While in recently in Barcelona, I came across Casa Amatller, a shop in the Casa Amatller building next to Guaudi’s Casa Batllo. In the back of the shop were two small galleries of old photos taken in Spain. I think they were selling prints of the displayed originals. It’s always a treat to happen upon something worth seeing.
I’m in London for a few days and visited the Saatchi, Hayward and the Gallery at OXO. The Saatchi and Hayward are larger galleries and the Gallery at OXO is a smaller gallery I ran into while walking along the Thames to get to the Hayward. The Saatchi is free and I beleive always exhibiting contemporary art, the Hayward has a current exhibition called “Walking in My Mind”. That was 9 Euros. A little expensive but a good show, and the Gallery at OXO was free. It’s a small gallery of prints. All can be found online. Worth visiting!
DoubleN is working on selling the house
I absolutely loved this place! Though I’m not a huge fan of modern architecture, this building is awesome, and I consider the building itself to be a work of art in itself. Its setting overlooking Lake Michigan is a part of what makes it work, and the fountains on the other side are also nice. There was a wedding party assembled along the long, narrow bank of fountains as I was leaving.
To be surrounded by beautiful things is soooo good for the soul, and when life isn’t completely peachy, it really makes a person aware of that fact.
There were so many things that caught my interest there, from a collection of unique clocks to American Modernist paintings, from the stunning giant Chihuly just off the main lobby to the ebony/ivory/mahogony backgamon set and other antique games, from the extraordinarily well-designed furniture and other functional art to the impressionist collection. Sculptures. Pop Art. Unusual glass pieces. You name it, they’ve got it – and all in a relatively small museum.
I found myself noting technique of the impressionist artists especially, and also what makes for good composition, since I’ve started doing a little painting myself.
Not to mention a gift shop that could break the bank. :) Yes, I did buy some gifts.
I am so grateful they were open on a holiday; I spent 3 hours there. This was definitely worth the trip downtown!
Tonight I went to the Picasso exhibit. It’s only through Saturday, so get to it if you can! I trekked out of may way after work to make it before 6 with enough time to see the show. I’m glad I did it, because it was really worth seeing. It was a large space consisting of many works, all done within the last 10 years of Picasso’s life. I’ve heard this was a time in his life when he was sexually frustrated, and I believe it after seeing this show. I’ve never seen so many mangled women displaying their private parts in my life! I think I only saw 1 penis, and probably 100 vaginas, no joke! There were a few works with other subject matters: some busts and a still life, but mostly the aforementioned. I believe it was all work I’ve never seen, at least none of it rang a bell, so I’m glad I got to see so many Picasso works new to me. If you go to the Gagosian website, you can view the show, but most of the works are shown in gallery view, so you don’t see the true intensity of the works with this view.
Tonight I visited the Leo Castelli Gallery. They were exhibiting Electricity, a show of works by Jim Dine, Dan Flavin, Joseph Kosuth, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist, Keith Sonnier and Robert Watts. As you can tell from the name of the show, all of the works were lit up or had to do with electricity. They were mixed media pieces, almost all had lights, except a Jim Dine piece was a painting with a real light bulb attached, but not lit up (it was painted red to match the mostly red canvas it was attached to). So from the list of artists, you might think it was a big show. Wrong! It was a small gallery consisting of two rooms. I actually asked if there was another gallery, partially because I thought there must be more to the show, and partially because when I rang the bell to be buzzed in, it was listed as 3A/B, so I thought maybe A or B was connected to what I saw, and also because the works were not labled so I didn’t realize all the work was by all the artists in the show. Anyway, I was wrong. I think I insulted them by asking. The guy at the front desk apologized saying he knew the place was a mess but that this was everything and pointed me to the book listing the works and artists. I didn’t mean for it to come out as an insult, I just really wanted to know if there was more because I didn’t want to miss it. I apologetically said it was all right and took the book with me to view the exhibit again, signed the guest book, said thanks and left. I wasn’t completely disappointed with the show. Actually, when I took another look at the Lichtenstein pieces, I noticed how the lights on them made the reflective media look like it was moving as I moved. It’s just that it was a small show, and I had higher expectations judging from their website. I’m glad I went. On the other hand, it took me 20 minutes in the opposite direction of home to get there from work, and I was only there for a few minutes. I look forward to my Chelsea gallery walk, where I will see more galleries and spend more time. I don’t think I’ll visit anymore single galleries unless I find out about a must see show. So stay tuned!
Tonight I went to the MFA show at Hunter College. It featured about 20 artists from the Hunter College MFA program. I was surprised by how large the galleries were. There were 1-2 artists works displayed in each gallery, as a lot of it was large installation work. I was disappointed to see that there was virtually no beauty in this show, yet all of the work had some meaning behind it with pretty lengthy descriptions. I was left feeling a lot like I felt at the Miguel Abreau Gallery (see previous entry about that gallery). I think I see what’s going on in these art programs. They teach you that you better have some really meaningful statement for the viewer, and they don’t teach much traditional studio art, so the idea often outdoes the creation. They also expect you to create things with mixed media in order to create something that’s never been created before, often resulting in installation art. I was reminded of a lithography class I took in college. The professor stressed that in order to make it in the art world, one MUST go to graduate school. I remember I drew a still life for an assignment the professor gave, not specifying any subject matter. My still life had a tea kettle in it, and she completely tore me apart, saying that my drawing had no meaning unless maybe I drew the tea kettle because I’m so passionate about drinking tea. I also recall her stressing the importance of making mixed media art in this day and age because everything else has already been done. With that said, I wasn’t very impressed with her work. Right now I’m feeling pretty good about not having gone to graduate school.
I left work a little early, walking around at my leisure, and wound up visiting 11 galleries. I kept track of where I went this time, so here they are in order: Candela Decker, Peter Tunney Art, Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, Artist’s Space, Arcadia, Animazing, William Bennett, Mimi Ferzt, Opera Gallery, CFM Gallery and Terrain Gallery. I’m glad to say that I saw a lot of stuff I liked. Aside from Candela Decker, which seemed to be more of a junk shop than an art gallery, everything was modern and contemporary. The syles and mediums ranged, and it felt good to see so much. I just took my time looking around. I felt like I could have squeezed in a few more galleries, but I had enough and didn’t want to turn my relaxing gallery walk into something other than that. I have to say that I’ve been to William Bennett, the Artist’s Space and Arcadia, but they all had mostly different work since I was last to them, so it was almost like visiting a new gallery. I can’t go through everything I saw, but I’ll mention one show I thought was outstanding between the work and the display of it put together. It was Wild Horses of Sable Island: Photoworks by Robert Dutesco at Peter Tunney Art. I wasn’t even about to go, but decided to wander in. They had three free postcards for his show, and I took them all. I couldn’t resist, I think his photography is great, and no one was looking, hehe… You know, I’m one who doesn’t think of photography as an equal artform to other visual arts such as painting or sculpture, but with the photography exhibits I’ve seen lately, I’m appreciating it more and more.
It was easiest to catch the 6 train to Canal Street and walk, but I wasn’t thinking how far east Orchard Street is, and had quite a long walk ahead of me. The weather was nice enough, so besides walking on congested Canal Street which I like to avoid, it was actually nice to take a walk and not go straight home.
I finally made it to the gallery. There were three men sitting at the front desk who I seemed to interrupt when I made my entrance. I asked if it was all right to take a look around and they said yes. Two of the men went outside after one of them suggested talking outside, as if I was there to listen to their conversation. I looked around at the art and came around to a large decorated book and asked the remaining man who seemed to be the receptionist, if that was the guest book. He said no, and gave me some headphones to listen to while viewing the pages in the book and also showed me where the guestbook was. He was actually pretty nice and helpful. I didn’t finish viewing and listening about that piece. I lost my interested after a minute of listening to someone slowly rattle off the names of animals while flipping through the book consisting of a lot of writing in pencil, then being told to rewind the tape and listen again, etc. I was about to leave when the receptionist told me there was more to the exhibit downstairs. We had to go outside to get downstairs. He showed me down the stairs and I found another small gallery. After I was finished I went back upstairs to sign the guestbook and let him know I was finished in case he needed to know since no one else was downstairs. As I left, the two other men were still outside staring at me.
No matter how I feel about an exhibit, I’m always glad to have seen it. As a former art professor said, “don’t live in a vacuum.” What she meant was, don’t cut yourself off from current events. Learn about what other artists are doing now, not just in the past. Overall, I was fairly unimpressed with this show. The art, consisting of photography, graphics, paintings and drawings, was mostly simple and failed to catch my eye. What I’ve been seeing a lot with current art is a large imbalance between idea and meaning and craft. I felt this way about this exhibit, Practice vs. Object, after having read the press release for the show. I just thought it was a little too deep for what I saw. If you want to read the press release and view some of the show, go to www.miguelabreaugallery.com.
I found a handful of galleries I can visit after work up until April 25. After that I want to spend more time doing some gallery walks on a day off during the week, or possibly a Saturday, which I’m trying to avoid (weekends are short as it is!) The thing is, if I had more time in Chelsea today, I could have seen far more galleries. I went after work I only had about a half hour before they closed at 6 and only got to see three. So I need to do a real Chelsea gallery walk and I want to go back to SoHo because last time I went I didn’t walk up and down all the streets and I know there are more to see. After I’ve done all of the above, I think it’s safe to say I’ve visited at least 43 galleries. I won’t have an exact count, because when I did my SoHo gallery walk last summer, I wasn’t keeping track.
First I went to the Mary Boone Gallery at 541 West 24th Street (last night I was at the 5th Avenue location). They had a show called Image Matter which was multi-media paintings and one wall hanging made of what looked like crumpled up tissue paper. There were several other galleries right on the same side of the block, so I went into two more. I went to the Charles Cowles Gallery which was all photography, and then to the Bruce Silverstein Gallery which had three photography exhibits going on which I enjoyed very much, which is surprising because I don’t get into photoraphy as much as I do paintings. They had E.O. Hoppe, Early London Photos 1910-1939, which interested me because I was in London for a few days last summer and wanted to see if I recognized any of the spots. Mostly I didn’t, but it always fascinates me to see how people lived in another time. Then there was Cloud 9, photos of clouds by Imogen Cunningham, Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston, which was okay. The other one was Andre Kertesz, In the Depths of Winter, which were winter scenes in New York near the artist’s home on 2 Fifth Avenue. Of course I’m always interested in New York, so that was good to see too.
