I always enjoy time at the Whitney – it is a short 15 minutes PATH ride from here and every time I am there I also enjoy seeing changes in the permanent collection.

Florine Stettheimer, New York, Oil on Canvas – 1918

I love this painting – how Stettheimer worked the folds of Lady Liberty’s toga, the view , the frame!

Japer Johns, Two Maps, 1965,Encaustic, oil, found paper and cotton on canvas

just look at the details – swoon!

Louis Lozowick, Strike Scene, 1935 – Lithograph

What an impressive print – it also kind of blew my mind how much work went into into creating the plate and the print showing a split of a second moment – being so used to photography nowadays.

Reginald Marsh, Death Avenue, 1927, Oil, charcoal, fabricated chalk, and ink on canvas

This painting shows the “Death Avenue” as it was called before the 1930s – and before the elevated train tracks were built – nowadays more known as the High Line. The freight line would frequently cause the death of a pedestrian. Marsh chronicled everyday urban life in his paintings.

When asked for his advice to young painters, Marsh replied, “How to draw? Go out into the street, stare at the people. Stare, stare, keep on staring. Go to your studio, stare at your pictures, yourself, everything.”

Charles Demuth, Buildings, Lancaster, 1930, Oil and graphite pencil on composition board

Thomas Hart Benton, Poker Night, 1948, Tempera and oil on linen

This is a scene from the theatre play A Street Car Named Desire. The story is that the painting was a commission and the female actor on the right looking into this mirror was totally offended by her portrayal since she was not wearing anything like the neglige in the painting.

Fairfield Porter, Portrait of Ted Carey and Andy Warhol, 1960, Oil on linen

In 1960, Warhol and Carey commissioned Fairfield Porter to paint their portraits. They thought they could save money by requesting a double portrait which they planned to cut in two, each taking his half. But Porter foiled their scheme by posing them so closely together that they could not divide the forty-inch-square of painting without ruining it. Warhol ended up buying Carey’s share and ultimately giving the portrait to the Whitney Museum of American art in New York.

Good on you Fairfield- well played :)

George Tooker, The Subway, 1950, Tempera on composition board

I always feel haunted by this painting and cannot stop looking at it.

The people look trapped, the woman seems anxious. Where is she going? What are the guys doing in the cubicles? Is it modern live anxiety …or the anxiety of living in an Mc Carthy era? I always think about the later.

Rockwell Kent, Moonlight, Winter, c. 1940, oil on linen

Agnes Pelton, Untitled, 1931, Oil on canvas

I hope you enjoyed the little Art Stroll through the Whitney – see you soon again with a different stroll.

Nat

A couple of weeks ago I went to the Whitney to see the Calder exhibition – which was fantastic- but I also took some time for the Where We Are exhibition with selections from the Whitney’s collection 1900-1960.

“Where We Are traces how artists have approached the relationships, institutions and activities that shape our lives. The Exhibition is organized in five themes: family and community, work, home, the spiritual and the nation. During the six decades covered in the exhibition, the U.S. experiences war and peace, collapse and recovery, and social discord and progress. The artists and their works suggest that our sense of self is composed of our responsibilities, places and beliefs. Where We Are is titled after a phrase in W.H. Auden’s poem “September 1, 1939”. The title of the poem marks the date Germany invaded Poland. While it’s subject is the beginning of the war, Auden’s true theme is how the shadow of a global emergency reaches into the far corners of everyday life. Where we Are shares Auden’s guarded optimism, gathering a constellation of artists, whose light might lead us forward.”

Ellsworth Kelly, 1961 – Red, White and blue – Oil on linen

Ellsworth Kelly’s earliest works of art were created in service to the United States, as part of a special camouflage unit in France during World War II. Kelly and his fellow artist-soldiers were tasked with fooling the Germans—using rubber and wood to construct fake tanks and trucks—into thinking the multitudes of Allied troops on the battlefield were much larger than reality. While this seems an unconventional early training for an artist, it proved a fitting one for Kelly. After his service, Kelly enrolled in the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. After knowing this – doesn’t the painting now feel like a camouflage flag? ;)

Herman Trunk, Jr., Mount Vernon, 1932.  Oil on canvas

Jasper Johns, 1958 – three Flags, Encaustic on canvas

Johns saw the American flag as a symbol that is usually “seen and not looked at, not examined”. The execution and composition of Three Flags encourages close inspection. What do you think, is the middle panel actually fully painted with the flag or not? Apparently it is still a bit of a mystery although infrared hints it is incomplete.

Jasper Johns, 1959, watercolor and graphite on fond paper

Having just seen the Rauschenberg exhibition at MoMA this made me excited – and I love the mail-art.

George Grosz, 1947-48, Waving the Flag, Watercolor on paper

Marsden Hartley, 1914-15, Painting, Number 5, Oil on linen

Marsden Hartley began this work before the First World War, during an extended stay in Berlin. The painting is a memorial to Karl von Freyburg, a young German officer whom Hartley loved and who was killed in battle soon after the war began. The way he painted has the effect of a collage.

Jacob Lawrence, 1946 and 1947- War series – Tempura on composition board

I had never seen the war series by Lawrence before and it really grabbed me. He painted the series while serving during WWII. These paintings are timeless and the narrative is ingrained in our heads with wars we have experienced or know about.

I would like to go back and see the other paintings in the gallery in this series with more time- but it was quite full that day.

Archibald Motley Jr., 1948 – Gettin’ Religion, Oil on linen

Archibald Motley’s primary artistic inspiration were the inhabitants of Chicago’s South Side, a culturally thriving neighborhood at the time. In this night scene he captured the full spectrum of urban experiences.

Charles Demuth, 1930- Buildings, Lancaster – Oil and graphite pencil on composition board

Louise Bourgeois, 1941 – Quarantania 1941 – painted wood

Soon after emigration from Paris to New York 1938 Louise Bourgeois made this sculpture. Quarantania resembles a group of standing figures huddled together and reimagines people she has left behind in her native France. Additionally the five elements might also evoke sewing needles or weaving shuttles, tools used in her family’s tapestry restoration trade.

James Castle, Interior with Stove and below Shed, Soot and spit on found paper.

I had never heard before of James Castle who lived from 1899-1977, but boy did his story and his paintings touch me.  Castle was profoundly deaf from birth.

He never learned to speak, sing, read or write; largely unschooled and self-taught he developed his own techniques for creating works of art and used his art as a tool for communcation. To make his black-and-white-drawings, he combined salvia with soot from a wood-burning stove and used sharpened sticks, sometimes fruit pits,  to apply the mixture to his paper.

James Castle, 1910- 77 , artist’s books with sooth and spit on found paper

In addition to the numerous works on paper, James Castle produced hundreds if not thousands of handmade books. Using commercial food packaging or heavy paper as covers, he stitched together blank pages and filled them with drawings of letters, pictographic symbols, collections of mock photos and sketches based on advertisements.

He frequently made use of both sides of papers he found around the house- flattened matchstick boxes, ice-cream carton lids, envelopes and even his niece’s old homework assignment. Amazing!

Andy Warhol, 1961 -$199 Television – acrylic and oil stick on canvas

I love this – it hints of things to come but still shows an artist hand – Warhol’s.

Minnie Evans, 1935 – My Very First and My Second

Minnie Evans crated both drawings on Good Friday when she was 43 years old. She said a spiritual force compelled her to begin drawing – these are her very first drawings hinting at the subjects of her later work – biblical imagery, plants and fantastical bests.

Morris Louis, 1958 -Tet – Acrylic on canvas

Morris Louis learned the method of staining unprimed canvas from fellow artist Helen Frankenthaler. He had a really small studio and this canvas is massive. For a long time no-one really could figure out how he made these big paintings. Conservators found out that he would roll the canvas in portions and pour, and then re-roll the canvas and dry and then continue. So he never saw the entirety of the painting while working on it.

Joseph Stella, 1939, The Brooklyn Bridge

This looks so timeless again – I love this painting of the Brooklyn Bride.

It was a great exhibition, thought provoking and interesting. It is open now and does not have an end date yet. Check it out when you are at The Whitney!

Nat

Finally, months after the Whitney Museum reopened, my friend Karen and I went to see the permanent collection and kind of breezed through the whole building to get an overview. The good thing is when you live so close you can do that as you can come back again :)

One of the things that I noticed right away was the framing of the artwork at Whitney.

(Florine Stettheimer, Sun, 1931)

I have taken several classes with Corey d’Augustine at MoMA and as an art conservator one of the things that are very dear to Corey’s heart is the topic of the frames of artworks. He made me aware of the fact that museums in the past often times have just discarded or destroyed the frames that artist had made or picked. The reason was that museums wanted to fit the frames to the museum’s aesthetics or whatever was hip at the time of the exhibition. The frame above on the painting by Florine Stettheimer was designed by herself and she had it specially fabricated.

(Marsden Hartley, Forms Abstracted, 1913 – Frame painted by artist)

With lot’s of passion Corey would elaborate in his classes, why he thinks this was and is such a sin and while I kind of understood what he meant, I fully became appreciative of the frame “problem” when I went to the Whitney museum. It just dawned on me when I was looking at the first couple paintings in the collection.  I was totally AWARE that the frames were not overpowering the artwork, they were part of the artwork or made the artwork WHOLE. And there I tipped my imaginative hat to Corey thinking “thanks man, – I got it!”

Paul Cadmus created the frame for his painting Sailors and Floosies (1938) and continued the graffiti depicted in the painting onto the frame. What a shame it would be if that frame would have gotten destroyed!

Apparently the Whitney Museum wasn’t happy with the wrong frames that some paintings lived in and they had a framer built 20 new frames for paintings that were ill-fitted in their frames. In the linked article, the framer talks about the detective work on how to find out how the frames have looked like back in the days. What an interesting work and topic.

Of course there was other work that highly inspired my at this visit at the Whitney Museum:

Alfonso Ossorio, Number 14 – 1953 . Ossorio developed a wax resist technique in the late 1940s to create layered abstract paintings. He would first draw using melted wax and then use water-pigments or ink on top which would be resisted by the waxed parts. He then scraped away pats of the hardened wax and repeat the process multiple time. While I have used different resist techniques- I never thought of repeating the process over and over …on my “play-list” now :)

Al Held – Untitled – Oil, ink and printed paper collage on Life magazine . Can you tell why this intrigued me? I almost ran to the case and I might have elbowed my way through as it looked so much like an art journal to me. Love this!

This is an gigantic piece by Mark Bradford – Bread and Circuses, 2007- Found paper, metal foil, acrylic, and string on canvas. It looks like a map – amazing. Bradford builds up a composition with layers of paper—often fragments of posters or ephemera salvaged from the street—that he soaks in water and combines with string, tape, and scraps of copy and magazine paper. He then sands down the collaged strata, and repeats the process in several layers.

Of course there was way more inspiring art work – but this is for a different visit – there is only so much input you can handle when you visit a museum. I leave you with some wonderful views that are revealed when stepping onto each of the floors’ balconies of the Whitney Museum:

Waving over to Jersey City!

Watertower and roof gardens – <3

Around the Highline.

That was a fine visit – totally enjoyed the time there with Karen and cannot wait to come back many more times.

What do you think about the frames? Does this make you see frames in a new light?

Hope you enjoyed this art stroll too!

Nat