The Arts in New York City

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A couple of weeks ago I went to the Neue Gallery on the Upper East Side. This was a new gallery that had been open for a couple of weeks when I went there. The gallery showed the art of Gustav Klimit. Klimit was a painter who lived in Vienna 100 years ago. He achieved his fame by making portraits of famous families in Vienna. The style that he used was borrowed from French painters of the time, like Monet. I find it hard to understand the meaning of the paintings, so I decided to go on a small tour of the gallery. The tour really was helpful. The guide eluded to other artists and other paintings. Probably at the begining of the semester I wouldn’t have been able to understand what she was talking about. Now I understood what was being said. This showed how far I have come this semester in my knowledge of art. However I felt like the only person under the age of 40 in the whole gallery. The Neue Gallery is a very interesting place to attend if one is an experienced art goer.

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The Moma (museum of modern art) showcases the most modern art that could still be considered art. Before I went to this museum, I had a vague understanding of what encompasses modern art. However after I returned from this museum I came to the conclusion that modern art is a wide range of works that I didn’t even previously consider art. The Moma is six stories high and it feels like every floor is a unique museum onto itself because ever floor houses a different form of art. On the lower floors was a suspended stairway that got narrower as it reached higher. There were also objects made of steel that could only be described as futurist. To my surprise not all the pieces were form the last couple of decades, there were things there that were almost a century old. The upper floors of the museum contained the pictures. These pictures were of distorted objects, geometric figures or a wide array of colors. An example of this was the work by Pablo Picasso. My favorite was the pattern that playing tricks on eyes by making you feel like you were hallucinating. Although the museum was crowded with tourists during the time that I was there, I though my trip there was interesting and worthwhile.

The museum of Jewish Heritage is located in the Battery Park neighborhood of Manhattan. The museum is relatively new, only 10 years old, and looks very modern from the outside. I have been to this museum once before, at age 12, but I don’t remember my experience there very well. This museum was particularly attractive to me because of my Jewish background. In attending this exhibit, I expected to learn more my heritage and culture. The sections of the museum that were worth viewing were the ‘Jewish life’ section and the ‘Holocaust’ section. (more…)

For my second blurb I visited the International Center of Photography, otherwise known as the ICP. At this museum they are currently featuring the work of photographer Robert Capa. Capa’s most famous photographs were of the Spanish Civil War which lasted from 1936 to 1939. In these photographs Capa showed the lives of ordinary people during war as well as the fighting, suffering and destruction that the war caused. While the first floor mostly focused on Capa’a work during the Spanish Civil War, the basement showed his work in all the other places that he traveled to capture the world around him though photography. The photographs shown were of Japan’s war with China in 1938, D-Day and the fall of Germany in 1945. These photographs also seemed very real and graphic. Besides Capa’s work, there were also clippings from the time period from magazines such as ‘Life’. These pictures also were successful in putting the audience in the shoes of the people who experienced this war. Overall I found that the exhibit was longer then I had previously expected, but worth the extra time that was spent there. If you want to see and in turn experience the past through the eyes of people who lived almost 70 years ago, theICP is worth checking out.

From September 28 to January 9, the Guggenheim Museum is showing an exhibit called Richard Prince Spiritual America. I went to see this exhibit over the Columbus Day weekend and found this artist’s work very interesting. Richard Prince’s career began when he moved to New York as a young man in 1977 and it has flourished ever since. Prince could be considered one of the post modern artists who have transformed the art world in the past 30 years by transforming what it is that the audience believes to be art. The style that is shown is provocative and thought provoking. The quality that made this exhibit at the Guggenheim unique was Prince’s style of appropriation in portraying everyday images and the jokes that he used as art in the exhibit. (more…)

The Paley Center for media is an exhibit in Manhattan that lets its visitors watch old clips from TV and radio shows that they consider to be classics. Indeed some of the more modern clips that they showed, like Mr. Bean and The Simpson’s I did find rather interesting. However since I am not an avid television and radio show viewer most of the shows seemed unnecessary to me. I felt that I could have seen the same thing if I turned on the history channel or watched old reruns late night on TV. I would recommend this museum to anyone who enjoys watching old shows or who just wants to reconnect with a time that now survives through these very shows and people’s memories.

For my first cultural event I went to the Frick Collection in Manhattan. The Frick Collection is located on the corner of East 70th Street and 5th Avenue. The museum was the private collection of a turn of the century art collector called Henry Frick. Mr. Frick made his fortune in steel and then used his great wealth to transform his house into a small art museum, which bears his name. Before my visit to the Frick Collection I didn’t believe that one individual home in New York could be so beautifully decorated and have so many famous pieces of art. What stood out most for me about this museum was the architecture in the house and the well-known European painters represented there. (more…)