I dashed from the Frick Collection over to the Whitney last night - knowing I did not have much time; it was 5:30 PM and I was let in for free and a guard told me to see Picasso and American Art on the 4th Floor - so I did - and what a show!

However, the Whitney site does not show much of the details about the Picasso and American Art exhibition - I understand they want people to visit - and no photography is allowed (so they want you to buy the catalog - I guess) ……

…but what about all those people who want to go but can’t (because they don’t live or visit NYC)? 

I think it’s somewhat shortsighted of the Whitney to not have put the entire Catalog of Picasso and American Art online - so it can be more widely discussed.  After all - it’s that level of Internet participation with Art Communities that makes Art interesting today…that is our 21st century Renaissance.  As a result, I need to quote other magazine articles that do discuss Picasso and American Art in more depth than the Whitney does - online.

To quote New York Magazine (which actually has some content) ..

“Picasso and American Art,” now at the Whitney, is an ambitious examination of how this great father-monster shaped the modern American imagination. The way serious artists influence one another is always a subtle and complex subject, especially when the interplay occurs, as it does here, among strong, independent figures rather than between a leader and his followers (as was the case with, say, Caravaggio and the Caravaggisti). In an exhibit where space is limited and curators cannot display less-visible forms of influence, such as the moral or personal sway of an artist, the focus inevitably narrows. “Picasso and American Art” leaves out much. But what it does do—juxtapose paintings—it does brilliantly. Those who like to look closely at individual works will savor the show, entering a state of compare-and-contrast bliss. And, more mysteriously, they may gain a better sense of what’s peculiarly American.”

Since I could not photograph anything, and there’s no online catalog - all I can say …. I had no idea that Jasper Johns was so influenced by Picasso till I saw this exhibition … a show I will go back to a couple of times (plus there’s a lot I missed at the Whitney that’s running right now).

Jasper John’s encaustic /wax and oil paintings are FANTASTIC - and there’s a lot of them in the Picasso show ….. it shows a range of work of John’s that is not particularly well represented in books or online - but is absolutely some of his finest work …and it turns out.. inspired largely by Pablo Picasso - who would have known?  I guess it is known..but who would have known that Picasso has SO MUCH influence on Modern American Art - since he never actually came to America?  Well, he did influence a lot of of struggling artists who worshiped Picasso’s popularity in the 1930’s and 1940’s and grew up to be famous artists themselves - like Jasper Johns.

But the show also says something at Picasso - and my inner intuition whispered this in my ear.

“…Picasso became bored with painting reality, painting representational reality by 1910.  Essentially, Picasso focused entirely on 2 and 3 dimensional design as a “problem to be solved”  and then put an eye or an arm of a part of a face on it …. to give it human meaning …. and meaning to him.  

You can trace the large ovals and circles on a flat plane as what interested him, balancing it with form and color …and then putting an eye there..to make it a face, or an arm, to show it was a shoulder.    Picasso essentially disconnected design from visual meaning ..and then threw in the eye, the arm, the hand, they table as a marker to where he began…and ended.  

Because of that … his later works are not that satisfying on a human level - though they are masterpieces of design and construction.  Picasso embodied the philosophy of his times, that painting really was just a representation of 2 dimensional objects …so he went all the way - to purely abstract qualities - and yet, still had to say …this is a person, this is a table, this is a still life….. because he thought that it still needed a connection to visual reality…the reality he now found boring.”

However, the influenced painters in this show, with the exception of Jasper Johns, don’t produce anything nearly as good as Picasso’s work … how could they ..when they imitate him?  

I’ll have more to say when I see the Picasso and American Art, perhaps Friday, when I will attempt to visit a friend, Liz Camps, in a nearby hospital, recovering from an operation.  I don’t usually like visiting hospitals..but I will, for a friend.

I went by the Frick Collection tonight - left work a little early so I could see two shows that are currently on display.  I normally don’t go to the Frick, I find the atmosphere and lighting at the Frick way too stuffy, too dark for me.   I used to go a lot more often when I was younger - and it was free.  Now it costs 15 bucks to get into the Frick..and I’m fine with that …. I just don’t like the Frick as a place to hang out.   

And the Weird thing…even though The Frick Collection is a mansion - to me - it feels cluttered, small.  You’d think a mansion should feel big ..but the only room that really feels big…..is BIG - the main room; other than that ….the Frick feels cluttered to me.

But I went because I wanted to see Cimabue and Early Italian Devotional Painting  - the whole show was in a tiny room, only two panels were painted by Cimabue - the rest were done by contemporaries of Cimabue.   While I think Cimabue is great …it’s really not my type of painting …it’s too far removed from life, as it is today, and I’m really not a strong fan of painting of that time… great as it is.

Maybe I’m sick of seeing so much religious painting …..you know artists had to paint religious works because that’s where the money was….you don’t paint Jesus…you starve (an oversimplification - but essentially true).   That’s how it was till the 19th Century - and it was not till the Impressionists that we were free of the domination of the Church.

Today…it’s hard to imagine what would be comparable - maybe artists living in Communist countries 40 years ago that had to paint propaganda to show anything at all.

The artists, in this case Cimabue, might have been religious, for all I know, but I’m kinda sick of seeing art that is about “another time” - stuff that happened 1300 years earlier than Cimabue - and the only thing we can infer about Medieval times, and pre-renaissance is in the handling of the figures, maybe the faces, maybe the technique and drawing.

In fact, I don’t really mind the religious aspect of Cimabue - I sorta expect it.  I mind it more in the rest of the paintings at the Frick Collection - the one’s both in the regular collection AND the Masterpieces of European Painting from The Cleveland Museum of Art.

I will start first with what I liked and then go into what I didn’t care for.

First of all, there were few paintings, maybe a dozen from the Cleveland Museum of Art being loaned for this exhibition.  My favorite painting in the show - Francisco de Zurbarán’s Christ and the Virgin in the House of Nazareth (you can see a larger image by clicking on the hyperlink)

 

Just visiting the Frick to see the Zurbarán painting was worth it - even if that’s all I saw….the Zurbarán painting is one of his very finest.  I did notice the “window” in the upper rear of the paintings seemed to be painted more as an afterthought - as if the painting used to be totally dark on top and the artist found he needed more light and shape there - so he painted a square that looks like it’s a window.

I also liked the Velázquez portrait of The Jester Calabazas due to the unusual motifs on the pinwheel and zig-zag chair - and  I also liked the composition.  I also liked Andrea Del Sarto’s The Sacrifice of Isaac  because part of the painting (middle far right) with the under drawing - Del Sarto drew out the in strong outlines all the main objects in the painting and then did his magic with the glazing - but for me, the under drawing is actually more interesting.

I also looked at  Domenico Tiepolo’s - A New Testament - a series of several drawings Tiepolo did - some of the drawings looked like they were slowly decaying.  While I liked the Tiepolo drawings - though I have a hard time relating to 1750’s Venice with it’s emphasis on what appears to be a natty society rich with color and social incidents.  Perhaps the most interesting motif that Tiepolo drew, is his dogs - he repeats, what appears to be a greyhound, in several drawings and I can relate to the dog way more than the religious figures that were, again, what artists kinda had to paint.   The architecture, castles, building edges - are clearly thrown in from imagination (even if buildings like that existed in Venice) and show a love for perspective.

I’m not even sure the drawings of Domenico Tiepolo (the younger Tiepolo) were commissioned or did he do them for himself only… I guess I don’t really care.  What was meaningful to me today - his freshness in drawing and focusing on the dogs the liked.  Maybe the show should have been called…the Dogs of Domenico Tiepolo - that would have been much more fun.

OK, here’s where I go into my rant about what I did not like: Nicolas Poussin painting of The Holy Family on the Steps appeared unnatural and fake in it’s rigidness.  The faces of the Holy Family look like Barbie dolls - but worse - and as I mentioned - I’ve overdosed on the fake religious propaganda that’s shoved down my throat the majority of paintings in the Frick Collection.  I understand that was the way it was but I don’t have to like it and relate to it… and I don’t.   I like Poussin’s paintings … just not this one.  Poussin’s approach feels too deliberate and studied for me.  Cezanne’s approach was Poussin redone for the late 19th Century and the 20th Century and is much, much more satisfying to look at for me..than Poussin’s reconstructions of history (impressive in his time - but not effective or interesting in ours).  Recreations of Nature are much more interesting than Recreations of faked historical events that were not really witnessed by Poussin (unless he was the reincarnation of one of twelve apostles - and even then - do we really want to recreate the past….or look to the future?). 

At least, Cezanne re-created what he saw…. not some fake thing made out of wooden models and faked perspective.  Maybe that’s what people liked in the 1600’s - a civilization that’s looking back to Roman Times to determine what fashion and art should be….. but it’s totally out of place in the Twenty First Century …our time.

I also hated Jacques-Louis David’s Cupid and Psyche - David would have been luckier had he died maybe 20 years before - most of his late work is dry and awful - you have to wonder how such a great painter ended up semi-senile. I don’t think it’s going too far to all Cupid and Psyche a banal painting. All that’s left in David’s later paintings is his skill - what actually made David great was who he knew and how he painted them - with a directness that was in tune with the time around the French Revolution and Napoleon ’s reign.  David reached his peak earlier in his life and basically was on auto pilot shortly after 1800, the rest of what he produced is not that significant to Art and actually, in some cases, is an embarrassment to his real legacy.

I just want to say that my favorite room at the Frick Collection is the gift shop — it’s actually well lit.

OK, got to get over to the Frick Collection - maybe I’ll go later today or this weekend…why?   Just read the review of the show at the Frick Collection  till Jan 28th, 2007 called Masterpieces of European Painting From the Cleveland Museum of Art”  .

“Yet the paintings in this show, which have been selected and installed by Colin B. Bailey, the Frick’s chief curator, with assistance from Margaret Iacono, assistant curator, transcend the “masterpieces from” genre and talk among themselves to a remarkable degree. They form a carefully linked seminar on the riveting ways that material, subject and sensibility can collaborate on canvas (or wood) and also on how works of art illuminate one another. Extending John Berger’s famous title, the show might be called “Ways of Seeing Paintings.”

I’ll have more to say when I see the paintings.  I need to go to the Frick anyway, to see the other show on Cimabue - never made it over there.

And I want to remember to go by my studio and paint this weekend too…..I need to paint - to express all of this.  But writing helps too.