[New York Peasant by Wilfrid: September 21, 2009]
After the lousiest summer I can remember in this town, it's something of a relief to climb back into a jacket and tie and embark on the fall circuit of galleries, openings, receptions and beanfeasts. Here's a quick look at some current art shows.
Through October 5, the Neue Galerie claims to "focus" on Oskar Kokoschka. Fan though I am of this protean painter, the show short-changes the viewer somewhat. Yes, you can view several of his superb early portraits - marvel at the trembling hands and moist eyes, for example, of the impecunious journalist Peter Altenberg. But these paintings, as far as I recall, are part of the permanent exhibition here and are hung, as usual, in awkward spots in a room otherwise devoted to period design.
The only extra the museum is offering is a small side exhibition of O.K.'s works on paper, which at least features some sketches with which I was previously unfamiliar. A full Kokoschka retrospective, including his later work as a resident of the United States, would be something worth seeing.
The terse selection of Jack Tworkov's paintings in the lobby of the UBS building on Sixth Avenue (through October 27) presents itself as a retrospective - a "comprehensive survey". This alone, perhaps, suggests the relative neglect into which the artist has fallen, because this is not a large exhibit. Although the show is worth a piece of your day if you're in the neighborhood, I have to say that the reasons Tworkov's reputation has languished are fairly evident. Much is made - through quotations from his writings - of his versatility and ceaseless evolution. Sadly, this can come across as an ability to produce polished versions of whatever type of painting happened to be in fashion at the time.
Thus one moves from the realism of the pre-war years - "Fisherman's Family" - through the strongly De Kooning-influenced fifties, to the more formal abstraction of the late pictures (Tworkov died in 1982). This is a case of what Harold Bloom called the apophrades, the baleful return of influences too powerful to be fully mastered. Some of the canvases are wonderfully colored and vigorously animated - "Pink Mississippi," "Watergame," but as I wandered around I found myself saying - "Look, a Franz Kline with color. And what a good Clyfford Still." It was his proud boast that he painted "no Tworkovs." But in a sense, that's just the problem.
I went to a preview of MOMA's new installation of Monet's water lily paintings (through April 12 next year), and came away uninspired. The triptych, which at least is no longer absurdly displayed in the building's high atrium, where it looked like a comic strip, is the center-piece of course. It's accompanied by several smaller paintings of associated subjects - the vibrant "Japanese Footbridge" for example. The paintings don't benefit, however, from the harshly lit room. In some places, the canvases look (perhaps are) faded and listless. My recollection is that the room devoted to Monet water lilies at London's National Gallery is a tranquil oasis of muted lighting and neutral wall colors. The glare of MOMA's white walls throws these pictures out of balance.
While visiting, you can also amuse yourself with another of MOMA's curatorial mash-ups of pop music and avant garde art, "Looking at Music: Side 2" (through November 30). I did stomp all over the first part of this show last year, calling it "quite nutty." My reaction this time was less hostile, perhaps because I was less surprised to see the apparently unironic juxtaposition of self-conscious artistic production (David Wojnarowicz, Laurie Anderson) with entirely commercial projects (Blondie's "Rapture," album covers featuring The Ramones, The Talking Heads' "Take Me To the River"). There's some rare video material which is worth seeing too: a loop of Glenn O'Brien's legendary underground "TV Party," footage from early CBGBs shows by Bob Gruen ("New York Death Cult"), and an absorbing record of unknown acts performing in a small space on Grand Street ("135 Grand Street" by Ericka Beckman).
It's evident that, for an extended period, artists and rock and rollers brushed up against each other in downtown Manhattan, and even learned from each other. What these MOMA shows fail to explore is the extent to which they were, nevertheless, doing quite different things.
Oskar Kokoschka
MOMA music show
Jack Tworkov
Claude Monet
