If Ron Arad’s name isn’t familiar, then chances are his work is, especially if you’ve ever been in stores such as Moroso or Moss in Soho. Arad specializes in seating, designing the familiar Ripple chair, shaped like an infinity sign, and the stacking Tom Vac, a sort of ribbed oval half cocoon. Arad can clearly design simple, elegant pieces with wide appeal and function. But for every VW, he has designed a Ferrari. In No Discipline, MOMA shows 140 examples of Arad’s work, including some of these Ferrari-type chaises.
The beauty (or curse) of being an industrial designer is that you can create the exhibition environment, in addition to filling it up. The main structure is called Cage sans Frontières, a freestanding unit of cubbies whose walls undulate, ribbon-like. Arad favors organic, flowing lines akin to a skate’s wing, and juxtaposes these soft contours with his materials’ strengths. Although it’s impressive by itself, it makes the exhibition feel like a bit like shopping. read more
James Ensor (1860-1949) is one of those artists whose name is fairly familiar, but whose work hovers in a mental netherworld of art history. So MoMA’s overview of this Belgian artist offers welcome insight into his weird, intriguing oeuvre that overlapped many influential movements and artists before nestling most comfortably with the expressionists of the early 20th century. The show, which runs June 28–Sept 21 and was organized by Anna Swinbourne, the museum’s assistant curator of painting and sculpture, is ordered chronologically and comprises about 120 works. Most were done in the 1880s and 90s, the decades of his richest output that saw the rapid location, refinement, and evolution of his voice.
It’s easy to play the association game while looking at his early stuff in which he honed his technique—streetscapes/Monet; still lifes/Cézanne; full, flattened figure/Manet; interiors bathed with northern European light/Vermeer; and so on. Paintings that showed he had mastered traditional painting technique featured not society types but regular folk, such as in The Oyster Eater (1882) and The Drunkards (1883).
In the mid-1880s, what would become signature motifs began creeping into his sketches and compositions. read more
Aside from the thorny subject of race, there’s perhaps been no other aspect of the national culture more contested and argued over than the American West. Even before the spread of photography, dime novels and steel engravings transmitted legends of gamblers and gunslingers, and indigenous natives who were at once noble and bloodthirsty. But it was the camera that revolutionized our ability to mythologize the West, to capture not only its winners and losers, heroes and villains, but also its magnificent natural beauty. And while still technology eventually led to motion pictures and an entire industry getting its start with stories of Cowboys and Indians, one can argue that the singular photographic image has remained vital to defining the West and our ever-changing notions about it.
“Into The Sunset: Photography’s Image of the American” at the Museum of Modern Art through June 8, provides plenty of ammunition for such an argument. One view are over 150 original prints, dating from 1850 to 2008. Depicting the West old and new, they are hung next to or near one another without regards to chronology. The effect overall—beyond the host of questions raised by placing, say, images of nomadic Native Americans in the same room as a group portrait of Hells Angels—is to re-inforce the familiar notion that the West is less of a place than it is a state of mind. read more
It’s plain to see what Martin Kippenberger (1953 – 1997) did, judging from MOMA’s fairly comprehensive overview of this German artist. The question is, what didn’t he do? At various stages of his sadly brief life, he had the ambition to be an actor, writer, musician, and artist. He met each with varying success, but surely it is his body of artwork that best reflects the larger-than-life man who seemed to view the world as his playground and art history as his palette. He located his place in the universe for us by attaching tangents to other artists/artworks or historical items.
Subtitled The Problem Perspective and assembled by Ann Goldstein, senior curator at MOCA in LA, with Ann Temkin, MoMA’s chief curator of painting and sculpture, the centerpiece of the show is an installation that sums up Kippenberger’s madcap vision and breadth of ambition. read more
Remember the sad time when MoMA closed its headquarters for renovation, forcing legions to cross the god-forsaken East River to Queens, where it shattered the space/time continuum in a hangar-like aluminum shed? It’s not exactly the same, but some masterpieces from MoMA have transplanted themselves, via giant plastic decals, into the Hades-like Atlantic/Pacific transit complex in Brooklyn in what has been dubbed a Schwarzeneggeresque “station domination.” (The catacombs have NOTHING on this monstrosity of tunnels and stairs, although Manhattan’s Fulton Street subway complex surely does.)
In fact, MoMA/AP is way better, because it catches folks by surprise, at least it did me. MoMA has put up nearly 60 different “artworks,” most of which are familiar, and some of which are new. Icons include Meret Oppenheim’s Object (“fur teacup”), Picasso’s Demoiselles D’Avignon, and van Gogh’s Starry Night reside next to fresher names such as Wangechi Mutu and Bill Morrison. Also included are works of industrial design, such as John Barnard/Ferrari’s Formula One racing car and flower printed fabric by William Morris.
The artworks are supplemented by graphic elements that parallel the escalator, wrap columns, and even turnstile bars with a bold design scheme in fuschia/black. They printed a humorous subway map-like flyer diagramming the locations of the work, plus little factoids and games. Oh, and a coupon for free entry to MoMA, worth $20. (You think, wow, I save $20! Whoa—it costs $20 to enter MoMA?) read more
MoMA’s new exhibition, Home Delivery, is satisfying but kind of perverse for New Yorkers. They’ve installed five pre-fab, temporary homes in the parking lot adjacent to the main museum, between 53rd and 54th Streets. The lot has been used to accommodate queues of people waiting to enter, though that was primarily when the renovated museum opened a few years ago. But the irony for Gothamites is that open lots like this are largely distant fantasies, putting any realistic local application firmly out of reach.
But it’s fun to dream. The houses range in size from tiny to multi-story. One of the most successful designs is the “micro compact home,” not much bigger and just as functional as a railway sleeper car (from what I’ve seen in the movies!) or small trailer home. It’s well detailed, sleek, and looks completely ready to move into. And amazingly, it took just two hours to install, according to the exhibition’s blog. The architects are Richard Horden, Lydia Haack, and John Höpfner. read more
What’s the opposite of a golden age? Whatever it’s called, it’s the age we’re living in when it comes to soundtracks—particularly from Hollywood movies. Trying to find a score that makes for decent home listening shorn of its accompanying images is a daunting task these days. Roughly speaking, your choices are either collections of pop songs (more or less inspired, cf. Juno) or formulaic scores that (1) tend to repeat a couple of themes ad nauseam and (2) are utterly predictable in their arrangements and melodic approaches. An ongoing film series at the Museum of Modern Art, “Jazz Score,” not only puts this dire situation in perspective, but shows us the birth of a specifically American approach to scoring. read more
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