I’m going to admit to something that might be heresy for a painter:  I went to the Giorgio Morandi show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Thursday and came away rather disappointed.  I had seen a Morandi exhibition in Chelsea back in 2004 and remember being impressed and wowed by paint handling, subtle use of desaturated colors, and interesting compositions built from bottles, pitchers, and vases.  For some reason, this large retrospective at the Met didn’t produce the same feelings.

For one, I remember that show at Lucas Schoormans gallery being very well lit and hung on white walls, a perfect way to see these mostly neutral paintings.  At the Met, the show is in the Robert Lehman wing, where it feels like you’re in a dungeon and the paintings look more dull than nuanced.  I think a part of it may have been my expectations perhaps coupled with a faulty memory of the past show.  In most of the still life works at the Met, the compositions are crowded and piled together, breaking many of the usual “rules” about composition (e.g., “kissing edges”, where the edge of one object lines up perfectly with those of the horizon or of another object).  From the wall texts (though contrary to at least one review of this show), we learn that this is what Morandi was trying to do — to explore mostly flat abstract compositions using traditional still life objects whose purpose was solely to provide shape.  Well, that’s a pretty interesting goal, but my memory of the Chelsea show was of very subtle, off-white colors with creative but not “stuck” compositions, and I had found those paintings fascinating and worthy of close scrutiny (though this could be a faulty memory of mine, or me coming at them at a different point in time).  At the Met, I found it hard to enjoy the compositions where the objects were all bunched up or aligned in forced ways.

One thing I notice is that in the catalog available at the Met, as well as in the images you can view online, it seems that the contrast has been pumped up a bit compared to the actual works.  For many of the pieces, that makes them look better (as traditional still lifes, at least) in reproduction than they do in real life.  The reproductions don’t, however, capture the brushstroke and paint handling that also is one of Morandi’s charms.

On my last few visits to the Met I have felt rushed, but on Thursday I had plenty of time and was able to enjoy a few of the museums other exhibits and treasures.  The famous Duccio painting that the museum acquired in 2004 for a huge sum of money (estimated at greater than $45 million) is presently on display, worthy of close inspection for its value, style, and historical import if not painterly technique.

I spent a good long time studying a Rembrandt self-portrait, trying to soak up some advice on portrait painting, partly through analysis and partly perhaps through “visual osmosis” (alas, I probably should have spent another hour or two looking at this painting…).

Finally, I made it to “Landscapes Clear and Radiant: The Art of Wang Hui“, an absolutely stunning show of Chinese paintings from 17th century master Wang Hui (plus a few much earlier works from artists who would have inspired and influenced Wang).  In some of the earlier work, Wang painted in the style of his predecessors using mostly black ink on either paper or silk supports, creating elegant landscapes that balance beauty and atmosphere with calligraphic detail.  The last room in the show contains two knock-your-socks-off paintings of incredible detail and size (one of them I think would reach 72 feet long if it were fully unfurled).  These are both color and black ink on large silk scrolls and each depicts a journey (of the emperor, I believe) across the land.  Tiny, but clearly drawn figures populate the landscapes; the people are working the fields, shopping in the marketplace, gathering in crowds.  There’s not a sign of any pentimenti anywhere in the scrolls — how did the artist draw such intricate designs without any mistakes?

But the best was yet to come:  As I was strolling through this exhibition I heard a familiar voice to my left.  When I looked over, I saw that it was indeed a very famous singer and artist (and avid museum-goer), explaining the Wang Hui show quite expertly to some friends.   [Hint:  He goes by a different name as an artist than he does as a musician and at one point became a huge hit on MTV.]

My painting, Arising, will be on display in a group show at Gallery 125 in Trenton from September 12 through November 8, 2008.  There will be an opening reception this Friday, Sep 12, from 5-9pm.  I should be there starting around 6pm if you’d like to stop by and say Hi.  Gallery 125, at 125 South Warren Street in Trenton, always has fun openings with a strong turnout plus food and drink and usually some live music.

In the sauna that was west Chelsea last night, a new art season began.  The hot and sticky weather didn’t keep the art-goers away, however, as the streets between 22nd and 27th were packed.  Fortunately, there were quite a few good shows worth mentioning.

I began my tour on 22nd Street where Keith Tyson has a show entitled “Fractal Dice” at Pace Wildenstein.  The show explores the use of rule-based systems to generate art works, while incorporating both randomness (the “dice”) and nesting of levels of abstraction (the “fractals”).  The artist has provided detailed instructions to the gallery for the fabrication of the pieces in the show, with rolls of the dice determining how a cube is to be deformed and colored and finally “instantiated” is an art object in aluminum and plastic.  I like my conceptual art to have a strong visual component and this show passed that test.    (My feeling regarding conceptual art is that I like it less if reading about a piece — or even seeing it in reproduction — provides about the same experience as seeing it in person.)  The sculptures consist of semi-matte, smooth surfaces in red, green, blue, yellow, black, and white in a variety of arrangements, some lying on the floor and some hanging on the wall.

Although Lohin-Geduld Gallery on 25th Street isn’t having the formal opening reception until next week, they had their doors open late last night for a show by Joanne Freeman and Kim Uchiyama.  Freeman’s works pop with optical contrasts and seemed to me to fit historically into a Stuart Davis / Bridget Riley / Brice Marden family tree, with my favorite piece being Electra.  Whereas Freeman’s works tend towards more vertical compositions, Uchiyama’s paintings consist of horizontal striations of color.

Who would have thought that marshmallows would provide such interesting subject matter for still life painting?  In the front space at George Billis Gallery, Derek Buckner exhibits a handful of beautiful paintings whose subjects are mounds and mounds of marshmallows, illuminated dramatically by a glowing yellow light.  The images on the web site don’t do the colors justice (they’re much more saturated in person).  The paintings are a study in temperature and value contrasts as well as adept paint handling.  Although the press release relates the subject to one of overcrowding and proliferation, I prefer to enjoy these works for their formal characteristics.  Thinking about the subject matter makes you first crave a stick and a fire but then you quickly recall the sickening feeling of one too many marshmallows!

Up the block at Dillon Gallery, Scott Redden exhibits his colorful, billowy landscapes in The Farmland Paintings.  Houses, barns, churches and other buildings sit atop mounds of rolling farmland, most often lit on one side by low yellow sunlight and the other by a cool blue sky.  I would categorize the paintings in this show into two types:  ones with large boulder-like “clouds” floating above the landscape and ones without.  I prefer the ones without these clouds even though they provide an ominous narrative to an otherwise still painting.  Though the paint handling is very different, the non-cloud paintings remind me of Hopper’s New England landscapes.  This is the second show of Redden’s I’ve seen at Dillon and in each of his paintings I notice one or more small drops of the underpainting in red, orange, or blue poking through the later layers, a kind of signature mark that the artist leaves behind.

Across the street at Gana Art is an exhibition of beautiful paintings by Korean artist Ko, Young Hoon.  In most of the show’s 10 paintings, a single object stands or floats in front of a white background: for several of the works the subject is an ancient Buddha statue, beautifully rendered in paint so that you can practically feel the texture of the sculpture.  Other subjects include ceramic jars also painted with incredible surface detail (though fortunately you can still see the brushstrokes upon close inspection).

Over on 26th Street, another Korean artist, Kwang-Young Chun, exhibits his now very familiar and yet still very fascinating “Aggregation” pieces.  Chun’s work, for me, falls into that category of “Darn, why didn’t I buy one of those earlier?”  When I first saw one of these pieces perhaps four or five years ago, I loved it immediately — it would have made a great investment then as the pieces on display his show at Robert Miller go for upwards of $150,000 now!  If you haven’t seen them, Chun wraps small polystyrene shapes with Korean mulberry paper covered with Korean characters and aggregates them onto a support that hangs on the wall.  The resulting pieces resemble rocky landscapes as the artist uses changes in value, texture, and size to suggest craters and hills.  This is the first time I’ve seen him incorporate color; tints of blue in some of the craters stand out from otherwise monochromatic surfaces.  These works are worth examining both from a distance and up close.

To top off a fine evening of art-going, over at the Betty Cunningham gallery I happened to run into Mel Liepzig and Linda Pochesci, both of whom I had the pleasure of exhibiting with in group shows this year (at D&R Greenway with both of them and at the Trenton City Museum with Mel).  The new season is always exciting and this year’s has gotten off to a stimulating start!