365 Days at the Met

April 28, 2022 Gallery 767 is home to works by three contemporary African-American artists, Kara Walker, Kerry James Marshall, and Hugh Hayden, that reflect on two icons of American painting in the Met's collection: Emmanuel Leutze's "Washington Crossing the Delaware," which hangs in the adjacent gallery, and Winslow Homer's "The Gulf Stream," part of a major show on Homer that's currently at the museum. For me, Kara Walker's "The Crossing," an outsize diptych that  measures approximately 12 feet long and 7 feet high, is by far the most impressive item on display, and unquestionably the most hard-hitting.  According to the placard, she began this take-off on the Leutze painting on January 20, 2017,  the day of Trump's inauguration, and the work expresses her anger and anguish about that event.  The drawing is largely in black and white, with a few notable exceptions: the red, white, and blue of the American flag, the blue of the wat...

 April 21, 2022 The title of the sign introducing gallery 766 is "The Cosmopolitan Spirit, 1860-1900," although again, the timeframe is only approximate.  The gallery shows works by artists who lived in Europe or traveled widely in other countries. These works include a couple of Orientalist paintings, which seem obligatory in a gallery with this theme. along with a Whistler and a Ryder.  The majority of these painters, though, I've never heard of.  One whose name - but little more -  I did know is Henry Ossawa Tanner. Tanner, I learn, spent his latter years in France, in part to escape racism in this country.  One of his paintings is on display, a "Flight Into Egypt"; the setting Tanner depicts is not the conventional desert scene but a narrow urban alley. According to the placard, in his later years, Tanner turned to Biblical themes, which must have been instilled in him in childhood; his father was a bishop in the  A.M.E. Church.   Today's obje...

April 18, 2022 The placard introducing gallery 765 describes its holdings as dealing with the American West between 1860 and 1920.  In fact, several of the works on exhibit were made after that period. These include an iconic 1930 Georgia O'Keeffe painting of Ranchos Church in Taos; an Ernest Blumenschein landscape of Taos Valley painted in 1933 that is distinctive for its geometric forms and rich color contrasts; and a striking jar made in 1990 by Nathan Begaye, a Hopi-Navajo ceramist and painter, that depicts the sun god both as a traditional katsina and as a nude man whose well-muscled, triangular torso, six-pack abs, pubic hair, and genitals are on full frontal display. (I note that the Met has been diligent about using "katsina" rather than "kachina," but has not similarly substituted Dine' for Navajo - presumably because relatively few people would know the tribe's name for itself.)  Works seem to fit into this gallery because of their subjects, no...

  April 11, 2022 The title of the placard introducing gallery 764 is "In the Artist's Studio, 1865-1900."  Some paintings indeed depict artists in their studios, while others show craftsmen and scientists in their places of work. For me, though, what the paintings largely indicate is their creators' self-consciousness as artists. Eight of the paintings displayed are by Thomas Eakins, and today's work, entitled "Arcadia," is the one that most grabs me, possibly because (and I am not proud to say this) I am aware of the speculation that Eakins was gay. and wonder whether  the canvas was meant to have homoerotic appeal.  The painting, which is about 44 inches wide and 40 inches high,  shows three nude figures, one standing and two lying on a lush green sward framed by leafy green trees in the background. Two of the figures play pipes of Pan. I can readily imagine that the lean youth standing at the right could be viewed as sexually enticing, although his ge...

  April 1, 2022 Gallery 763 holds 13 oil paintings and a number of sculptures executed between 1860 and 1890. The introductory signage notes that many of the paintings present a rather sentimental and traditional, if not conservative, view of American life that ignored the new realities of mass immigration and industrialization. In fact, the works on display do include several portraits of large families in comfortable and prosperous settings. But, after all, these were the people who could pay painters for their work! Despite its relatively small size (perhaps 28" high and 24" wide)  William Michael Harnett's 1879 still-life, entitled "The Artist's Letter Rack," immediately grabs me because its trompe l'oeil effect is so successful.  I've never seen a letter rack and can't imagine how this one works, but the pink square that presumably holds the letters and calling cards practically jumps off the canvas; I had to get close to see that the work r...