Organized by The Costume Institute and on at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through July 31. The installation of this exhibition was fantastically done (in both senses of the word). More here.
McQueen’s Savage Beauty at the Met
Category Archives: Metropolitan Museum of Art
Cycladic Heads: What the Nose Knows
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| Cycladic Head, Mindy Shapiro at Armory 2011 |
Is the title referring to the the Bronze Age civilization on the Cyclades islands in the southern Aegean Sea, or the present day inhabitants? The painted acrylic scales covering the wood statue were hand cut and performs marvels of gently undulating texture.
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| Detail, Cycladic Head |
The Metropolitan has its own Clycadic head, most definitely of the Bronze age- 2700 BC to be precise.
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| Head from the figure of a woman, Metropolitan Museum of Art |
There are traces of pigment on the sculpture that suggest the surface was originally colored in with more facial features. Typically the nose the only individual feature sculpted, lending it a noticable prominence today.
John Baldessari: Pure Beauty at the Met
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| Commissioned Painting: A Painting by Anita Storck, 1969 |
This work, up at the Met as part of its John Baldessari: Pure Beauty exhibition, was painted by Anita Storck, an artist who, like others in this series, Baldessari found at a local craft fairs selling scenes of landscapes, flowers, and boats at sea. He commissioned them to paint as faithfully as they could an image of their choice from a selection of photographs Baldessari had taken. After, Baldessari had a sign painter hand-letter the painter’s name on each canvas. Like much of the work on view, the story behind the object is more interesting than the object itself.
As the first major U.S. exhibition in 20 years to survey the Baldessari’s work, this pioneer of conceptual art was a bit of a history lesson for me, as I can see the shadow of his long arm in many contemporary artists’ work, but also a reminder of some of my inherent dislike of conceptual art. In Pure Beauty, one can witness the many evolutions of form in his long career, but much of the same focus, such as the process of art making and how we perceive things.
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| Heel, 1986 |
The story of how he makes the works, like how he pulled images, for example cinematic stills like the works above and below, and put them back together is more interesting than the end result is visually. (Conceptual art in a nutshell?). For example, to create the Duress series below, Baldessari went through the process of him standing in front of the TV with a camera and taking pictures of movies, blowing up those stills, inking in the figures, and creating depth with foam as an examination of mass media. The process in interesting, but is doesn’t necessarily come through in the work.
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| The Duress Series: Person Climbing Exterior Wall of Tall Building / Person on Ledge of Tall Building / Person on Girders of Unfinished Tall Building, 2003 |
For me, the continuous focus on structure, rules, media, and the process of art making is a questioning of convention without actually saying anything in response. His work can be interesting, even decorative, but shallow. That said, I feel like I understand contemporary art better for having seen it.
On view at the Met through January 9.