May 30, 2008, Four New York museums and five pounds, By Margaret Failoni, Enriched vision of the past, By Flor Acosta, Pastel still life, plein aire, portraits, By Jan Searle

Four New York museums and five pounds
By Margaret Failoni May 30, 2008 San Miguel de Allende

Finally got back to New York for my big city fix only to discover upon my return I had gained five pounds. My love for New York deli food is second only to art, and New York amply fulfills my wildest desires.

It rained a great deal with windy temperatures vacillating between 54 and 64 degrees, which somewhat hampered my getting about. Nonetheless, I managed to shop, eat my way through Manhattan and attend the exhibitions in the city’s major museums.

The first thing I did upon arrival was to check out the shows in the major art galleries—let’s face it, you can’t see them all—and quickly decided to skip the galleries and concentrate on the museums. Every morning started with cream cheese and smoked salmon on a toasted bialy. Heaven.

(Klimt, from Neue Galerie)

I had not been back to the city since the Neue Galerie opened, specializing in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Austrian and German art and design. The love child of millionaire collectors Ronald S. Lauder and Serge Sabarsky, the Neue Galerie New York is located in a beautiful, limestone landmark mansion on Fifth Avenue which was built in 1914 and offers a strong program of exhibitions, lectures, film, concerts and other events.

The ground floor houses a superb bookstore, a gift shop and two excellent restaurants—the Cafè Sabarsky has great food and a Viennese fin-se-siècle atmosphere. Two large exhibition rooms are one flight up. The galleries are dedicated to rotating exhibitions of fine and decorative art from Vienna circa 1900, including works by Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka and Josef Hoffmann. On this occasion, the main exhibition gallery was dedicated to Klimt, including the large oils recently acquired at much-talked-about, multi-million-dollar auctions. The gallery next door had an exh
ibition of Wiener Werkstätte objets d’art and jewelry in silver and hard stones with accompanying photographs of Viennese society women who wore them—beautiful objects by Josef Hoffmann, Koloman Moser, Carl Otto Czeschka and Dagobert Peche. The best was the third and last floor, dedicated entirely to Klimt’s amazing drawings. A late lunch at the Cafè Sabarsky was accompanied by delicious Rhine wines and finished off with tempting Viennese tarts.

The next museum visited on another rainy afternoon was the Metropolitan Museum of Art which was featuring a retrospective exhibition by Gustave Courbet. This late nineteenth-century master was a major influence on the French Impressionists who came shortly after. By far, the most sensational of his huge output were the very modern and sensuous nudes.

Following the arrows to visit the newly inaugurated Modern Heroes exhibition, we slowly and lovingly walked past the galleries with the Greek vases and statuary, caressing them with our eyes, only to end up in what was to be a very disappointing exhibition of contemporary kitsch. Mannequins wore clothes inspired by comic book superheroes. A flimsy spider-woven mesh gown by Versace was inspired by Spider-Man, a bustier with pointed cone-shaped bras inspired by Catwoman, sequined red and blue hot-pants outfit inspired by Wonder Woman and ghastly gowns with long, red-sequined capes inspired by Superman. I’m sure my distaste is a generation thing accompanied by the 20 previous minutes of the beauty of the Grecian vases, but I hated it all. I do believe this show would have fared better in a different venue, perhaps the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) or the Guggenheim.

I didn’t bother going up to the roof to see a blown-up green balloon rabbit by Jeff Koons; my excuse was the rain…I consoled myself with a Nathan’s hotdog with sauerkraut from the push cart in front of the museum. Delicious.

(MOMA)

Next, I went to see MOMA. I had not been back to this museum since the renovations and the added skyscraper building above it.

ART ny olafur Whereas the former exhibition spaces all had huge floor-to-ceiling windows on at least one wall, washing the spaces with glorious daylight, these new galleries are entirely ensconced in walls and more walls. The permanent collection is always inspiring, with an incredible sampling of the best from each artist, but somehow they don’t work as well in these new spaces. The visiting exhibition shared with P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center was really great. It spread throughout the entire second floor and consisted of half the space of average works by average artists, a few great and some, well…average. The other half of the space, and some on the ground floor, was given over to a one-person exhibition of installation works by the Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson (b. 1967). This gifted artist conceives immersive environments from model rooms featuring visionary sculptural maquettes to

fluid light projections. “Probing the cognitive aspects of what it means to see, Eliasson creates complex optical phenomena using simple, makeshift technical devices (i.e., strobes illuminate a thin curtain of falling water, causing the eye to ‘freeze’ the droplets in midair),” noted the catalog.

The exhibition is titled Take Your Time, and indeed, this show is well worth it. Did I mention the hot pastrami sandwich with kosher dill pickles before entering the museum?

My favorite museum visit was to the Guggenheim. They showed a stunning exhibition by the new Chinese superstar, Cai Guo-Qiang. Born in Quanzhou, China, in 1957, and a resident of Japan and then NewYork since 1995, Cai has developed a unique aesthetic iconography that draws freely from ancient mythology, military history, Taoist metaphysics, Maoist revolutionary tactics, pyrotechnic technology and terrorist violence. His huge panels are “painted” with large, scroll-like designs using gunpowder, which is then lit, causing a varied, colored, burnt design on huge panels of rice paper. Cai uses this same technique for large outdoor installations covering land and water. All are metaphors for the above-mentioned philosophies and theories which so engage him. The largest work in the show, Inopportune: Stage One, 2004, consists of nine real cars hanging helter-skelter from the main atrium ceiling in a cinematic progression that simulates a car bombing with slashing light-lit arrows attacking the cars. A lovely small classic scroll hangs on one wall, created by his father, a classic calligrapher from the old school. Cai uses this image to inspire a large installation of lunging and attacking tigers all covered with arrows. There is more, but too much to describe. Suffice it to say, it’s the best show I’ve seen in years. A chopped chicken liver on raisin bread at Eats (Zabars) rounded out the rainy afternoon.

I shopped till I dropped and ate my way through the city. Was it worth the extra five pounds? Most definitely.

Margaret Failoni is an independent curator and art historian who has lived in San Miguel for 13 years. She curates exhibitions of contemporary art for museums, public spaces and some galleries in Mexico after a full-time career in Rome, Italy.

Enriched vision of the past
By Flor Acosta

Art Opening
Iconósfera
Photography exhibition
Fri, June 6, 6pm
Museo Municipal
Plaza Principal 8,
across from the Jardín

This first Iconósfera exhibition will display portraits of citizens who have been part of San Miguel history. The compilation of 25 antique pictures was obtained through a call by Micaela Rodriguez Olvera to the Casa de la Cultura of Xichú Guanajuato. The exhibition will be open through June 16.

The Iconósfera collective’s social commitment is to carry out several performances to restore to sanmiguelenses their documented history. We believe that sustained history gives us courage, pride and identity.

Photography is commonly viewed as the truth, documented reality that has a technical genesis. It is coming to replace some functions of the other visual arts, such as representation, illustration and formal instruction through images.

The value of photography is wide in its scale and applications. The old-fashioned photograph is the one that was created on our ancestor’s behalf and that we have in our family album, tucked away in a drawer or protected in the files.

Its use as a memory has a leading role in the creation of regional and local histories. It also is an invaluable element for the conservation of intangible cultural heritage, a historical documentary of the past.

The compilation of these segments of time into an exhibition aims to generate identity, recognizing through photo illustration our past, personalities of local life, natural landscapes and environments—an enriched vision of the past as a contribution to the present.

Flor Acosta is the coordinator of Iconósfera.

Pastel still life, plein aire, portraits
By Jan Searle

Art Workshops
Pastel painting
Eunice Hundley
Ancha de San Antonio 3
US$120 per day
(415) 110-3200

Master pastel artist Eunice Hundley will offer one-day workshops in pastel painting and a three-day workshop over the weekend of June 13–15.

The June 9 class meets in the studio with a live model and a still life setup. Hundley will be focusing on compositional design and color harmonies. A plein aire class June 11 meets on site at one of the marvelous ruins near San Miguel, again focusing on design and color harmony.

The three-day workshop will be in and out of the studio focusing on design and color harmonies, with instruction in the principles of classic portraiture and still life composition. A Sunday afternoon special section is “How to Market Your Paintings.”

The classes are designed for the beginning student as well as the career artist.

Hundley first came to San Miguel as a teenager and studied portraiture at the Instituto Allende under James Pinto. Her career includes gallery representation in Texas, Wyoming and New Mexico with paintings of Native Americans, children and market vendors of Mexico, Mayan villagers of Guatemala, and Folklorico dancers of San Antonio and Mexico. She has created portraits for corporations and private homes and murals of wildlife, landscape and figurative subjects. A 20x10-foot tile mural by the artist, painted and fired in Dolores Hidalgo, fills a dividing wall at the Juan Guyenberg Bilingual School near Atontonilco.

Hundley also has illustrated several children’s books, including So Sings the Blue Deer, a novel of the Huichol Indians by San Miguel author Charmayne McGee.

Hundley teaches workshops in Texas as a member of the Texas Pastel Society and has taught pastels and oils at the Instituto Allende here.

To register for the workshops, call (415) 110-3200 or visit the gallery/studio.