Top heavy

Magnet #1309 - Whitney Museum

Another one of my architecture collection.

If you haven't visited the Lyonel Feininger: At the End of the World exhibit, like I told you a while ago, best to get going soon before it ends.

Such a good exhibit. Even as the gift shop merchandise always leaves something to be desired.

The other reason to visit the Whitney is for the awesome building. Built by Bauhaus-trained Marcel Breuer, the giant slab of granite on Madison Avenue is like an upside-down pyramid of sorts.

Both impressive and imposing, you're almost afraid to walk inside. You're instantly rewarded when you walk through the galleries, and spy a glimpse of light through the trapezoidal windows scattered throughout the building.

When you visit, take a moment to hang out on the lower level, where the giant windows give you this wonderful sense of openness you don't often feel when you're essentially belowground.

Pretty genius, methinks.

Bau-chicka-bau-bau

Magnet #1277 - Bauhaus

What? I couldn't help it.

This magnetpost is my own little reminder that I need to hit the Uniqlo roller rink over on the West Side soon, and most definitely hit up the @CoolhausNY ice cream food truck. Seriously. Between the fresh ice cream flavors and awesome cookies, that truck is amazing. And they crack me up, having somehow connected ice cream to the Bauhaus movement, my second reason for this magnet.

The Bauhaus movement, in a nutshell, was this utopian-esque enclave of designers, architects, artists, and other notable folks in Europe, banding together to create an art school in Germany, sandwiched in between the two World Wars. And when I say notables, Albert Einstein was involved at some point, as well as Vassily Kandinsky and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. What came out of this movement, was some very interesting art and design in several different fields, including the little known (to me) artist on exhibition at the Whitney, Lyonel Feininger.

Yes. The Whitney Museum of American Art. Folks. I've now been to the Whitney on the Upper East Side multiple times. I don't always agree with their collection or their art, but each time the museum both over- and underwhelms me.

How can the museum own 2,500 Edward Hopper pieces...and then only have one on display. How does that work? The one they have is part of their Breaking Ground: The Whitney's Founding Collection is amazing - both the art and the images and the exhibit. But really? One Hopper up on the wall?

On top of that, I can't show you what that Hopper is on a magnet...because the museum does not sell magnets. You know that's why their "shop" underwhelms me to no end - every time. Never changes.

They don't have magnets. At all. One could argue that their artists are often alive and or so recent that maybe they have to pay licensing rights to estates to develop any swag to sell in the museums. If that's the case, I get it. But man. Not even any museum merchandise - even with their strong Whitney brand? Get on that, marketing folks!

The latest latest exhibition, however, you must make time for: Lyonel Feininger: At the End of the World, and take the docent-led tour. It's amazing. An American who moved to Germany for most of his life before coming home to Manhattan in his later years, he started out doing cartoons and ended up one of the leaders of the modernist movement.

It took five years to pull together, which is amazing, because seriously, in a time where most museums are just re-staging pieces from their own collection and calling it an exhibition, the scale of this one is amazing - pulling pieces from major museum collections everywhere. Indeed, they only own one piece in this collection! That's almost unheard of in these last few years!

But, through the genius way they've set up the exhibition, you can truly see the evolution of his work from the cartoons, through his time at the Bauhaus, and beyond.

Not that I can show you on a magnet.

Because outside of a few books about the exhibition? No merchandise. Seriously. Grandest exhibition in years, five years in the making, the first time in decades Feininger's work's been shown in America...and no merchandise?

Really?

Abstracts of visual vocabulary

Magnet #666 - Georgia O'Keeffe quote

This Georgia O'Keeffe quote magnet is one of that supercool artists quote set that I picked up from the Met earlier this year. It's a photograph of her taken by the love of her life, Alfred Stieglitz (yes, this time it's really by him) - which I saw in person today! Very cool.

I hung out with DCsister's godmother today, running around the Upper East Side, taking in the Kandinsky exhibit at the Guggenheim, a French lunch at Demarchelier, the O'Keeffe exhibit at the Whitney, and a Rooster at Vosges. Fun day!

I know - I keep going to museum after museum, and there hasn't been an exhibition I haven't really enjoyed. But honestly, if you're good enough for me to recognize your work on sight, to see it in multiple galleries around the world, and you're truly masters of art, then, really, who the heck am I not to like it.

Who doesn't love learning more about the art and the artists, and seeing the master works of art in person. Even though I have magnet after magnet of these great works, there's nothing quite like giving security guards palpitations by sticking your nose five inches away from the canvas to investigate the brushstrokes, and dodging your head around other people's heads, standing five feet away to begin grasping the gestalt of each artists' visual vocabulary.

Yeah, that's right. Today I learned the term visual vocabulary - both the audio tour at the Gugg and the tour guide at the Whitney mentioned it. I won't lie - I'm completely untrained artwise, no classes, no seminars - so hearing the term visual vocabulary was new for me. For Kandinsky, it's his horses and geometric shapes. For O'Keeffe, it's her multifaceted layers of color and bold, sweeping shapes.

Today, Georgia's art - and the tour guide - made a lot more unknown known to me today - wandering around, I learned more about O'Keeffe's art, her life, her relationship with Alfred Stieglitz and her relationship with the public and their relationship to her art. If you get the chance, check out the guided tour of the exhibition - you get more out of that than the audio tour (something I rarely say).

Although, I don't mind saying, they have these superfun O'Keeffe toolboxes for kids to carry around, with crayons and flowers and a drawing notebooks. I would have rather plopped down and grab one of those toolboxes out of the cute kids' hands and start drawing - though my art of smiley faced suns and grassy with rainbows would be a far cry from Georgia's work hanging up on the Whitney walls.