Unfinished at the Met Breuer

We saw the opening exhibit of what is now called the "Met Breuer".  It is the old Whitney Museum building on Madison Avenue, which is now an outpost of the Metropolitan Museum.   The featured opening exhibit was entitled "Unfinished".   The idea was to explore works of European art ranging from the 15th Century to the 21st Century that are either literally unfinished, or else invoke the notion of unfinished in some sense.   This is a very broad topic, perfectly capable of provoking all kinds of discussions, which, in our case, kind of lead nowhere.   There are too many variables involved to come to any clear sense of what unfinished means in artistic terms, except in the literal sense when the artist died before he or she finished a work.     The best thing, though, was that the museum was filled with wonderful and astonishing works of art, many of which the Met had borrowed from elsewhere.   It was quite a shock to get off the elevator on the third floor of the Whitney and to see paintings by Titian et. al. after all these years of seeing nothing but 20th century American art in that building.

An unfinished work by Reubens:

There was a wonderful room of late Turner paintings which were apparently thought of as unfinished after his death and eventually consigned to the Tate's attic.   Now, of course, we don't think of them as unfinished.  Or do we?

This Klimt is clearly unfinished, but I found it to be a nicely subversive version of the Klimt paintings that have become all too iconic these days.

In the 20th century portions of the exhibit, the notion of unfinished becomes more philosophical.

Witness this grayish work by Roman Opalka, which from a distance looks like this:

Looking closer,  this is what you see:

He had the notion of writing out the numbers to visualize infinity.   He never got there...

Then there is Cezanne..

And Picasso:

And did I mention Rembrandt, Michelangelo, and Leonardo da Vinci?

A truly spectacular exhibition...

Postscript:

It was interesting to read the New York Times art critic's takes on this show.   There were many contemporary woman artists in the show, so they couldn't complain about that.   But they did complain about the lack of Non-European works in the show, or as Roberta Smith put it, leaving  "....the Met very much in its comfort zone, with older art in a hermetically sealed Eurocentric bubble."    Really!   The Met must be the most non-Eurocentric museum in New York, as they exhibit and treat with great respect art from all cultures.  And the curators even addressed the issue in an interview, mentioning that the notion of "unfinished" became even more complex and problematic when other cultures were involved.    

A Stroll in the South Bronx

When I walk in New York, I enjoy seeing all the disparate streetscapes that exist; they all interest me one way or the other.  Industrial, residential, commercial, wasteland or high end, there is always something to see.  So I wanted to walk around the South Bronx, which, 30 or 40 years ago, was considered to be unsafe to walk in, day or night.  The South Bronx, unlike most of Manhattan, has been disfigured by expressways that divide up neighborhoods.   I went to the Mott Haven and Port Morris neighborhoods in the extreme southern tip of the Bronx, both bisected by the Major Deegan and Bruckner expressways.   There are both housing projects and residential historic districts, as well as  and industrial areas and wasteland areas.   Mott Haven was originally populated by German immigrants, and Port Morris was home to many piano factories, among other industries.   Some remnants of these factory buildings still exist, and some are transitioning to condos.   There are Con Ed facilities, waste treatment and recycling plants, and even a new distillery.  I saw a place that many sanitation trucks spend the night.   The main railroad tracks from Connecticut also cross the district, leading to the beautiful Hell Gate Bridge that crosses from the South Bronx to Queens via Randall's Island.     As alway, I got carried away in finding colors and shapes in the landscape.

A Richard Serra in the making?

 Underneath the beginnings of the Hell Gate Bridge, this path leads to Randall's Island and all the playing fields there.  I didn't see any other people.

 The same, showing the underside of the bridge;

Looking in the other direction, another view of the underside of the bridge.

Things grow under the bridge...

 Colorful doors and walls:

Older residential buildings overlooking industrial areas.

You can't get away from Manhattan.

One of the old piano factories:

By the time I got to the Mott Haven historic district, I was out of of photographic energy.  There were blocks of nice old townhouses, not unlike many other older parts of New York.