Messiah

To commemorate this blessed season, here's William Christie leading his Baroque ensemble Les Arts Florissants in Handel's Messiah.

Happy Holidays to one and all!

Inventing Abstraction, 1910–1925, at the MoMA

The Museum of Modern Art is presenting Inventing Abstraction, 1910–1925, a survey of 350 works from the beginning of the 20th century that trace the development of non-representational art.

Far from being a rehash of familiar images, the show includes many small paintings, drawings, photographs, and mixed media pieces that I've never seen before, from artists who are totally unfamiliar to me.

The exhibit conveys the spirit of experimentation and rebellion of artists who didn't quite know what they were aiming for and yet produced strikingly original bodies of work. Even the painters who are now known for having a distinct style, like Josef Albers and Piet Mondrian, did things early on in their careers that seem, in retrospect, totally fresh and daring.

The show merits repeated visits and will be on view until April 15, 2013.

František Kupka

Mme. Kupka dans les verticales (Mme. Kupka among the verticals) (1910-11)

Oil on canvas, 53 3/8 x 33 5/8" (135.5 x 85.3 cm)

Anton Giulio Bragaglia
Un gesto del capo (A gesture of the head) (1911)
Gelatin silver print, 7 x 5" (17.8 x 12.7 cm)

Robert Delaunay

Soleil, lune, simultané 2 (Sun, Moon, Simultaneous 2) (1912)

Oil on canvas, diam.: 53" (134.5 cm)

Francis Picabia 

 La Source (The spring) (1912)

Oil on canvas, 8' 2 1/4" x 8' 2 1/8" (249.6 x 249.3 cm)

Wyndham Lewis
Portrait of an Englishwoman (1913 or 1914)
Ink, pencil and watercolor on paper, 22 1/16 x 14 15/16" (56 x 38 cm)

Umberto Boccioni
Dinamismo di un foot-baller (Dynamism of a soccer player) (1913)
Oil on canvas, 6' 4 1/8" x 6' 7 1/8" (193.2 x 201 cm)

Sonia Delaunay-Terk
 Prismes électriques (Electric prisms) (1913)
Oil on canvas, 22 1/16 x 18 1/2" (56 x 47 cm)

Lawrence Atkinson
Vorticist Composition (1914-1915)
Oil on canvas, 41 3/4 x 33 7/16" (106 x 85 cm)

Georgia O'Keeffe 

Blue II (1916)

Watercolor on paper, 27 7/8 x 22 1/4" (78.4 x 56.5 cm)

Patrick Henry Bruce
Composition II (1916)
Oil on canvas, 38 3/8 x 51 1/4" (97.4 x 130.2 cm)

Kurt Schwitters
  Das Kreisen (The revolving) (1919)
Wood, metal, cord, paperboard, fiber, wire, and oil on canvas, 48 3/8 x 35" (122.7 x 88.7 cm)

Josef Albers
 Gitterbild (Lattice Picture, also known as Grid Mounted) (1921)
Glass, iron latticework, and copper wire, 13 1/8 x 11 7/8" (33.4 x 30.2 cm)

Master Drawings from the Courtauld Gallery

On view at the Frick Collection: Mantegna to Matisse: Master Drawings from the Courtauld Gallery, a glowing exhibition of fifty-eight drawings from Britain's preeminent research center for art history.

I visited the Courtauld during my last trip to London six years ago and enjoyed its collection of Impressionist paintings. The current show at the Frick reveals the depth of its holdings and includes works from the Renaissance, Baroque, and Modern periods.

This exhibit features many pieces that are being shown in New York for the first time, and the roster of artists includes Andrea Mantegna, Leonardo da Vinci, Albrecht Dürer, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Peter Paul Rubens, Jusepe de Ribera, Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn, Jean-Antoine Watteau, Charles-Joseph Natoire, Thomas Gainsborough, Francisco Goya y Lucientes, Joseph Mallord William Turner, Théodore Géricault, Edgar Degas, Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, Georges Seurat, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso.

The show is a humbling reminder that fine draftmanship is skill that has become increasingly rare in this age of mechanical, mass produced, and assistant driven commercial art.

These inspiring drawings will be on view until January 27, 2013. Don't miss them.

Workshop of Hugo van der Goes (c. 1440?–1485)

A Seated Female Saint, c. 1475–85

Pen, point of the brush and gray ink, heightened with white gouache over preliminary black chalk underdrawing, on green prepared paper

Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528)

A Wise Virgin, 1493
Pen and brown ink on paper

Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640)

Head of the Farnese Hercules, c. 1608–10

Black chalk, heightened with white chalk, on gray paper

Guercino (1591–1666)
A Child Seen from Behind, Standing Between His Mother's Knees, c. 1625
Red chalk with stumping

Pieter Saenredam (1597–1665)

The South Ambulatory of St. Bavokerk, Haarlem, 1634
Pen and brown ink with gray wash, heightened with white gouache, on blue paper

Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669)
Two Men in Discussion, 1641
Quill and reed pen in brown ink, with corrections in white gouache

Giovanni Battista Piazzetta (1683–1754)

The Head of a Boy and of an Old Man, c. 1739–40

Black chalk heightened with white chalk, on gray paper

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780–1867)

Study for La Grande Odalisque, 1814

Graphite

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851)

Colchester, Essex, c. 1825–26

Watercolor, white and colored chalks, and gouache, with scraping

Honoré Daumier (1808–79)
Le Malade imaginaire (The Hypochondriac), c. 1850
Black chalks, black ink wash, watercolor and touches of gouache, with pen and point of the brush in brown and black-gray ink

Georges Seurat (1859–91)

Female Nude, c. 1879–81

Black Conté crayon over stumped graphite

Edgar Degas (1834–1917)

Woman Adjusting Her Hair, c. 1884

Charcoal, chalk, and pastel, on two sheets of buff-colored paper

Freddy

Over the past three weeks I worked on this figure study using acrylic and masking techniques. I was attempting a video static effect inspired by Andy Denzler but using a high key palette. The canvas size is 24 x 30 inches.

Freddy, the model, is an artist and painter as well. We have one more session with him. I may try a quick portrait sketch next weekend.

WIP photos:

Thanksgiving Program at the New York Philharmonic

 (Photo: clevelandclassical.com)

(Photo: bso.org)

Andrey Boreyko, Conductor
Frank Peter Zimmerman, Violin

Mendelssohn - Overture to Die Heimkehr aus der Fremde (Son and Stranger) (1829)
Shostakovich - Violin Concerto No. 1 (1945-48)
Dvořák - Symphony No. 9, From the New World (1893)

On Tuesday night I attended the New York Philharmonic's concert featuring works by Felix Mendelssohn, Dmitri Shostakovich and Antonin Dvořák.

At the age of 20, Mendelssohn composed his one act opera Die Heimkehr aus der Fremde for a private performance for friends and family. The overture remains its best known excerpt and features a sunny virtuosity that reflected the young composer's talents.

The Shostakovich concerto provided a stark change in mood. Its anxious melodic lines and disturbing rhythms probed the depths modern angst. The third and fourth movements contained  many dazzling passages for the soloist which Zimmerman met with ease.

The New York Philharmonic commissioned Dvořák to write his New World Symphony while he was the director of the New York Conservatory from 1892 to 1895. The composer incorporated American spirituals into the score and it was fitting to hear this expansive, optimistic piece as a prelude to Thanksgiving.

It was interesting to hear the Russian conductor Boreyko's interpretation of a Czech composer's impressions of American folk music. Boreyko imbued the performance with a lilting tenderness that somehow seemed fresh and very touching, and taken together with the two earlier pieces fully demonstrated his range as a conductor. I hope that the Philharmonic plans to invite him to lead many future performances.

Mahler's Ninth with the Philharmonia Orchestra

(photo: Richard Haughton)

Due to a busy work schedule I haven't been able to blog about concerts lately but I just had to post about the Philharmonia Orchestra's incredible rendition of Mahler's Symphony No. 9 at Avery Fisher Hall last night.

All I can say is WOW. Mahler's Ninth, composed in 1910, is in my opinion one of the highlights of symphonic literature but it is the rare interpretation that can move this sprawling 90 minute score at a good pace and still leave the listener emotionally wrecked by the end.

The conductor, Esa-Pekka Salonen, did just that. He conducted the esteemed ensemble with glistening precision but not at the expense deeply felt emotion. The final movement in particular was just ravishing with otherworldly strings and slowly dissolving tempi. It felt like Mahler's farewell to romanticism and everything else that he loved in life.

The program, unfortunately, won't be repeated but New Yorkers will have a chance to hear this work again next spring with Michael Tilson Thomas leading the San Francisco Symphony at Carnegie Hall.

Juan

Over the past two Saturdays I continued to experiment with acrylic.

I bought a 30 x 30 inch canvas which is huge for me and the portrait of Juan Michael, the model, was larger than life. I haven't worked with overscaled dimensions before but thought I might as well try it since one of the trends in contemporary portraiture is oversized head shots (see Andrew Salgado, Alyssa Monks, and Tai Schierenberg, among others).

I also tried saturated color, straight from the tube in certain areas like the shirt, hat, and parts of the background. Was I intensifying reality (like Lucian Freud) or flirting with garishness (like Leroy Nieman)? Who knows. I just felt like doing it and the experience was exhilirating. Using intense chroma over a large surface area was like a drug - my teacher had to tell me to stop painting before I ruined the pictorial balance.

We still have two more sessions with our current models. I think I'll continue with acrylic for now. Maybe I'll buy a few new colors or try using a weird surface - like plastic or aluminum. I wonder where I can buy those supports in Manhattan...