Dearest Readers,
The Met is overwhelming. Dizzying. Too much art for me to
absorb.
One select, targeted hour with floor plan in hand did the
trick.
This visit I threaded my way through rooms of European
decorative furnishings, Greek and Roman statuary, and Medieval paintings to an
obscure elevator that took me to the roof garden and cafe.
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| Imran Qureshi-floor painting acrylic on stone |
Pakistani miniaturist and installation artist Imran Qureshi is
the guest artist this summer/fall on the rooftop space.
I was shocked to experience the flatness of this floor
piece. I expected another huge intertwining sculpture, like the Roxy Paine stainless
steel, rootish extravaganza “Maelstrom” from 2009 that crawled all over the roof.
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| Roxie Paine-Maelstrum, 2009 |
Instead, the area was wide open, but not quiet. I had to
draw my eyes down, away from the clear-day panorama of NYC, to a bloody
splatter-painting of carnage, sprouting swirls of delicate foliage blooming from
the gore.
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| Imran Quereshi-detail of floor painting |
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| Imran Quereshi-detail |
I loved it. It was political
and poetic with a miniaturist’s sensibility, bringing to America the terrorism
rampant in Qureshi’s native Pakistan, while reminding me of our own terror
attacks in Boston and our epidemic of mass shootings. This space required some time to meditate on
the clash of natural beauty, cruelty and hope.
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| Anna Mendieta-Untitled from the Sandwoman series1983 |
Right off the elevator, down to the first floor in a hallway, I found the
small show of earthwork photos entitled “Land Marks”-mostly documentations of
outdoor artist interventions using the body+an idea+the ground. Mendieta above expresses her earthly feminism in sand.
According to the wall text, Kiefer below believes there is no one theory for all. Here he draws himself under a blue bubble expiating for the WW2 sins of his German culture and relating his action to the motherland.
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| Anselm Kieffer-Everyone Stands Under His Own Dome of Heaven, 1970 |
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| Matthew Brandt-Mary's Lake, MT-C-Print with random color created from immersions in the lake water, 2012 |
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| Richard Long-County Cork, an ephemeral piece created by his own body walking repeatedly on the land, 1967 |
My own recent earthwork, “The Hole” was a similar attempt last
summer to project the impermanent self within the ostensible
permanence of the land–a desire in my case for immortality, but realizing my
momentary place in time and space.
On the Mezzanine level I discovered a few modern and
contemporary paintings from the Met’s own collection. Two similar abstract
pieces thrilled me with their layering of stroke, paint and color. In the first case,
Terry Winters' paint marks are red and exuberant like a dark sun burst.
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| Terry Winters-Light Source Directions, 1997 |
In the latter painting by Lethbridge, I imagine a cool, raucous, bird’s eye view of a tangle of tree branches covered in ice and
snow. (Grandson Roman called them scribble pictures!)
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| Julian Lethbridge-Untitled, 2003-4 |
Last stop, a small show of early abstractions from the
Metropolitan’s collection of Paul Klee paintings, mostly on paper from the
1920’s. I was again transported to a singular environment, and an artist’s
vision. The one-room exhibition was dimly lit in yellowish light. Each piece
was a small world of the imagination–little treasures of the eye and mind, based on a trip he took to Hammamet in Tunisia.
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| Paul Klee-The Firmament Above the Temple |
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| Paul Klee-Static-Dynamic Gradations |
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| Paul Klee-Mural From the Temple of Longing |
