Guston and Cezanne

I saw this sleeve in a Guston up at the Modern. Earlier this week I made this crop from a Cezanne Bather Painting.

Ive seen this similar idea in Hockney and in Johns. Cezanne's surface had some simile as a Harlequin figure, the figure of Harlequin as the surface of painting.

Cezanne used these flat brushstrokes to turn the form of an orange and at the same time make the surface of the canvas non illusionistic and physical.

Museum of Modern Art, August 2008

The black line here in the hands of Manet's Christ seems to have something to do with the accents of the urban 'black' one sees in the tophats and overcoats of the Parisian strollers.



Manet made boat shapes black on a viridian sea. Here Monet does a similar thing. One sees it taken forward in Matisse and Marquet takes it to make the center of his style. Close valued color tempered with figures and lines of black.




Van Gogh in his struggle to draw he almost incises this line and finally uses black to get the full force of effect.



This is where I'm going with all this. A blow up of the Van Gogh gets us mighty close to Picasso and Jasper Johns, if on squints.






This line of Van Gogh also connects to what I'm bringing up later about Guston.





One can see here how this line sets the strenght of Picasso and Matisse.



Mondrian has his own complete evolution which has created a unique Modernism. He begins with a naturalistic illusionistic line and comes along to the more artificially drawn line, now flattened, and more in relation to the reality of the surface of the physical canvas.






Beckman is someone I am interested in lately as he is a link to Marsden Hartley and this line coming to America through German Expressionism through Picasso's influence.






Gorky and de Kooning, and Pollock bring all this forward to a new level once again.











There is a nice grouping of Guston in the Atrium. I was surprised then when I came upon this Claes Oldenburg. I then saw how Elizabeth Murray related to this group.






The insistent black line drawing, in it's variations has been an important way in which reality has been seen as Modern. There have been many subtle innovations in this evolution in the last 40 years. We are missing Frank Stella, Rosenquist, and later Johns.

Modern's Bathers

The Bather. c. 1885



Standing Model, c. 1860-80
Photograph
Artist Unknown

Then this lithograph from later-- 1896-97
So Cezanne apparently worked on this motif for many years.

Cezanne at Barnes Foundation

This Cezanne was a surprise. I couldn't remember ever seeing it.

dated 1876-77




The Bathers as a motif is one of the interesting things the Barnes has alot of. Sadly I couldn't take pictures so it will take some special investigation to put together all the pieces in my head.

One thing I'm wondering about is that there is recently a photograph at the Modern of the Bather that Cezanne painted.

Strange as there seem to be alot of paintings that predate the Modern's Bather and all have the motif of the white, underwear like garment.

Barnes Foundation.

No Photography

I was blown away walking in. I hadn't been there since 1972 when a bunch of us students having been up all night decided to drive down from NYC.

Big Cezannes, Seurats, Matisse, seeming masterpieces everywhere-- then I realized something strange well but not as good as that Cezanne at the Met or the Matisse seems a bit under par-- maybe the gallery was dark? a bit of wear? Frames dirty.



The Met's refined version?

Well I got a kick from my friend for complaining and so yes I shut up.

There are so many paintings hung every which way salon style I reflected upon the statement, that a painting "essentially a flat surface covered by colours in a certain order" wondering what made anything stand out?

There are a number of Van Gogh's one of a brothell I think Picasso copied and even seems the source of Picasso's strenght in the strong intense line.

Matisse stands out in this collection there are 20 little nudes from the south of France. Any one isolated on an elegant wall would be a priceless jewel. Here there is one after another.



The small size of alot of paintings-- either a collectors souvenir or a interesting oddity?

Well again alot looks like a job lot-- of Renoir, not the best. Although Renoir has many great poses probably Mattise drew from.

Matisse great Joy of Life painting hangs in a stairway-- like at the Modern?



I was not so impressed as we finished the downstars . We were already exhausted-- but took a lunch break and to come back and realize there was as much upstairs.

The sheer numbers make a certain impression. Two high quality Gaugins. Im not sure if any of the Cezannes were great. All the little Bathers my favorite.

So Cezanne, Matisse, Van Gogh, the post man is here, and Gauguin. Have trouble with the Renoir. The Mural is great but like his sketches for it better.

It's an amazing eccentric place.


It reminds me a bit of the L'Orangerie in Paris. I remember Manet's Olympia on a wood polished wall. I thought it would always be there. Then on one trip it appeared instead on the mall like walls of the Dorsey Museum, with removable peg holes--


The L'Orangerie now is newly done and the archtecture I guess one would say is modern--ley beautiful if not brutal in
presenting the Impressionist master works of Monet, Cezanne, similar work as the Barnes, but which one gets an entiriely different feel for there.

Jewish Museum

Action/Abstraction
Pollock, de Kooning, and American Art, 1940-1976

No Photography-- allowed.

Wow. One walks in and everything looks new-- or as it did? The Low cielings and small rooms of the Jewish Museum give a certain power back to the paintings, Pollock at least, his painting Convergence steals the room.

This is the best Pollock besides Blue Poles in Sidney, which I have never seen, and the Met's and Modern's.




The show starts out really great. Pollock and deKooning-- the deKooning a bit squeezed in here it could have a much better showing. Then into the next room a startling Hofmann.





There is a bunch of memorabilia in the form of old Art News and movie clip, an incredibly handsome presence in de Kooning cynically asks over and over like a Nauman in the space , "say Harold am I an action painter?-- its a short film loop.




A great Still and a small Newman finish out the show for me.

A Rothko like another Newman and the beginning, Gotham News of de Kooning are so-- I guess I have to say, badly hung one can nott really gain any aesthetic hold onto them which makes this show mainly historical.

I hope to see it in St Louis where they have alot of space.

NY Metropolitan Museum, Early Modernism

Marsden Hartley, first has interesting connection to Ryder.





Above Arthur Dove painting from 1924, one looking very much like Duchamp's, Tu m' of 1918, that seems to have a later relation to Jasper Johns.




O'Keeffe also had a connection to Dove.




These Stuart Davis paintings would be amazing with the ones from the Carnegie Museum and a number I've seen across the US. I'll put them all together in a later post.




I'd like to see this Benton with the one I just saw at Josyln Museum.

Al Held and Georgia O'Keffee

Held at Joslyn Museum, O'Keffee at Chicago Art Institute.

Jeff Koons, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago

The poster for example looks good-- like the advertising it is.

Show itself looked kind of old, looks like a flea market.

They had a walled off portion to show his more intimate work. A little sad.

I was surprised to see a retrospective seemed like a bad Idea. Should have just had a big flowered puppy instead!








Jeff Koons things for sale at Museum.