Category Archives: Modern Art

A Tudor-style Skyscraper: Richard Woods at the Lever House

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When I wrote about Public Art in Manhattan, I ended writing that it’s often not successful as it becomes more and more part of the landscape. Well, what better way to shake things up than to do a renovation?

The Lever House, above, at 53rd St and Park is doing just that. The Lever House is an important and seminal building that paved the way for the glass box skyscrapers we have today, and today it features an impressive contemporary art collection. The glass street-level room is used to show pieces of contemporary art, such as Damien Hirst or, currently, Tara Donovan. The public courtyard flows into the sidewalks and streets, and offers benches, a fountain, and enormous, white Hello Kitty statues by artist Tom Sachs. Perhaps it shows how jaded I am that I could become blase about this public art, which, on reviewing my sentence, sounds pretty awesome.

The Lever House rotates the art it shows in the ground level room, but in this upcoming year it plans a more serious make-over. This modernist landmark is going to renovated by artist Richard Woods, who is planning to wrap the walls and outdoor columns in…Tudor-style prints. Yes, Tudor, like England in the 1500s. Reportedly they will be “flora and fauna images a la William Morris.” William Morris opposed Victorian opulence and yearned for a return to the days of Merry ol’ England in his work, and Woods will be echoing the move back in time in his approach to the Lever House.

For an example of Wood’s work, the Perry Rubinstein Gallery in Chelsea is showing the image below. On the walls of the Lever House, this will be a dynamic and interesting change to the boxy, clean-lined glass temple.


I hope he doesn’t touch the Hello Kitties!

The Modernist’s Versailles, Dia:Beacon

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If the city isn’t wintry enough for you, take MetroNorth out of Grand Central some morning up to Beacon, New York. Along the frozen Hudson River, this small town is home to Dia:Beacon, and Dia is a monument of a museum to Modernist art.
The scale of the place lends Modernism a lighthearted air. One feels distanced from the small people walking on the other side of the gallery and more immersed in an aesthetic experience. The huge works beg to be played with just as they play with your perceptions. The atmosphere invites you to touch the works (Dont!, however). It even begs for you to do a little dance inside the center of a Richard Serra sculpture. This sense of exploration is with you around every corner.
A former Nabisco factory, its proportions are suited to the huge works its showcases. Galleries of open windows and bare white wall, stretching miles, make it a pared down Versailles. The works, of Sol LeWitt and Joseph Beuys and other important Modernist figures, take up the space beautifully. Rooms bigger than most New York City apartments contain rows of Robert Ryman’s white paintings or compacted cars.

Robert Ryman, Vector, 1997.
Dia also has spaces set off from the main galleries on the ground floor, so that smaller, darker brick rooms hold Louise Bourgeois’s womb-like sculptures and her impressive bronze cast of a spider resting its huge weight on spindly legs. On the basement level, there are dark rooms showcasing neon light sculptures and movies playing on the walls. In a former loading dock are Richard Serra’s Torqued Ellipses, large circular wall installations of to wander in and out of.

Such extremes of Modernism can be overwhelming. I left wondering if the canvases painted white, the pieces of string attached floor to ceiling, and the compacted cars really hold meaning or if the whole experience was a colossal joke. Yet it does feel wonderfully playful to wander there, and the whole trip is a pleasant escape.

Louise Bourgeois, Spider, 1997

City People ala Giacommetti

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This small bronze by Alberto Giacommetti at MoMA has always enchanted me more than its small size and simple compisition seem to allow. I love how his contoured bronze people seem strong despite their unnatural slenderness and the sense of movement overall.

Entitled City Square (1948), for me it encapsulates how people walking by each other in the city, each absorbed in his own world and striding purposefully. This is probably true anywhere, but I associate the sculpture and the feeling with New York City.