Tag: painting

Saturday afternoon at the Met

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Portraits, angels, ethereal figures, a lighthouse; I have them all to myself! Even on crazy busy weekends, the crowds disperse on all floors and into various galleries, engulfed by the vastness of space that is the Met, leaving me alone, to enjoy my favourite works in peace. Unless, that is, there is a popular exhibition – then it feels like the whole of New York has landed on that same floor, at the same time, making it really hard to appreciate the art. Popularity, like most things in this world, has its price…

Art:

1/
Fairfield Porter, 1907-1975
Elaine de Kooning (1918-1989), 1957
Oil on canvas

2/
Edward Hopper, 1882-1967
Tables for Ladies, 1930
Oil on canvas

In Hopper’s Tables for Ladies a waitress leans forward to adjust the vividly painted foods at the window as a couple sits quietly in the richly paneled and well-lit interior. A cashier attentively tends to business at her register. Though they appear weary and detached, these two women hold posts newly available to female city dwellers outside the home. The painting’s title alludes to a recent social innovation in which establishments advertised ”tables for ladies” in order to welcome their newly mobile female customers, who, if seen dining alone in public previously, were assumed to be prostitutes.

3/
Florine Stettheimer, 1871-1944
The Cathedrals of Broadway, 1929
Oil on canvas

4/ & 5/
Jean Dunand, 1877-1942 & Séraphin Soudbinine, 1870-1944
Pianissimo and Fortissimo, 1925-26
Lacquered wood, eggshell, mother-of-pearl, gold

Created for the music room of Solomon R. Guggenheim’s residence in Port Washington, Long Island, these screens are an artistic collaboration between the designer Jean Dunand and the sculptor Séraphin Soudbinine. While Soudbinine conceived the composition and carved the bas-relief figures of otherworldly angels and rocklike forms, Dunand lacquered the screen.  Guggenheim’s widow, Irene Rothschild, donated the screens to the Metropolitan following the death of her husband.

6/
Edward Hopper, 1882-1967
The Lighthouse at Two Lights, 1929
Oil on canvas

7/
Juan Gris, 1887-1927
Juan Legua, 1991
Oil on canvas

8/
Balthus, 1908-2001
Thérèse Dreaming, 1938
Oil on canvas

9/
Francis Bacon, 1909-1992
(Reflection on one of) Three Studies for a Self-Portrait, 1979-80
Oil on canvas

As Bacon remarked to David Sylvester in 1975, ”I loathe my own face… I’ve done a lot of self-portraits, really because people have been dying around me like flies and I’v nobody else left to paint by myself.”

10/
Pablo Picasso, 1881-1973
Bust of a Man, 1908
Oil on canvas

11/
Pablo Picasso, 1881-1973
Gertrude Stein, 1905-06
Oil on canvas

12/
Albert Bloch, 1882-1961
Summer Night, 1913
Oil on canvas

13/
Edgar Degas, 1834-1917
Young Woman with Ibis, 1860-62
Oil on canvas

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

February 17th, 2018

Feel like dancing

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(But after wandering for hours in and out of the Met’s endless galleries, I do need to sit down).

Art:

1/
Joel Shapiro, 1941
Untitled, 2000-2001
Oil paint on cast aluminum

2/
Al Held, 1928-2005
Mercury Zone III, 1975
Acrylic on canvas

3/
Jennifer Bartlett, b. 1941
Five A.M., 1991-92
Oil on canvas

4/
Alex Katz, b. 1927
Red Coat, 1982
Oil on canvas

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

February 17th, 2018

Tangled

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How my brain feels at the end of this week.

Art:

1/
Autumn Rhythm (Number 30),

2/
Monoceros, Ibram Lassaw
|ronze and manganese bronze fused over galvanized wire

3/
Untitled, Clyfford Still 
Oil on canvas

Kouros, Isamu Noguchi
Marble 

4/
Attic, 1949, by Willem de Kooning
Oil, enamel and newspaper transfer on canvas

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

February 17th, 2018

Meditation

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Healing, following a brief panic attack last night, triggered by a close encounter with a giant cockroach, in the bathroom.

P.S.: a chilled beer can also help
P.S.1: the beast is dead

Spectrum V, 1969, by Ellsworth Kelly (1923–2015)
Oil on canvas

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

February 17th, 2018

David Zwirner: 25 Years

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In 2018, David Zwirner celebrated their 25th anniversary and, on that occasion, New York was treated with a special exhibition of works by some of the artists the gallery represented over the years.

David Zwirner was the only New York gallery on my radar before coming to the City, because they represent one of my favourite Belgian artists, Michaël Borremans. I went to the exhibition hoping to see some of his works and, sure enough, a couple of his smaller-size paintings were on show. This is one of them, but if you’d like to see more of Borremans’ amazing  work, please hop over to my Brussels blog, for highlights from an exhibition held in Brussels, in 2014.

Michaël Borremans

Chris Ofili

Marlene Dumas

Isa Genzken

Aline Kominsky-Crumb and Robert Crumb

Philip-Lorca diCorcia

Suzan Frecon

Jeff Koons

Sherrie Levine

Christopher Williams

Felix Gonzales-Torres

Donald Judd / Dan Flavin

Ruth Asawa

Yayoi Kusama

February 10th, 2018

Edvard Munch Art

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As intrigued as I was in discovering Munch the Photographer, I couldn’t wait to renew my acquaintance with some of the inspiring, melancholic and – at times – tormented, works of Munch the Painter; and be reminded that there’s more loneliness in Munch the Man and a deeper agony than what he let us see/hear with ”The Scream”.

Self-Portrait, 1886
Oil on canvas

Self-Portrait with Cigarette, 1895
Oil on canvas

Self-Portrait with the Spanish Flu, 1919
Oil on canvas

Self-Portrait with a Bottle of Wine, 1906
Oil on canvas

Self-Portrait by the Window, ca. 1940
Oil on canvas

Inheritance, 1897-99
Oil on canvas

The Sick Child, 1896
Oil on canvas

Sick Mood at Sunset: Despair, 1892
Oil on canvas

Despair, 1894
Oil on canvas

Death in the Sick Room, 1893
Oil on canvas

Madonna, ca. 1895-97
Oil on canvas

Puberty, 1894
Oil on unprimed canvas

Ashes, 1925
Oil on canvas

Jealousy, ca. 1907
Oil on canvas

Model by the Wicker Chair, 11919-21
Oil on canvas

Edvard Munch: Between the Clock and the Bed @ Met Breuer, November 2107 – February 2018.

December, 28th 2017

ah ah

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|1|-|6| Nothing is Enough, single-channel digital video projection, 2012 – by Frances Stark

Nothing is Enough consists of documented text fragments from Frances Stark’s online chat with a young Italian man, ranging from contemplative, self-reflective discussions to cybersex.

|7|- Fuck You: From the Liz Taylor Series (after Bert Stern), 1984, acrylic and composition leaf on canvas – by Kathe Burkhart

Kathe Burkhart is an artist and writer who uses images and text to, in her words, ”articulate a radical female subject.” She considers this confrontational, sensual work to be the first fully realized canvas in her Liz Taylor Series, ongoing since 1982.

|8|-|9| Pat Hearn, 1985, acrylic and silkscreen ink on linen – by Andy Warhol

The Art Institute of Chicago

November 4th, 2017

Taking a line for a walk @ The Art Institute of Chicago

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The monumental

1965, oil on canvas – by Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986)

|2|- ”Bar on Skis” Liquor Cabinet, about 1930 – by Émile Jacques Ruhlmann

|3|- Painting of Madame X, 1927/30, oil on canvas – by Francis Picabia (1879-1953)

|4|- Forest and Sun, 1927, oil on canvas – by Max Ernst (1891-1976)

|5|- The Banquet, 1958, oil on canvas – by René Magritte (1898-1967)

|6|- In the Magic Mirror, 1934, oil on canvas, on board – by Paul Klee (1879-1940)

The Art Institute of Chicago

November 4th, 2017

The Art Institute of Chicago

The Humble Fabulist2 Comments

After two full days absorbing as much as possible of the city’s stunning art deco architecture, it was now high time for some art. Enter the Art Institute of Chicago, one of the largest museums in the United States, one that is home to some of my favourite paintings and the one museum you should never leave Chicago without visiting.

And once inside, the danger is, you will never want to leave.

Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894)
Paris Street; Rainy Day, 1877, oil on canvas

Georges Seurat (1859-1891)
A Sunday on La Grande Jatte – 1884 (1884-86), oil on canvas

Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)
Self-Portrait, 1887, oil on artist’s board, mounted on cradled panel

Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)
The Bedroom, 1889, oil on canvas

Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)
The Poet’s Garden, 1888, oil on canvas

Louis Anquetin (1861-1932)
An Elegant Woman at the Élysée Montmartre, 1888, oil on canvas

Harald Sohlberg (1869-1935)
Fisherman’s Cottage, 1906, oil on canvas

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)
Lucie Berard (Child in White), 1883, oil on canvas

Emil Nolde (1867-1956)
Red-Haired Girl, 1919, oil on canvas

The Art Institute of Chicago

November 4th, 2017

The Idiosyncratic Eyes of Mme Bourgeois

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Staring into your soul.

House 1994
Marble

the puritan 1990-97 (text: 1947)
Folio set no. 3: engravings with selective wiping, gouache and watercolour additions

Lullaby 2006
Series of twenty-five screenprints on fabric: title sheet and twenty-four compositions

Bourgeois created shapes by turning and tracing common household objects – scissors, a knife and a candy dish, among them. She published this set herself, under the imprint Lison Editions. Lison, Lise, Lisette, Louison and Louisette were among her childhood nicknames.

Ode à l’Oubli 2004
Fabric illustrated book with thirty fabric collages and four lithographs

The pages of this book are composed of linen hand towels saved from her trousseau. Many contain the embroidered monogram LBG (Louise Bourgeois Goldwater). Bourgeois later issued and editioned version of this book in twenty-five examples. In that version, the pages are tied together through buttonholes instead of bound so all of the pages can be displayed simultaneously, as seen on this wall.

Untitled 1998
Fabric and stainless steel

Stamp of Memories I 1993
Drypoint with metal stamp additions

Sainte Sébastienne 1992
Drypoint

Triptych for the Red Room 1994
Aquatint, drypoint and engraving

“The subject of pain is the business I am in.“ – LB

Self Portrait 2007
Gouache on paper

Self Portrait 1990
Drypoint, etching and aquatint

I Redo (interior element) from the installation
I Do, I Undo, I Redo 1999-2000
Steel, glass wood and tapestry

Untitled 1940
Oil and pencil on board

Lacs de Montagne (Mountain Lakes), 1996 & 1997
Engraving and aquatint with watercolour, gouache and ink additions

Arch of Hysteria 1993
Bronze, polished patina

Spider 1997

Note from Louise Bourgeois: An Unfolding Portrait, an exhibition that ran at the MoMA, until end January 2018: ”[…] explores the prints, books, and creative process of the celebrated sculptor Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010). Bourgeois’s printed oeuvre, a little-known aspect of her work, is vast in scope and comprises some 1,200 printed compositions, created primarily in the last two decades of her life but also at the beginning of her career, in the 1940s. The Museum of Modern Art has a prized archive of this material, and the exhibition will highlight works from the collection along with rarely seen loans […].”

September 25th, 2017