Revisiting: The Frick

Ultimately, I would argue that the inclusion of the mirror in the Comtesse d’Haussonville represented a solution to the rendering of a personality that defied being complacently transmuted into oil paint. This claim finds support in a statement made by the Comtesse herself in her biopic of Lord Byron: “Usually, where women have been put is where they stay, with the vague idea, instilled since infancy, that women are made for suffering—even while they now and then amuse themselves as a distraction from the sad fate society has in store for them.” The comtesse, as rendered in her namesake portrait, is a “difficult” woman: she refuses to acknowledge her “place”—that is, facing the mirror, refusing all the same to fatuously amuse herself with the distraction of looking at herself in the mirror. Instead she finds solace in the contemplation of something presumably beyond her image, and in doing so, evades banalization. It remains the viewer’s task to discern the two “worlds” manifest in the painting: the harshly illuminated world of the subject, in which the presence of the figure dominates over the minor curvature of strategically placed props, as opposed to the “world of simulacra” in which the subject’s reflection is imprisoned in a depthless expanse of murkiness.

The most clever details captured in the mirror are the details ‘unseen’ in the frontal view of the comtesse: the subtle scooping of the collar of her dress, a beautiful satin bow tied into her coiffure, and finally, a brown comb that secures her chignon. The mirror as “world of simulacra” alludes to the inherent function of the oil painting and its maker-- where measure for measure, satin bow for satin bow, reality is simultaneously masked and revealed, for perpetuity.

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Site-Specific: Two Models for the Museum of Today, Tomorrow, Yesterday

Recently, two renowned architects' visions of conceptual museum space have created a buzz

in the art world: zaha hadid's monumental design for the freshly-completed

museo delle arti del secolo ventunesimo (MAXXI) and David Chipperfield's renovation

of the original structure and site at the Neues Museum in Berlin.

Each architect's design ultimately reflects two separate, yet vital directions in which

site-specific architecture is heading in the 21st century. The considerations of

the architects when conceptualizing the space seem tailor-made

for each site, resulting in sound construction that makes sense at the given location.

I. Dream Big, Build Bigger: Zaha Hadid and MAXXI

bend sinister: a detail inside MAXXI

A jolt of much-needed modernity enlivens the "eternal" city notorious for its classical

dimensions and ruins, Roma. Enter Maxxi, or the museo delle arti del xxi secolo,

Zaha Hadid's building-homage to arts contemporary and living,

amidst a setting renowned predominately for its archaeologia.

The project materialized in 1999, when Ms. Hadid beat 273 other architects and won

the international competition to design the publicly-funded, ambitious Maxxi.

231 million dollars --and one museum -- later, and it looks like the Italians are still

crazy for the enigmatic Anglo-Iranian "starchitect" and her futuristic design.

In her own words, Ms. Hadid describes the process of conceptualizing the museum space

as a perfect manifestation of making (the Greek poiesis) transformed into craft (techne):

”It was important to decide that we would keep some of the buildings

but not all of the buildings. And once that was decided we made certain studies

where the geometry which replaces the existing one should be octagonal, parallel, should be diagonal.

What began to appear was that a confluence of lines of many different geometries was operating on the site.

What was initiated was the idea of a very fluid formal interpretation of the programme.”

The result: a poetics of construction, massive, yet intimate, dominated by sensuous, curving lines

that seemingly empty out into the vast arteries of the neighboring streets and thoroughfares,

a reference to the very infrastructure binding us all.

Maxxi, the first museum in Italy dedicated to the art of the 21st century,

opens with a site-specific installation by one of Miuccia Prada's favored artists,

the German Tobias Rehberger.

II. Interpreting the Ruins: David Chipperfield and the Neues Museum

urbane decay: a gallery of the Neues Museum

"I do enjoy order. I think that architecture should be ordered--that is has to be readable."

Thus spoke David Chipperfield in a recent interview when asked if he considered himself a

neoclassicist, especially in reference to his renovation of Berlin's Neues Museum.

The comment proffers a glimpse of insight into the painstaking, six-year process undertaken

by Mr. Chipperfield and his team of reconstructing a site with visible signs of an

unstable past. The architect faced the arduous task of restoring a building severely damaged in WWII,

and subsequently left in disuse by the Eastern German regime, to splendor.

The result? Mr. Chipperfield and his associates have gently breathed new life into the Neues Museum, reconstructing rooms damaged by the blasts, yet also "working around"

certain cracks in the facade, leaving the building with readable traces

of its own traumatic history: the building site as palimpsest.

Ruinous elements of the building are meant to complement the newly constructed attributes: for example,

in the photo above, Chipperfield replaced a stairwell destroyed by a bomb with a simple, white

concrete staircase that takes on the dimensions and physical space of the room.

The building is fascinating, exposing the visitor to multiple narratives of

meaning, especially when viewed in terms of the cultural patrimony inside -- including the 2500+ Egyptian artifacts on display --and also the violent recesses of a country's past evident

on its walls. Let things fall apart, each seems to say.

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Strawberries in Murnau

Gabriele Münter, Kandinsky and Erma Bossi at the Table in the Murnau House, 1912. oil on canvas

see: Gabriele Münter and Vasily Kandinsky, 1902-14: A Life in Photographs

on view at the Guggenheim Museum

as part of the Kandinsky focus show.

I’m trying to make sense of a thread of correspondences written one unseasonably hot summer in 1911. The place is Murnau, a rustic village in Bavaria, Germany. An artist has arrived to the house after an extended visit with family and relatives in Moscow and Odessa. She is not there, and so thus begins the chain of correspondence:

Well, sailed in today with pile of luggage (porter Lobl). It was very hot, unusual even for Murnau. Went into the garden at once & ate a few strawberries. Then had tea and bared my knees—splendid. Then back into the garden. And this is how things stand. Not one berry has been stolen (i.e. not even red currants etc.) The strawberries look as if splashed with thick daubs of blood. The biggest one today was like this (here, Kandinsky inserted a drawing)…the bed positively glows—even from afar there must be hundreds in there…

Wassily Kandinsky begins a long line of correspondence with his lover, Gabriele Münter, who cannot join him in Murnau, in the house that she bought, due to obligatory family affairs. I am skimming through these letters for any hint of the significance that this place had for the artist, who over the course of five years, 1908 to 1913, painted many landscapes of the small village he had called ‘home”. One theme constantly appears in Kandinsky’s letters—the garden, with its growing crops of raspberries, cherries, and gooseberries, its potatoes, radishes, lettuce, and spinach, and most importantly, strawberries...

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Madrelingua: Museo d'Arte di Chiancino Terme

Jacques Gregoire, The Naked Photographer. Museum of Art of Chiancino Terme

Appena letto l'articolo sul Museo d'Arte di Chiancino Terme nel New York Times, e voglio sapere più del progetto, eppure più del suo organizzatore, Roberto Gagliardi. Gagliardi fa gallerista a Londra, però ha deciso di fondare il suo museo nel borgo inaspettato di Chiancino, vicino a Siena nella regione di Toscana. Fra gli artisti rappresentati al museo c'è Goya, Dali, Rembrandt (tutti disegni), e anche l'arte asiatica dai paesi come Afghanistan e Cina. Antico e fresco, moderno e tradizionale, il museo di Gagliardi mi pare un bel omaggio al paese in cui tutti questi paradossi fiorono in abbondanza.

After reading about the Museum of Art Chiancino Terme in the New York Times, I'd like to know more about the project and more still of its organizer, Roberto Gagliardi. Gagliardi is an Italian gallerist based in London; however, he decided to found his museum collection in the small, unexpected town of Chiancino, close to Siena in the region of Tuscany. Among the represented artists in the museum are Goya, Dali, Rembrandt (all drawings), and also Asian art from countries like Afghanistan and China. Ancient and fresh, modern and traditional, Gagliardi's museum seems to me a beautiful homage to the country in which all these paradoxes flourish in great abundance.

sandstone fragment with Kufic inscriptions, Museum of Art of Chiancino Terme

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High Tea

Juan Gris, Breakfast, 1914. Cut-and-pasted paper, crayon, and oil on canvas; 31 7/8 x 23 1/2 inches. MoMA, New York.

No better way to start an amorously grey Sunday than Tea with Juan Gris.

His 1914 cubist collage Breakfast is currently among my favorite paintings.

Must not forget to mention another personal favorite, or series of favorites -- Futurist Giacomo Balla's

dynamic paintings of swallows in flight, one of which, also, hangs at the Museum of Modern Art. I could rhapsodize about this too, into eternity, but will spare you all for another day.

Giacomo Balla, Swifts: Patterns of Movement + Dynamic Sequences, 1913. oil on canvas; 38 1/8 x 47 1/4 inches. MoMA, New York.

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