It felt so good to be back at MoMA last month – since I haven’t been there for 18 months. On our anniversary we went for a nice day in the city and a fantastic dinner – and so MoMA was a big part of the nice day.

I am not obsessed with cars, in fact most of you probably do not even know that I never had a driver’s license- yep …true city kid here – but …if you would give me this car..I would def. get one LOL. What a beauty!

Love this painted car hood by Judy Chicago. Judy Chicago actually enrolled at an auto body school in order to learn spray painting after she completed her masters of arts.

Wonderful Alexander Calder exhibition – Modern from the Start – a bit different from the one a while ago at the Whitney.

I did love this mobile – I forgot the name but it was something with snow …which makes sense. If it wasn’t something with snow..well, I am sticking to it …it should be ;)

I have never seen his pieces made out of steel wire- they were so cool – the movement and shadows!

So fun!

I would take this little marquette- it makes me so happy and it would fit perfectly into my studio ;)

The other big exhibition at this time was Cézanne’s Drawings – a gazillion sketches and studies by him. I have to admit I wasn’t really taken by this exhibition. Although I do love to see sketches and studies and where they are going, it felt just so repetitive to me and it felt more like a sketch dump to me than really a curated exhibition. But then …what do I know …I also didn’t do the work to read anything about the show to see if that then would make more sense. But I loved the Study of Trees above.

As well as this sketch and the drawings below

because they were so different and I would have loved to actually see if they resulted in something else

Love how Cèzanne painted the pattern on the curtain!

In the permanent collection some changes- loved to see this piece by Roberto Matta “Here, Sir Fire, Eat!” from 1942 . There is a lot to see in this painting and I am still not sure what alludes to this title!

This painting by Sonja Sekula “The Town of the Poor” 1951 – oil on canvas- was just stunning. the blue and yellow washes – the lines depicting the view from her downtown NYC studio which she sahred with John Cage and Merce Cunningham.

Now to pieces by William H. Johnson – Jitterbuggs II above and below Blind Singer.

Both pieces are Screenprints with hand additions.

Norman Lewis, Untitled 1949 …it is funny sometimes I am cool with no title and sometimes I think “lazy Dude” LOL.

And then you have titles like this “Five Feet of Colorful Tools” by Jim Dine …stating the obvious but nonetheless pretty cool :)

Tom Wesselmann – Still LIfe #57 – speaking of lazy titles LOL.

And in this potpourri of artwork – my favorite of that stroll – Noah Purifoy – Unknown 1967 – painted wood with parasol armature and handle, found wood, pasted papers, backgammon and poker chips, fishing pole, wire, birdcage parts and other materials.

“As a young artist in Los Angeles, Purifoy was profoundly influenced by the 1965 Watts Rebellion, six days of civil unrest by residents of Watts and other predominantly African American neighborhoods of the city in response to decades of racial injustice. In the event’s aftermath, the artist collected charred debris form the streets and assembled it into a series of sculptures, a technique that would define his practice for years to come. Unknown, though more joyful and playful than other of his works, is a rare surviving example of his early assemblages. With its easily identifiable castoff objects, it suggests a question central to Purifoy’s practice “How …you tie the art process in with existence.” (MoMA wall plaque)

Hope you enjoyed this Back at MoMA ArtStroll!

Nat

In December on a snowy afternoon my husband and I went to a member evening with Jazz and open galleries and I guess because it was snowing the museum was almost empty. It was a total treat to walk almost alone through the galleries. 

Funky!

Seeing this in an empty room …RARE

Swoon – This piece by Giuseppe Lignano, – Foladable 1 – 2016 – Laser Cut Cardboard with Inkjet print and Enamel Paint inspired me to those pieces.

Laura Owens, Untitled, 2013 – I love this so much -the stenciled newspaper – the thick impasto flowers .

More empty gallery bliss.

Gorgeous wood cut prints by Edvard Munch!

Picasso’s Ladies on their own

Egon Schiele, Nude with Violet Stockings and Black Hair (Akt mit violetten Strümpfen und schwarzem Haar)

Egon Schiele, Portrait of Gerti Schiele, 1909 – I love this and I love how you can see how influenced Schiele was in in his style by Gustav Klimt.

Vanessa Bell, Composition – 1914 Gouache, watercolor, and colored paper on cut-and-pasted paper

YESS – I really love that MoMA finally makes an effort to show more female artists

Sonia Delaunay-Terk, La Prose du Transsibérien et de la Petite Jehanne de France (Prose of the Trans-Siberian and of Little Joan of France) 1913

Delaunay-Terk and Cendrars transformed the traditional book format from a handheld volume that is read sequentially from page to page into an object that unfolds accordion-style—a dazzlingly colorful, nearly seven-foot-long sheet on which text and illustration can be apprehended all at once. While Cendrars’s poem appears on the right, in various typefaces and colors, Delaunay-Terk’s geometries cascade down the left, and the blank spaces around the text have been stenciled with color as well.

Sonia Delaunay-Terk , 1923 Tristan Tzara with Monocle

Florine Stettheimer, Euridice and the Snake – 1912 – Costume design – Oil, beads, and metal lace on canvas

Florine Stettheimer, Gorgette, 1912 – Costume design

Stettheimer wrote the libretto and designed the costumes for this unrealized ballet.

Florine Stettheimer, Family Portrait II, 1933

An artist, playwright, set designer, and poet, Stettheimer led a Manhattan salon where she entertained, exhibited her work, and shared her poems with her favored circle of artists. In Family Portrait, II, she combines images of herself, her sisters (who ran the salon with her), and her mother with symbolic elements wittily representing their individual personality traits. Among those she chose for herself are the RCA building (30 Rockefeller Center, known today as the GE Building) and Radio City Music Hall, each identifiable by the text the artist has inscribed on it. In focusing on her family, the painting typifies Stettheimer’s concern with the personal, which seems to have endlessly inspired her. Her attention to detail extended to choosing the frames that would best set off her vibrant paintings—in this case an unusual construction of white wicker.

Francis Stark, Chorus Line 2008 – Cut-and-pasted printed and colored papers on paper.

Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven – 1923-1926 Dada Portrait of Bernice Abbott, Gouache, metallic paint, and tinted lacquer with varnish, metal foil, celluloid, fiberglass, glass beads, metal objects, cut-and-pasted painted paper, gesso and cloth on paperboard.

Fernand Legér, 1922 – costume desing for the ballet Skating Rink

People??? just kidding ;)

Joseph Cornell, Untitled (Bébé Marie) 1940s, Papered and painted wood box with painted corrugated cardboard bottom, containing doll in cloth dress and straw hat with cloth flowers, dried flowers and twigs, flecked with paint.

Rufino Tamayo, Animals 1941

Graham Sutherland, Thorn Head 1945 – Gouache, chalk and ink on paper on board

Janet Sobel, Milky Way 1945 – Enamel on Canvas

Nat

During the holiday season my husband and I want to a MoMA evening with Jazz for members. There is nothing better than the word Jazz to get the man out – LOL- just kidding ;) I think because of some snow right before we went the museum was empty- it was awesome. We finally also saw the Betye Saar exhibition. Betye Saar is known for her assemblage and collage work. Saar explores both the realities of African-American oppression and the mysticism of symbols through the combination of everyday objects. “I’m the kind of person who recycles materials but I also recycle emotions and feelings,” the artist has explained. “And I had a great deal of anger about the segregation and the racism in this country.”

The Wounded Wilderness, 1962 – Etching with relief printing.

She became interested in printmaking when she was studying design. It became her segue from design to fine art.

In the Dell, 1960 – Etching.

Her pieces were fascinating!

The Quick & the Dead, 1964 – Etching and collagraph with hand addtions and embossing with stamped ink

Mystic Window for Leo, Assemblage, etching

Saar found this window and used images of the leo and sky charts as this is an important symbol for her. I loved this so much!

Black Girl’s Window, 1969, wooden window fram with paint, cut-and-pasted printed and painted papers, daguerreotype, lenticular print and plastic figurine.

A silhouette of her head with floating moons and stars; an etching (her own) of a lion, her birth sign; a tintype of a woman who could be her Irish grandmother; and, at the center, a novelty shop Halloween skeleton alluding to her father’s death when she was a child, a loss she says she still lives with.

“Even at the time, I knew it was autobiographical”, Saar said of her now -iconic assemblage Black Girl’s Window. “It is like a diary of my life”

Saars printing materials – it was so interesting to see those and then try to find them again in her various prints.

Phrenology Man Digs Sol y Luna1966, Etching with relief-printed found objects

“Phrenology, a pseudoscience that has been definitively debunked, links portions of the human brain to different character traits and capacities. It gained popularity in the nineteenth century and was cited by proponents of slavery and segregation as proof of the inferiority of African Americans. That a black woman adopted this motif in her work may seem subversive, but according to Saar, she was attracted to phrenology as a map of the unknown, in keeping with her interest in astrology and palmistry. Her own Phrenology Man, who appears in this print and several others, has the words “SEX” and “HATE” tumbling through his mind, together with animals, flowers, and astrological signs.”

The Phrenologer’s Window II, 1966 – Wooden Window frame with cut-and-pasted printed paper, acrylic paint, and found objects on board

“You can make art out of anything.” Betye Saar

The Palmist Window, 1967 wooden window frame with cut-and-pasted printed paper and fabric with charcoal and acrylic paint

Nat