The Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century purports to display “the radical transformation of the medium of drawing throughout the twentieth century,” but what the genre retrospective really does is to narrow the definition of “drawing” considerably, limiting works not by medium but by execution: almost every work in the show is non-objective. This festival of the abstract is visually impressive but conceptually lacking. Shouldn’t any century-long survey of drawing include some less academically austere work?
MoMA
Posted inOpinion
How is MoMA’s “Abstract Expressionist New York” Faring Online?
The Museum of Modern Art’s Abstract Expressionist New York: The Big Picture, an ambitious exhibition that (kinda) rethinks the standard narrative of Abstract Expressionism (aka AbEx), has been open since October 3. The show complicates things by reintroducing us to artists not entirely within the AbEx canon, putting old favorites in a new context and shining a spotlight on the people and places of AbEx.
The question is: did MoMA and its curators accomplish their goal? We turn to the internet at large for a look at how people have reacted to the exhibition!
Posted inArt
Taking Another Look at Robert Motherwell
The Museum of Modern Art’s sprawling re-envisioning of Abstract Expressionism, “Abstract Expressionist New York,” inspires a lot of looking. The stately museum’s upper floor galleries, previously dedicated to the slow progress of abstraction in modern art, have been shuffled around to get a better view of exactly how the movement we came to call Abstract Expressionism developed.
It was one particular showing that caught my eye and really caused me to stop in my tracks and rethink where I pigeonholed these artists. Standing sentinel on one back wall were two works that cohered together perfectly, paintings whose muted colors became bright and whose architectonic compositions were like an abstract expressionism slowed down and frozen in time. Upon closer approach, I noticed that the pieces were by Robert Motherwell, an artist I was aware of and respected, but didn’t enormously enjoy. Yet something about these two paintings, “Western Air” (1946-47) and “Personage, with Yellow Ochre and White” (1947) made me reconsider.
Posted inSponsored
Announcing the Winners of the “William Kentridge” Film/DVD Contest
We received tons of entries but, sadly, there are only six prizes. So, after the contest deadline passed on Friday, we finalized the winners in our “William Kentridge: Anything Is Possible” contest and today we award three people with exclusive tickets to attend the Art21 hosted premiere Monday, October 18 at the Museum of Modern Art while three others will receive a free DVD copy of the flick. For those of you who may not know, the feature-length film tells the story of the world-renowned South African artist William Kentridge.
Posted inSponsored
Win Tickets to the MoMA Premiere of Art21’s “William Kentridge: Anything is Possible”
“William Kentridge: Anything Is Possible” is a new hour-long film from ART 21 that gives viewers an intimate look into the mind and creative process of William Kentridge, the South African artist whose acclaimed work has made him one of the most dynamic and exciting contemporary artists working today.
Art 21 is hosting a special premiere screening at MOMA in New York City on Monday October 18th and they are giving Hyperallergic readers a few chances to win a pair of tickets to this special event.
Posted inNews
In the Museums: Fall 2010 in New York
This fall is a great time to be in New York. The always interesting Teri Tynes over at Walking Off the Big Apple has compiled a select (but extensive) list of New York museum shows this fall. There’s a lot to see and do and here are some we’re really looking forward to …
Posted inArt
Why Am I Looking at “Pictures by Women”?
Over at MoMA, there are two big survey shows that focus on a single theme throughout the history of photography from the heyday of the daguerreotype through to the present. The first, Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography, is an “installation that comprises more than 200 works by approximately 120 artists.” The second is an examination of photography’s relationship to sculpture titled The Original Copy: The Photography of Sculpture, 1839 to Today, that “brings together over 300 photographs, magazines, and journals, by more than 100 artists” … A good exhibition is not a numbers game. And in Pictures by Women, which is a little diffuse, it shows.
Posted inArt
Playing the Game at PS1’s Pole Dance
We perceive architecture, Walter Benjamin thought, in two ways: optical and tactile. There’s a progression over time in our optical perception of something that develops from looking at something into contemplating it. Black scratches to letters to a sign to an idea. But Benjamin didn’t think there was a tactile analog to contemplation when it came to perceiving something through touch.
Posted inNews
Sculpture is Dead: Art, Not Suicide (Part 3/3)
One of the definitions given by the OED for sculpture is, “as a type of silence or absence of movement of feeling.” After 700 hours of sitting ‘still as a statue’ and silently engaging a series of 1400+ visitors at MoMA, Abramović has completed what is being hailed the longest work of performance art.
Posted inOpinion
MoMA’s Glenn Lowry Hypes Tech
If earlier this year, we were all distraught that the chief curator of an institution calling itself the New Museum didn’t know much about the online art world, today we can all breathe a little sigh of relief as the director of the world’s foremost modern art museum, MoMA, has given what amounts to a tech-friendly endorsement of the virtual world.
Posted inNews
Sculpture is Dead: Art, Not Suicide (Part 1/3)
There is a death wish that threads modernity — death of God, death of the author, death of history, even the death of the modernity itself (the post-modern) but perhaps most insistently of all, is the existential interrogation that is modern art … but is it true for sculpture?
Posted inOpinion
MoMA’s Paola Antonelli Talks Design
If you’re like me then you’re probably kicking yourself that you were unable to attend MoMA design curator Paola Antonelli’s talk as part of the Swissmiss Creative Mornings series. Thankfully Soulellis Studio blogged about the affair and shared their notes, which include some really interesting highlights …
