I Still Use Brushes

Arman, an French-born American artist (1928-2005) created this artwork called "I Still Use Brushes" on display at the Museum of Modern Art. This unique piece is made of brushes embedded in plastic, in acrylic box.

"For Roebling" By Mark di Suvero

On exhibit at the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden at the Museum of Modern Art is a steel sculpture called "For Roebling" (1971), created by Marco Polo "Mark" di Suvero. Mark di Suvero is an American abstract expressionist sculptor born in Shanghai, China in1933 to Italian expatriates. He immigrated to San Francisco, California in 1942 with his family. From 1953 to 1957, he attended the University of California, Berkeley to study Philosophy. He later moved to New York City where he was surrounded by an explosion of Abstract Expressionism. While working in construction, he was critically injured in an  accident. He changed his career and focused all his attention on sculpture. He currently lives in New York City.

Jennifer Bartlett's RHAPSODY At The Museum Of Modern Art

On view at the Museum of Modern Art Atrium is a collection of 987 enamel on steel plates titled "Rhapsody" by American artist Jennifer Bartlett (born 1941). The colorful small plates occupy more than 150 feet of the walls of the atrium. Reading from left to right, the display is composed of 7 thematic sections: Introduction, Mountain, Line, House, Tree, Shape, and Ocean.

Georges Braque's "Landscape At La Ciotat"

This is "Landscape at La Ciotat" by Georges Braque (French, 1882-1963) on exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art. Oil on canvas, 28 1/4 x 23 3/8" (71.7 x 59.4 cm). Before Braque met Pablo Picasso, with whom he invented Cubism, he painted in the bright, bold colors shared by the Fauves, a loosely affiliated group of artists that also included Henri Matisse, André Derain, and Raoul Dufy. They were given this name—meaning "wild beasts"—by an unsympathetic critic in 1905, as a result of the high-pitched colors and anti-naturalistic rendering they embraced. In the summer of 1907 Braque worked in the resort town of La Ciotat, near Marseilles, where he painted this landscape using heavy outlines, flattened space, and intense, harmonic colors (information from the gallery caption).

Elizabeth Murray's DO THE DANCE

On view at the Museum of Modern Art is this artwork by Elizabeth Murray (American, 1940-2007) called "Do the Dance" 2005. Oil on canvas on wood, 9 feet 5 inches by 11 feet 3 inches by 1 1/4 inches. The work demonstrates her fascination with the fractured world of cubism.

Allora and Calzadilla Performance Art Exhibition At MoMA With Performance By Amir Khosrowpour

Part of the Museum of Modern Art's Performance Exhibition Series, the artists Jennifer Allora (b. 1974) and Guillermo Calzadilla (b. 1971) present Stop, Repair, Prepare: Variations on Ode to Joy for a Prepared Piano (2008). For this piece, the artists carved a hole in the center of a grand piano, through which a pianist plays the famous Fourth Movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, usually referred to as “Ode to Joy.” The performer leans over the keyboard and plays upside down and backwards, while moving with the piano across the vast atrium. The result is a structurally incomplete version of the ode—the hole in the piano renders two octaves inoperative—that fundamentally transforms both the player/instrument dynamic and the signature melody, underlining the contradictions and ambiguities of a song that has long been invoked as a symbol of humanist values and national pride. (information from the MoMA website).

Dance (I) By Henri Matisse

 

(Audio from the Museum of Modern Art website - MoMA Multimedia)

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) has an extraordinary art collection of modern and contemporary art such as this painting called "Dance (I)" by French painter Henri Matisse (1869-1954). The painting was done in early 1909 in Paris, Boulevard des Invalides. This oil on canvas, 8' 6 1/2" x 12' 9 1/2" (259.7 x 390.1 cm) is currently on view as part of the Abstract Expressionist New York Exhibit which runs through April 25.

From the MOMA Gallery Caption:

In March 1909, Matisse received a commission from the Russian merchant Sergei Shchukin for two large decorative panels, Dance and Music (now in the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg). This painting was made quickly as a compositional study for Dance, which was intended to hang on a staircase landing at Shchukin's Trubetskoy Palace, in Moscow. The figure at left appears to move purposefully, while the other dancers seem to float weightlessly. The momentum of their movement breaks the circle as the arm of the foreground dancer reaches out. Dance, Matisse once said, evoked "life and rhythm."

Rock Paper Scissors

Encounter (1969, bronze, six parts) by Dorothy Dehner (American, 1901-1994)

Even  The Centipede (1952, unglazed kasama stoneware, wood pole and hemp cord) by Isamu Noguchi  (American, 1904-1988)

Imprisoned Figure (1948, wood and sheet lead) by Seymour Lipton (American, 1903-1986)

On view at the Paul J. Sachs Prints and Illustrated Books Galleries (second floor) of the Museum of Modern Art are these three sculptures by Isamu Noguchi, Seymour Lipton and Dorothy Dehner. These pieces are part of the "Abstract Expressionist New York: Rock Paper Scissors" exhibit that runs through February 28, 2011. The exhibit features sculptures and works on paper—realized in wood, stone, lead, etching, lithography, cut paper, watercolor, and crayon, among other materials and processes—by artists who moved in Abstract Expressionist circles.

World AIDS Day: Bruce Nauman's "Punch and Judy II Birth and Life and Sex and Death" At The Museum Of Modern Art

On exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art is the work of American artist, Bruce Nauman (b 1941) called "Punch and Judy II Birth and Life and Sex and Death" (1985). The artwork is a gouache and pencil drawing on paper, and is juxtaposed with wallpaper imprinted with the word AIDS (designed by a collective called General Idea, and is a riff on Robert Indiana's "Love" motif).

From Moma.org

Nauman's work raises questions related to eternal tensions between life and death, love and hatred, verifiable truth and existential doubt. He addresses these issues with great economy in a hybrid contemporary idiom devised to connect, in as many ways as possible, the thoughts of the artist with the experience of the viewer. Nauman seeks to involve people with hard-to-grasp ideas and hard-to-face uncertainties or ambivalences, and he is prepared to use any method to push aside distractions, break down resistance, and make contact. Correspondingly, the unease created by Nauman's all-out and all-fronts assault on his own and other people's mental habits expresses itself in many ways: recoil at the sight of an apparently grim object, confusion at the sight of an inexplicably abstract one, surprise at the intensity of sounds or lights, embarrassed laughter at a crude joke or cartoon. Whatever that discomfort's manifestation, however, its importance is the same. For Nauman, thinking is feeling. Nauman's general outlook is correspondingly pessimistic, although pathos and tragedy frequently assume a comic guise in his art. The comedy can be harsh, as in Punch and Judy II Birth & Life & Sex & Death (1985), a preparatory drawing for a multiphase neon work in which the aforenamed puppet characters appear as a naked couple who engage in oral sex, attack each other with weapons drawn, and commit suicide, all at the same time.

KANDINSKY Paintings At The Museum Of Modern Art

Four Panels For Edwin R. Campbell (1914)

Church At Murnau (1909)

Picture With An Archer (1909)

Currently on view at the Museum of Modern Art are some of the works of VASILY KANDINSKY (French, born Russia 1866-1944), painter, stage designer, decorative artist and theorist. He is considered an important figure in 20th century art, particularly in the evolution of abstract art. More works of  Kandinsky from the MoMA collection can be seen here. 

Abstract Expressionist New York At The Museum of Modern Art: MARK ROTHKO's No.1 (Untitled)

Video from the MoMA Multimedia

Currently on exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art is MoMA's largest and most comprehensive presentation of Abstract Expressionist art. Included in the exhibit is the beautiful work of American painter MARK ROTHKO (born Latvia, 1903-1970) called "No. 1 (Untitled)" 1948, oil on canvas. 

MoMA Exhibit caption:

Eliminating the figures and organic imagery that dominate earlier paintings in the late 1940s, Rothko began to focus on the relationship between space, color and scale in paintings that later became known as Multiforms. In this work, Rothko applied thin washes of paint to canvas to create a multitude of irregular forms that ebb and flow across the picture plane. Its large size and abstract style point toward the artist's signature Color Field paintings, which he began a year after completing this work.

"Cinderella Table" by Jeroen Verhoeven and Demakersvan

On view at the Museum of Modern Art (Architecture and Design Department) is this "Cinderella Table" made of birch by Dutch born artist, Jeroen Verhoeven (born 1976) and manufactured by the Dutch design group, Demakersvan (est. 2004). Using computer software, the designers translated sketches of the profiles of two antique tables into digital drawings then made a rendering representing the two morphing into each other. Next, using computer-driven wood-cutting machines normally employed for mass production, they produced the drawing as a three-dimensional object, in thin vertical sections out of sheets of birch. Each slice was glued by hand to the next, forming a unique piece of furniture. 

Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913–1917 at the Museum of Modern Art

Currently on exhibit at the Joan and Preston Robert Tisch Exhibition Gallery on the sixth floor of the Museum of Modern Art is "Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913-1917." In the time between Henri Matisse's (1869–1954) return from Morocco in 1913 and his departure for Nice in 1917, the artist produced some of the most demanding, experimental, and enigmatic works of his career—paintings that are abstracted and rigorously purged of descriptive detail, geometric and sharply composed, and dominated by shades of black and gray. Works from this period have typically been treated as unrelated to one another, as an aberration within the artist's development, or as a response to Cubism or World War I. Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913–1917 moves beyond the surface of these paintings to examine their physical production and the essential context of Matisse's studio practice. Through this shift of focus, the exhibition reveals deep connections among these works and demonstrates their critical role in the artist's development at this time. Matisse himself acknowledged near the end of his life the significance of this period when he identified two works—Bathers by a River (1909–10, 1913, 1916–17) and The Moroccans (1915–16)—as among his most "pivotal." The importance of this moment resides not only in the formal qualities of the paintings but also in the physical nature of the pictures, each bearing the history of its manufacture.This exhibition runs through October 11. (information from the MoMA website)

KARA WALKER's Art Installation at MoMA - "Gone: An Historical Romance of a Civil War as it Occurred b'tween the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart"

On view for the first time at the Museum of Modern Art is the wall installation of black cut-out silhouettes of caricatures and antebellum figures arranged on a white wall in uncanny, sexual and violent scenarios by artist, Kara Walker. The artwork (1994) critiques historical narratives of slavery and the ongoing perpetuation of ethnic stereotypes. In the elaborate title, "Gone" refers to Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel "Gone with the Wind" set during the American Civil War. While Walker's narrative begins and ends with coupled figures, the chain of tragicomic, turbulent imagery refutes the promise of romance and confounds conventional attributions of power and oppression. "The history of America is built on inequality, this foundation of a racial inequality and social inequality," the artist has said. "And we buy into it. I mean, whiteness is just as artificial a construct as blackness is." (information from MoMA caption). This art installation is located at the second floor atrium. MoMA is located in midtown Manhattan, New York City, at 11 West Fifty-third Street, between Fifth and Sixth avenues.

Yoko Ono's WISH TREE for the Museum of Modern Art

The Museum of Modern Art has installed Yoko Ono's "Wish Tree" in the Sculpture Garden as part of the new exhibit, Contemporary Art from the Collection. The tree has been drawing attention from a steady stream of museum visitors from all over the world who write their wishes on white paper tags and tie them on the tree branches. When the tree is completely covered with wishes, the paper tags are collected and placed in a glass box on the second floor of the museum. The Wish Tree is a tribute to Yoko Ono and John Lennon's campaign for world peace. It was inspired by Yoko Ono's childhood in Japan. When visiting a temple, she would write a wish on a piece of paper and attach it to a tree branch. The Wish Tree installation runs through the Fall.

The video below from MOMA shows Yoko Ono writing her wish, as well as her performance in "Voice Piece for Soprano," a participatory artwork at MOMA. Museum visitors are invited to take a microphone in the museum's atrium and follow Ono's instructions, posted on a wall to "Scream 1. against the wind; 2. against the wall; 3. against the sky." The resulting screams are amplified throughout the galleries.

 

HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON Photography Exhibit at MoMA

On exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art until June 28 is a retrospective of the photographs of HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON (1908-2004), one of the most original, accomplished, influential and beloved photographer. The exhibition surveys Cartier-Bresson’s entire career, with a presentation of about three hundred photographs, mostly arranged thematically and supplemented with periodicals and books. In a review of the exhibition in The New Yorker, Peter Schjeldahl writes, "The hallmark of Cartier-Bresson’s genius is less in what he photographed than in where he placed himself to photograph it, incorporating peculiarly eloquent backgrounds and surroundings. His shutter-click climaxes an artful scurry for the perfect point of view. This made him a natural for photojournalism, whose subjects, their “significance” prejudged, unfold unpredictably in space and time."

STACK by SHAY ALKALAY

On exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art is SHAY ALKALAY's "STACK" (2008). Made of painted plywood and steel, the stack storage drawers unit is manufactured by ESTABLISHED & SONS.  With STACK, the artist showcases the beauty of drawers left open. Stack units are available in two attractive color schemes as shown in APARTMENT THERAPY, and the drawers can be opened from either side. London-based Shay Alkalay was born in Israel in 1976. This exciting designer has shown in Madrid, Cologne, Tokyo, Shanghai, Milan and New York. He obtained an MA in product design from the Royal College of Art. 

Tom Wesselmann's STILL LIFE #30 at the Museum of Modern Art

On view at the Museum of Modern Art is this piece by American artist Tom Wesseelmann (1931-2004) called "Still Life #30" (April 1963). It is made of oil, enamel and synthetic polymer paint on composition board with collage of printed advertisements, plastic flowers, refrigerator door, plastic replicas of 7-Up bottles, glazed and framed color reproduction, and stamped metal, 48 1/2 x 66 x 4" (122 x 167.5 x 10 cm). 

Bauhaus 1919–1933: Workshops for Modernity at the Museum of Modern Art

Entrance to the exhibit hall with a painting by JOHANNES ITTEN

A special exhibition about BAUHAUS opened last week at the Museum of Modern Art. Bauhaus ("House of Building") was a famous and influential avant-garde art school in Germany that operated from 1919-1933. I made these images when I viewed the exhibit which runs through January 25.

From the MOMA website:

This survey is MoMA’s first major exhibition since 1938 on the subject of this famous and influential school of avant-garde art. Founded in 1919 and shut down by the Nazis in 1933, the Bauhaus brought together artists, architects, and designers in an extraordinary conversation about the nature of art in the age of technology. Aiming to rethink the very form of modern life, the Bauhaus became the site of a dazzling array of experiments in the visual arts that have profoundly shaped our visual world today. 

The exhibition gathers over four hundred works that reflect the broad range of the school’s productions, including industrial design, furniture, architecture, graphics, photography, textiles, ceramics, theater design, painting, and sculpture, many of which have never before been exhibited in the United States. It includes not only works by the school’s famous faculty and best-known students—including Anni Albers, Josef Albers, Herbert Bayer, Marianne Brandt, Marcel Breuer, Lyonel Feininger, Walter Gropius, Vasily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, László Moholy-Nagy, Lucia Moholy, Lilly Reich, Oskar Schlemmer, and Gunta Stölzl—but also a broad range of works by innovative but less well-known students, suggesting the collective nature of ideas.

CLAUDE MONET'S Water Lilies: The Full Group of Late Paintings at MOMA

Water Lilies, Reflections of Weeping Willows. 1914–1926. Oil on canvas. 51 1/4" x 78 3/4" (130.2 x 200 cm)

The Japanese Footbridge, c. 1920-1922, Oil on canvas. 35 1/4 x 45 7/8" (89.5 x 116.3 cm)

Water Lilies. 1914–1926. Oil on canvas. 51 1/4" x 79" (130.2 x 200.7 cm).

Water Lilies. 1914–26. Oil on canvas, 6' 6 1/2" x 19' 7 1/2" (199.5 x 599 cm)

Agapanthus. 1914–26. Oil on canvas, 6' 6" x 70 1/4" (198.2 x 178.4 cm)

Water Lilies 1914-1926

On exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art are Claude Monet's Water Lilies through April 12. This is a special exhibit because for the first time in the museum's new building, the full group of Claude Monet's late paintings is featured in the collection. These include a mural-sized triptych (Water Lilies, 1914–26) and a single-panel painting of the water lilies in the Japanese-style pond that Monet cultivated on his property in Giverny, France (Water Lilies, 1914–26), as well as The Japanese Footbridge (c. 1920–22) and Agapanthus (1914–26), depicting the majestic plants in the pond's vicinity. These paintings have long held a special status with the Museum's audiences and, much like MoMA's Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden, they provide a modern oasis in the center of midtown Manhattan. These works will be complemented by two loans of closely related paintings.