365 Days at the Met

March 30, 2023 Gallery 901 centers on surrealism. Its contents include canvases by Miro, Dali, Magritte, and Picasso, as well as one of the slender Brancusi sculptures meant to evoke a bird. None of it is easy for me, all enigmatic.  The most opaque is an enormous (perhaps 18 feet long and 9 feet high) 1946 painting by the Chilean artist Roberto Matta. I can’t figure out what’s going on.  The title - “Being With” - is no help either. The caption is somewhat informative.  It notes that the painting depicts “a labyrinth of architectural structures seen from various perspectives” Maybe so - I’m more inclined to see industrial tools: a hoist, perhaps, or a saw. The caption also describes “contorted humanoid figures engaged in sex acts.”  I recognize circles denoting breasts; perhaps the blade-like objects protruding from some of the figures represent penises? At first I had no idea what the artist was trying to say with the image. But I concluded that it's not a rational response but r

March 19, 2022 With gallery 900, I begin exploring the Met's collection of Modern and Contemporary Art.  This gallery, which was recently rehung, holds a rather odd assemblage of works, including portraits by Picasso (Gertrude Stein has been moved here), Max Beckmann, and Modigliani. It also contains three paintings by Harlem Renaissance artists with whom I'm unfamiliar - Archibald Motley, Jr., Aaron Douglas, and Hale Woodruff; I suspect that their inclusion was a major motivation for the rehanging. All the works are representational, although most contain elements of simplification and abstraction.   I decide that I should challenge myself by focusing on the most difficult work in each gallery, and here this is indisputably a 1924 oil by Chaim Soutine, measuring about 40 inches wide and 30 inches high. The foreground suggests a still life; it contains a dark green bottle, a white pitcher holding a paddle, and what initially looks like some unidentifiable red fruit, all laid ou

 The 19th and early 20th century  galleries, especially the Impressionist and post-Impressionist galleries,  always seem crowded - I suspect the Met could make a go of it on ticket sales if it consisted only of these  rooms and the Egyptian collection (which has the advantage of being on the ground floor and containing mummies). I know that these were my mother's favorite galleries.  It's worth asking why they are so popular. I suspect that the answer lies in the fact that many paintings display a combination of originality of technique (or at least what felt original 150 years ago) and of familiarity  We take pleasure in the free brushwork -  the broad swaths of color, but especially the small dabs that we see as leaves or flowers or as ripples or foam in a  body of water, and that give the paintings a shimmering quality.  The images are familiar in that they are representational - abstraction hasn't yet entered the picture. In all but a few cases, we can recognize what is