Tag: met museum

Philip Guston at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

In the late 60s, abstract artist Philip Guston stopped painting, then restarted his practice by building a new, figurative artistic vocabulary.  The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s newly installed mezzanine gallery features solitary painted objects – a lightbulb, a shoe – on small canvases that demonstrate how the artist weighed up the meaning and import of everyday objects that he would later repeat. This untitled painting shows a partial view of the artist himself, apparently painted over and covering another image. Wide-eyed and looking straight at the viewer, Guston is only partially visible, but his wary stare speaks volumes about his desire to communicate.  (On view on the Upper East Side in the Met’s ‘Philip Guston: The Panel Paintings, 1968-72 which includes work from Musa Guston Mayer’s promised gift.)

Philip Guston, Untitled, acrylic on panel, 1968.

Jacolby Satterwhite at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Vastly larger than any work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Jacolby Satterwhite’s commissioned six-channel projection ‘A Metta Prayer’ transforms the museum’s cavernous lobby space into a celebratory, uplifting and politically insistent digital realm.  Inspired by the Buddhist mantra of loving-kindness, phrases including, “May we always hear ourselves clearly” and “May your martyred fate start a revolution against hate” (seen here) appear over computer generated individuals running as if in a video game to collect ‘mantra coins.’  In the segment pictured here, dancer O’Shea Sibley appears in white sweats, filmed months before he was murdered in a racist and homo-phobic attack in a Midwood gas station last summer.  Satterwhite’s prayer continues, ‘May your candid grace deface, replace this senseless race.’ (The museum will be closed Jan 1st.  On view through Jan 7th.)

Installation view of The Great Hall Commission: Jacolby Satterwhite, A Metta Prayer, Dec 2023.

Berenice Abbott at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Right on the heels of a show of photographer Berenice Abbott’s Greenwich Village portraits and urban landscapes at Chelsea’s Marlborough Gallery, fans of the iconic early 20th century New York City chronicler can enjoy the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new exhibition of images from Abbott’s 1929 album shot around town.  Freshly back from an eight year-long stay in Paris where she pivoted to photography and established her own successful studio, Abbott arrived in New York and enthusiastically fell to documenting the thriving city as she found it.  Also included in the Met’s show are works by Abbott’s contemporaries and her ‘Changing New York’ series from ’35-’39, including this view of a 9th Ave Automat. (On view on the Upper East Side through Sept 4th).

Berenice Abbott, Automat, 877 Ninth Avenue, gelatin silver print, 1936.

Nicole Eisenman’s ‘Abolitionists’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Nicole Eisenman’s monumental painting ‘The Abolitionists in the Park’ at Hauser & Wirth Gallery in late spring/early summer was a highlight of Chelsea gallery tours; you can see it again in the Met Museum’s permanent collection, a recent acquisition thanks to the Green Family Art Foundation Gift.  At over 10 feet tall, it towers over visitors, inviting us into a scene of protesters gathered outside City Hall in downtown Manhattan during the summer of 2020.  Featuring an array of characters, from figures in shades of blue eating pizza to an entirely red-toned figure lounging in front, Eisenman meets and disrupts expectations of large-scale history painting while taking the genre up to the present moment. (On view in the Mezzanine gallery).

Nicole Eisenman, The Abolitionists in the Park, oil on canvas, 127 x 105 inches, 2020-22.

Alex Katz at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Alex Katz’s towering painting of his wife, Ada, in red coat, hat and lips dominates a selection of paintings by the artist at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. As bold as an advertisement but with no product to sell, this arresting painting celebrates Ada’s allure. (Through Nov 6th).

Alex Katz, Red Coat, oil on canvas, on loan from the American Contemporary Art Foundation, Inc. Leonard A. Lauder, President, 1982.
Alex Katz, Red Coat, oil on canvas, on loan from the American Contemporary Art Foundation, Inc. Leonard A. Lauder, President, 1982.