So Many Exhibits In New York

There were no classical music concerts in New York in the beginning of July, but many visual art exhibits to see.   The highlight, for me, was MOMA's Rauschenberg retrospective.  It was wonderful display of the extraordinary creative talents of Rauschenberg, and his ever inventive ways of reconfiguring how we make, view, and think about art.  None of this conceptual thought, however, would be of much use to me if it wasn't for his talent as an artist.   No matter what you think, his work almost always reveals a wonderful sense of color, line and shape.  My favorites are the combines and "red paintings" of the 1950's. I love the juxtaposition of disparate materials in a coherent visual design.   (A technique which seems to evolve straight out of Schwitters, to my eyes.)  The exhibit also focuses on the many artistic collaborators he worked with, from visual artists like Johns and Twombly to composers like Cage and Feldman to choreographers like Cunningham and Trisha Brown.  My only disappointment was with the representation of the work of his later years; did his output diminish, or was it simply not adequately represented in the exhibit?   I don't know.

A few highlights with some close-up details of larger works:

And there was mud...   (with splatter warnings)

Another fascinating exhibit was the Richard Gerstl show at the Neue Galerie.     Gerstl was a good friend and collaborator of Arnold Schoenberg's until Schoenberg caught him in bed with his wife Mathilde.  This was in 1908, when Gerstl was 25 years old.   Gerstl was an unstable individual and soon after his banishment from the Schoenberg circles, he committed suicide.
Aside from his biography, though, Gerstl was an extremely talented painter.   The most remarkable thing about his work was the extent to which he moved in the direction of expressionism, indeed almost abstract expressionism, in the last years of his life.   There was a painting of the Schoenberg family which looks as if it might have been painted by DeKooning.    The snooty Neue Galerie doesn't allow photographs, but from the web, I found images from the painting, both in full and with some details.

Details:

Schoenberg is on the right.   I'm not sure what Schoenberg thought of this portrait; it was painted before the discovery of the affair.   Myself, I might have wondered what was going on....


Another very interesting show was at the Metropolitan Museum, a one room show of the 19th Century Norwegian landscape painter Peder Balke.   I often love these non-blockbuster shows that the Met does, where you can focus closely on something without being too overwhelmed by quantity.   Balke came from a peasant background, and was primarily interested in the landscape sublime genre, and painted some of Norway's astonishing landscapes.   The most interesting paintings were some that were very small, postcard size, and painted in black and white using a number of interesting techniques.
Some samples:

Another exhibit I enjoyed was the show of postwar women abstract painters at MOMA.  It was all material from their own collection, and material which does not normally show up in their galleries.   My conclusion was that it should be in their galleries, and on the walls all the time.   (A quick visit to the abstract expressionist room upstairs revealed that there were no paintings by women artists on display there.)    The other problem was that in a show of about four rooms; there was hardly room to do justice to all the work that could have been included.  And really, there was no overall all theme to the show, other than the fact that the paintings were all by women.    Next time time they should clear out a whole floor, show nothing but work by women artists, and not tell anyone that.  Call the exhibit something else.   And leave it that way for a while.
Ranting aside, I particularly enjoyed seeing more work by Anne Ryan.  But only one painting for Alma Thomas and for Agnes Martin?

Here are some Anne Ryan collages:

We also saw the Florine Stettenheimer show at the Jewish Museum.   It was both interesting and stimulating.  Stettenheimer came from a wealthy family and lived with her mother and her other two sisters.  None of the sisters were ever married, and the family was known for its lively parties and hangers-on like Marcel Duchamp (who appears in some of the paintings.   The paintings are full of references to the Stettenheimer friends and family, as well as American culture of the time.