Inventing Abstraction

I saw a big new show at MOMA entitled "Inventing Abstraction", which covers the eponymous activities of artists in the period 1910-1925.   Being a big fan of abstract art, I was pleased to see this.   The exhibition covers a lot of ground and is organized by country.  Thus we get the Constructivists, the Futurists, the Vorticists, the French (Delaunays, etc), Mondrian and the Dutch, the Americans, etc. (and even Polish in one corner..)  On the one hand, this is interesting, to see the extent to which the movement towards abstraction quickly spread internationally, and to see how each different school evolved.  On the other hand, this makes for a very diffuse exhibit, with a room or two for each country, and lacks interesting and more focused detail on any one of these countries, each which could be an exhibit in itself.   There are also token nods towards parallel movements in music and dance; the exhibit opens with some early Kandinsky, and some Schoenberg manuscripts.  Though I am not sure I buy the parallel between the move towards atonality and the move towards abstraction in painting, despite Kandinsky's excitement.  There is also a listening room with very poor sound at the end of the exhibit, playing a loop of predictable choices of music from the period.


Guess who did this drawing..

Nijinsky, the dancer....

An abstraction from Popova:

A very large work by Morgan Russell: