Wednesday, April 23, 2008

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

It was a glorious day up at 1000 Fifth Avenue. The sun was shining and the museum was not too crowded. My first stop was the Gustave Courbet exhibit.
from: www.metmuseum.org
"This is the first full retrospective of the French artist Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) in thirty years, presenting some 130 works by this pioneering figure in the history of modernism, from his seminal manifesto paintings of the 1850s to the views of his native Ornans and portraits of his friends and family. The exhibition also includes a selection of nineteenth-century photographs that relate to Courbet's work, especially his landscapes and nudes. The works are drawn from public and private collections in the U.S. and abroad."
Then: Jasper Johns: Gray
"The exhibition examines the use of the color gray by the American artist Jasper Johns (b. 1930) between the mid-1950s and the present. It brings together more than 120 paintings, reliefs, drawings, prints, and sculptures from American and international collections. Johns has worked in gray, at times to evoke a mood, at other times to evoke an intellectual rigor that results from his purging most color from his works. This exhibition is the first to focus on this important thematic and formal thread in Johns's career and includes some of the artist's best-known works, such as Canvas, Gray Target, Jubilee, 0 through 9, No, Diver, and The Dutch Wives, as well as works from the artist's Catenary series and new paintings never before exhibited."
Then late lunch at Jack: Pumpkin Sage Ravioli sage ravioli filled pumpkin, served with a citrus reduction and toasted walnuts. I would have been just as happy with Chicken McNuggets.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

David and I saw this exhibit two weeks ago. It is phenomenal, Marjorie. Enjoy!