365 Days at the Met

 July 29, 2023 Galleries 904 through 907 are still closed, as are galleries 922-925, so this seems as good a time as any to think about the works I've been looking at for the past several months. If the reopening of these galleries leads me to reflect further on what I've seen, I can always return to this entry. The first thing to say is that these are unquestionably the most difficult and challenging galleries I've visited, and this would be true, I think, even if I hadn't given myself the task of writing about works that struck me as the most difficult and challenging. With representational art, you basically recognize what you're looking at, even when the work is highly stylized (think African sculptures or totem poles). The familiarity is comforting. You can pay attention to subject or composition or color or line or iconography or cultural influences without wondering "What is this?" The abstract works I've seen make very different demands Some th...

July 6, 2023 Gallery 921 displays nine large works. I can’t abide by my “rule” of choosing the most problematic canvas, because if I did, I suspect that my choice,  an abstraction by Clyfford Still (three are hanging side-by-side,  all characterized. by irregular swaths and slashes of paint), would say nothing to me no matter how long I looked at it. But neither will I take the easy way out and select the painting I immediately recognize and gravitate to,  one of Ellsworth Kelly’s “Blue Green Red “ paintings, whose clean lines and rich colors I find endlessly satisfying.   My choice is instead a 1970 acrylic  on canvas entitled "Whirlirama," by Sam Gilliam,  an artist I’ve never heard of before. Very large in format (perhaps nine feet across and only a little less high), it is composed of vertical streaks in various colors, predominantly teal, turquoise, and red-orange, but also yellows, a fleshy pink. and brown. Giving the painting visual interest are the ...

June 29, 2023 Gallery 920 is home to six large wall panels employing different media, as well as to a sculpture by David Smith. All merit and receive my attention, I decide - although I now wonder if I would have had the same reaction to many, many other works if I had taken care to look at them more closely.   One of the items that first grabs me is a relatively early (1961) work by Andy Warhol  called "Before and After 1" which juxtaposes two large profiles of a woman, drawn in comic-book fashion. In one profile, the woman has a hook nose, in the other a button nose, and you realize with a bit of shock that the event to which the title refers is the subject's nose job. A second Warhol work, "Nine Jackies," is a silkscreen showing, in a 3 X 3 matrix, nine images of Jackie Kennedy,  based on a photo clearly taken November 22,  1963, since Jackie is wearing that famous pillbox hat. It's interesting to see the way that President Kennedy's face moves into a...