurate opposites of existence.

Detail of van Gogh’s Irises, Metropolitan Museum, NYC

And everywhere are van Gogh’s arrestingly passionate brush strokes, that aggressive impasto he so thoroughly possessed. There’s no fading there! (I wish, though, that viewers, talking would stop gesturing toward them: those impasto peeks are fragile. The effects of this kind of gesturing led the Museum of Modern Art to place van Gogh’s The Starry Night behind glass, at a loss of impact. (So please, don’t do it!)

The exhibition’s organizers have taken the opportunity to document van Gogh’s careful study of color theory, and have applied scientific techniques to analyzing his pigments and practices. Their discoveries are conveyed in a fascinating series of photos and other media, the montage of the fading Roses among them. How fascinating to see a digital reconstruction of what the colors in these paintings would have looked like when van Gogh first took them off his easel.

When van Gogh left the asylum in St. Rémy, three days after completing the last Roses, the paintings were still wet (what a vivid, exciting thought) and so were sent on to him later in Auvers, arriving toward the end of June. After his death, July 29^th , they were dispersed. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to see together these paintings that, like his series of Sunflowers painted in Arles two years earlier, van Gogh conceived as a whole.

Van Gogh: Irises and Roses will be at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City through August 16, 1915.

Yvonne Korshak, “From “Passions” to “Passion”: Visual and Verbal Puns in The Night Café,” in Van Gogh 100, ed. Joseph D. Masheck, Hofstra University, Greenwood Press, 1996, page 40.

Art Review | Thomas Hart Benton’s America Today Mural Rediscovered | Metropolitan Museum of Art

By Yvonne Korshak

On October 11, 2014

In Art Exhibitions

Thomas Hart Benton’s murals, America Today, have an immediate impact of color, exuberance, and resonant ideas. Urban and rural, old ways and new, labor and entertainment, freedom and oppression, rich, poor, and all the way through the middle: the view is so wide and comprehensive it seems to really encompass, in broad strokes and specifics, the essence of America in a defining view. At the same time, the murals span in spirit two epochs — the excesses and abundance of the “Jazz Age” of the 20’s, formative for Benton’s imagination, and the bitter advance of the Great Depression.

City Activities with Subway. Photos are courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of ArtThe panels were painted in 1930-31 for the Board Room of the New School of Social Research in New York City and ultimately purchased by Equitable Life — AXA. Here they are, a stunning gift to the Metropolitan Museum from AXA, and installed in their original arrangement in this exhibition.

The ten panels, most of which about seven-and-a-half feet high and nine feet or more wide are painted in egg tempera with an oil glaze, for strong colors, broad modulations and gleaming surfaces. Aluminum partial frames, complex moldings with alternating curves and right angles, boldly define vignettes within the panels and add an emphatic strength.

Dancer, 1930, pencil, crayon on paper, 21 1/4 x 14 in (54 x 35.6 cm). Courtesy of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

City Activities with Subway (above) thrusts us into “the color and tempo of the Jazz age,” in Benton’s words — night clubs, city streets with preaching evangelists, evangelists, park benches with lovers, the subways, the boxing match. Among the rich trove of Benton’s drawings in the exhibition that are related to the murals is the Dancer, you can see where she finally arrives in the upper left of City Activities with Subway (above).

The times they are a-changing in the Midwest (below) where activities of corn production, taking their vertical direction from the corn growing in the fields, are juxtaposed with the dynamic diagonals of the scenes of clearing the land. Progress here has — if not as a double edged sword — a ferocious looking cross cut saw with lance teeth.

Thomas Hart Benton | Midwest

Being an animal lover, I took a close look at that sow near the bottom edge of the painting: she’s dark, lean and with a long snout — closer to wild pigs than the flat-faced pigs we have today, and she’s rooting outdoors with her piglets, not in a tight brood crate. A wonderful drawing Benton did of the pig and piglets in the 1920’s, well before the murals were conceived, is in the exhibition — it’s a fine example of how Benton drew from his earlier experiences and travels in designing America Today.

Thomas Hart Benton | Changing West

Things seem to be changing more slowly in Deep South (where cotton is still the main crop although rice is taking hold. The White man at left is seated working on the machinery, the Black man at right, one of Benton’s several monumental figures of laborers, stands emptying the sack of cotton (suggesting the past and slavery’s end? An end of cotton?). The most back-breaking work is relegated to prisoners planting seed, overseen by a man seated with the rifle.

Thomas Hart Benton | Coal

In the mural of City Building, the Black man far left with a drill forms a pendant to the man emptying the bag of cotton: but he’s a city man, with suspenders instead of a rope belt, and he’s the one running the
machinery now.

You can see behind the ship an early representation of New York City’s developing skyscraper skyline, before the Chrysler Building and Empire State Building became iconic.

Benton studied the full production of steel at a Bethlehem Steel plan, which

Thomas Hart Benton | Steel

he represents in the panel Steel. At the time, Jackson Pollock was a studio assistant for Benton, and appears as the model for the worker spotlit by the furnace he’s stoking (the museum, with good caution, says Pollock was “likely” the model — Pollock was on hand, and it looks like the young Pollock). Although Benton is a representational painter and Pollock paintings are often non-objective, Pollock was inspired by Benton in developing his totally charged surfaces — his all-over-the-painting energy.

Instruments of Power , the largest and most abstract panel, provides a tough fulcrum for the whole series. It recalls the Italian Futurist movement of the early 20th century with its dynamic diagonals that seem almost to break forward through the surface of the painting and in the optimism it exudes for technology’s promise of liberating human beings from grinding labor. It doesn’t, however, include the Futurist “lines of force” that suggest through repeated contours movement through space.

Thomas Hart Benton | Instruments of Power

In a thought-provoking contrast, Benton includes in Instruments of Power an empty, receding colonnade on the far lower right, a classical touch amid aggressive modernity. It’s in the style of Giorgio de Chirico, an Italian artist contemporary with the Futurists — but no one ever made stiller or more inward paintings. Does the empty arcade, reflective of a lost past, suggest that all-powerful technology may leave human beings out — spiritually as well as out of work? Instruments of Power is the only painting in the series with no human figures. I think that, through the nostalgic intrusion of the arcade, and the lack of human figures, Benton probes the negative as well as positive aspects technology holds for human beings.

The murals are otherwise so filled with figures in such a variety of activities they give an impression of being more comprehensive than they are. Although they encompass several sections of the United States in Benton’s regionalist style, the paintings don’t take us to the West Coast, the only racial types represented are Whites and Blacks with the exception of one Native American in a bar scene in the mural called Changing West, and there are no very old people nor, with one exception, children.

The exception is the upright and intelligent little boy in the lower right of City Activities with Dance Hall (below), a portrait of Benton’s son on the lap of the artist’s wife, like a contemporary Madonna and Child. And like the infant Christ (though with his left hand), the child raises his index finger, teaching more than being instructed. A study from life Benton made of his son with that gesture is in the exhibition.

Thomas Hart Benton | City Activities With Dance Hall

Evidently the child and teacher are working on arithmetic since there’s a chalk board behind them, with numbers “6 X 7” — the “answer” being 42, Benton’s age when he completed the murals. And at the edge of this densely autobiographical corner is the artist’s self-portrait — sleeves rolled up for work, with the seated director of the New School. In the upper right an acrobat flies through the air with the greatest of ease, a genie of amazing human achievement.

The murals express the rich variety, sense of abundance, optimism and excess of the 1920’s, a time of Benton’s intellectual, moral and artistic development. But the years Benton was at work on the murals marks the onset of the Great Depression. Above the doorway, is a narrow lintel-like mural of Outreaching Hands: through the contrast of hands, Benton tells the story as he understood it — the poor reaching for bread and coffee, and the plutocrats with top hats and white shirt cuffs grasping money.

Thomas Heart Benton | Outreaching Hands

The shiny metal partial frames, that create separate but flowing narrative vignettes, are a brilliant innovation, formally effective and filled with meaning. They link this 20^th-century wall cycle that focuses on ordinary people in their secular existence of work and entertainment with the great tradition of aristocratic and religious wall paintings and altar pieces. While recalling the great European tradition, they draw a strong contrast with it. These frames are aluminum, an industrial and “democratic” metal — not rare gold. They’re open, not confining, just as Benton’s paintings chafe at hierarchy and include all classes of society. In a novel leap — and way before the time — these frames also look forward to post-modern deconstructions that challenge the status quo in art and culture.

Benton spent six months conceiving and designing the murals and three months painting them — a gauge of the importance of mind in the creation of art. This room of the ten panels is an exhilarating, life affirming treasure. Beyond the murals, the exhibition includes examples of Benton’s other work, including drawings related to America Today, and works by other artists in and around Benton’s time whose art is related in various ways to his. This illuminating and exciting exhibition has been organized by curators Alice Pratt Brown and Randall Griffey: it is perfect.

The current exhibition of Benton’s America Today will be at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through April 19, 2015. The museum posts prices for tickets that are suggested, not required — it’s wonderful to support this great institution but pay what you can — and go!

The Metropolitan Museum of Art – The New David H. Koch Plaza, New York, NY

By Yvonne Korshak

On September 12, 2014

In Art Exhibitions, Dance | Ballet, Of Special Interest

… one of New York’s favorite theaters …

The moment the fountains of the new David H. Koch Plaza at the Metropolitan Museum were first (officially) turned on

The fountains that ran along the front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, though they still looked beautiful and continued to toss their refreshing waters, had severe internal problems in the pipes and plumbing. Museum Trustee David H. Koch expressed willingness to pay for repairs, an offer that morphed into a total re-design of the public spaces, four blocks long, that span the front of the museum, including removing the old fountains and installing new ones. We were told at the ceremony dedicating the new plaza that Mr. Koch said “Why don’t I pay for everything including the extras?” and he did at a cost of $65 million.
He said at the ceremony he’s pleased that the two-year renovation project came in on time and on budget. So how does it look?

View from steps looking north before the fountains were turned on

The main features of the new design are two large fountains in square granite basins that flank the steps north and south. Being square rather than long, and reaching closer to Fifth Avenue than the old fountains, these new ones bring the sparkling play of water and its delicious sounds closer those on the steps and to passers-by, more readily enjoyed. That’s really nice! On either side of

After the fountains were turned on

the fountains are newly planted shade trees — more than there were before — with café tables and chairs interspersed. The Plaza is unified its entire length and depth by paving of grey toned granite.

It’s good to have this important city open space healthily maintained.

High view looking south.

A consideration of old and new, though, makes it clear that there have been some significant losses. The old fountains were long and narrow, stretching on either side of the steps a good part of the length of the museum’s façade, and thus they invited movement along the full length of public space, while the depth of the new square fountains obstructs the continuity of the spaces on either side of the steps.

Also, the high arching play of the water in the old fountains reflected and

Square within a square. Circle within a square.

echoed the series of high arched openings of the museum’s facade behind them. The square-within-a-square and circle-within-a-square geometry of the new fountains is a fascinating exploration of classicism, and links them with the steps in an interesting way, while engaging less with the architecture of the building.

And — depending how you feel about park-like settings — before the renovation, shade trees and park benches set on cobblestones created a continuation of Central Park that lies behind the museum. The new plaza is sheathed in gray-toned granite, with café tables and chairs instead of park benches and pebbly cobbles, weakening the sense of the continuity with Central Park. Before the park embraced the museum, now it sits behind it.

All in all, the new design is more centralized than the earlier one, with the casual seating areas — café tables and chairs — somewhat marginalized by those deep fountains.

During the dedication ceremony for the new plaza, Thomas Campbell, the

Night view fountain

Museum’s Director and CEO said some wonderful words about what he called “one of New York’s favorite theaters — the steps of the Met.” The steps draw an exhilarating mix of museum goers and people and performance watchers from all over the city and all over the world, sunning, eating, singing, enjoying music, mime, break dancing, juggling — virtuoso performances of all kinds … well, if you don’t know, make a visit!

And as for the plaza, it will take a little doing but — like a river — people will find their way, filtering through the full length of the four city blocks, and make this public space their own.

View of plaza looking North from 81st Street. Photos 4-7 courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Art Review | Boxer at Rest, Greek bronze sculpture of the Hellenistic period, late 4th-2nd century B.C., loan exhibit | Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC, June 1 – July 15, 2013

By Yvonne Korshak

On June 15, 2013

In Art Exhibitions

… humanity …

This is a rare opportunity to see one of the finest and most compelling works of art ever made. The bronze Boxer* is somewhat over life-size but so immediate it’s hard to think it’s not a “real” man — and a man of total experience: exhausted but powerful, brutalized but handsome, dazed by what’s hit him but alert for whatever’s coming his way. Ready.

Made in the Hellenistic period, when a love of realism made a powerful advance on earlier Classical idealism, the boxer is astonishingly realistic. Seated and near to exhaustion from a match, and bleeding from wounds all over his body, he still has the energy to turn his head. What attracts his attention? Is he hearing applause? Listening to his trainer’s advice? Or is he getting a look at his next opponent? Still wearing his boxing gloves, he’s gathering his force for his next match (these ran back-to-back). His arms are relaxed but his toes are tense: his struggles continue.

Read away that dark patina, developed over time through oxidation, and see him as he was originally, when the bronze was polished to the color of an athlete’s tanned and oiled gleaming skin.

To further “color” the statue realistically, the sculptor inlaid the rosy lips and nipples with copper: copper inlays also “paint” the rivulets of blood that run from his many wounds, and the cuts on the ungloved knuckles that landed the punches. Under the swollen eye, the sculptor inlaid a bronze alloy, darker in color than the rest of the sculpture, to depict a large bruise — one of the most remarkable, and touching, uses of inlay in ancient art.

The boxer’s eyes were never meant to be empty and blank as they appear in the photograph. Originally the sculptor inlaid the eyes using materials that made them look natural. Those inlays are now lost but to help visualize them the museum is exhibiting near the boxer inlaid eyes disembodied from some other sculpture (not otherwise known) in which the whites are marble, the irises quartz and the pupils obsidian, and the Boxer’s sculptor would have used these or other materials for a similar effect. Catch your breath — the boxer has individually formed bronze eyelashes that once surrounded those life-like eyes. Who was the great Greek sculptor who made this work? It’s unknown.

“Look at the blood running from the wound on his cheek!” visitors say, circling the statue. “Look — he has cauliflower ears!” The realism of form and detail are fascinating and the technique is surpassingly brilliant. But that’s not in itself what makes the sculpture so compelling. What a man indeed — the history of struggles written all over his body and his determination to fight on express a man’s story, and that of human existence. He is one man, caught in specific moment, and he is all men through time. This is a sculpture of existential truth.

The Boxer was discovered buried in the Quirinal Hill in Rome in 1885. Was it made by a Greek sculptor in Rome or was it brought there by ship as many sculptures were? Did it represent a particular boxer? The answers are unknown. What is clear is that it was highly valued, perhaps even venerated, since it was buried purposefully in antiquity, perhaps, like many valuables, for preservation from anticipated invasions. So many great bronze sculptures from antiquity were melted down for the valuable metal that only a handful survive today. Thanks to those who buried this one and preserved it.

*Boxer at Rest. Greek, Hellenistsic period, late 4th-2nd century B.C., bronze inlaid with copper, H. 128 cm. Museuo Nazionale Romano – Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, inv. 1055. Photograph courtesy of Soprintendenza speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Roma.