Monday, February 27, 2012

MANHATTAN MEDLEY: ART WORLD VENUES (c) By Polly Guerin

















Matisse, Woman with Hat

It is the best of times and the most prolific of times because New York City’s art lovers need only head for museum mile to find the richest deposit of art treasures in the world. Here’s the scoop!!!

Photo: Liberty House at night in Jersey City.

THE STEINS COLLECT: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art unites some 200 works of art that demonstrate the significant impact the Stein’s patronage had on modern art, albeit collecting relatively unknown artists at the time with whom they became friends. Just as the Steins opened their apartment on Saturday evenings to anyone who arrived with a reference in hand, you too can vicariously enter the Stein’s salon and view the early works of Matisse and Picasso, and scores of other painters such as Pierre Bonnard, Jacques Lipchitz, Henri Manguin and many others. It is the story of one American family not rich, but collectors by nature, who shaped the development of modern art for decades to come. Do stop and see Gertrude Stein’s musical Four Saints in Three Acts with the enchanting models for both settings and costumes by American artist, Florine Stettheimer. www.metmuseum.org. Image: Henri Matisse (French 1869-1954) Woman with a Hat, 1905 © Succession H. Matisse/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
IN THE COMPANY OF ANIMALS: Art, Literature, and Music. The new Morgan Library & Museum’s exhibition explores how the relationship between animals and the artistic imagination have provided a particularly fertile source of inspiration for artists, writers, and composers for centuries. Animals are everywhere from ancient depictions with fearsome lions and mythical beasts, to Biblical scenes, to more recent portrayals of endearing animal figures in children’s stories, such as Babar and Winnie the Pooh. On view the varied role of animals as symbols, muses, moral teachers, talking creatures and beloved companions and how they communicate important ideas and themes. In Talking Creatures a child’s definition of an animal (1951) “An animal is something you feel like talking to.” Through May 20. www.themorgan.org.
THE QUEEN OF SELF-PORTRAIT, Cindy Sherman is the subject of MOMA’s groundbreaking retrospective of the artist’s career from the mid-1970s to the present. A photographer and filmmaker known for her conceptual self-portraits Cindy gets her due with more than 180 key photographs from the artist’s significant series including the complete “Untitled Film Stills” (1977-80) centerfolds and her celebrated history portraits. Masquerading as a myriad of characters in front of her own camera, Sherman creates extraordinary invented personas and tableaus. Through June 11th. MOMA 11 W. 53 St. www.moma.org.
LIBERTY HOUSE…Polly’s restaurant pick of the week is over the river by Water Taxi to Frank and Jeannne Cretella’s landmark hospitality restaurant in Liberty State Park with spectacular views of the New York Skyline at 76 Audrey Zapp Drive, Jersey City. Come spring and summer it’s the perfect vicarious day trip where the food is international with an American twist and the meals are served with an artistic presentation that is as delightful as the food itself. www.libertyhouserestaurant.com. 201.395.0300. Call for directions by car via the Holland Tunnel.
Ta Ta Darlings!!! I was delighted with Florine Stettheimer's costumes and sets for Four Saints in Three Acts and urge you to see the Steins Collect. Fan mail welcome: pollytalk@verizon.net. Visit Polly’s fashion, poetry or determined women Blogs at www.pollytalk.com, just click in the left-hand column on the convenient links.

1 comment:

  1. Dear  ,

    now this wonderfull exhibition,"The Steins Collect;Matisse,Picasso,Cezanne and the Parisian Avant Garde" in NewYork at the Metropolitan Museum of Art ,is over .

    It was a little more than twelve months the Steins’s Year .Perhaps more than one million visitors in the five exhibitions .

    What a pleasure to see the portrait of Gertrude Stein by Riba-Rovira .

    Who was as Picasso an antifascist and antinazi artist .Persecuted by Franco and the Nazis .And he is in this exhibition ,thanks to Rebecca Rabinow and Edward Burns.
    So Riba-Rovira is beside Tchelitchew and Balthus and Francis Rose near Picabia and Picasso in the last room of this exhibition with Cézanne, Matisse .

    You have an interesting article in Appollo London Revew about him .And also in Artes Magazine from San Francisco where the exhibition was before .

    The main revelation is in the mention beside the picture with the Preface Gertrude Stein wrote for first Riba-Rovira's exhibition in the Galerie Roquepine in Paris on 1945 .

    Where we can read Gertrude Stein writing Riba-Rovira "will go farther than Cezanne...will succeed in where Picasso failed...I am fascinated " by Riba-Rovira Gertrude Stein tells us .

    And you are you also fascinated indeed as Gertrude Stein by Riba-Rovira ?
    Me I am when I see « L’Arlequin » on the free access website of « Galeria Muro ».

    Gertrude Stein spoke in this same document not only Picasso and Cezanne but also Matisse and  Juan Gris .
    Riba-Rovira went each week in Gertrude Stein's saloon rue Christine with Masson, Hemingway and others. By Edward Burns and Carl Van Vechten we can know Riba-Rovira did others portraits of Gertrude Stein .

    But we do not know where they are ;and you do you know perhaps ?

    With this portrait we do not forget it is the last time Gertrude Stein sat for an artist who is Riba-Rovira .Picasso the first .
    This exhibition presents us a world success with this last painting portrait before she died .And her last Gertrude Stein's Art Retrospective before dead .

    It illuminates the tone as an esthetic light over that exhibition now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York thanks to Curator Rebecca Rabinow .
    Coming from San Francisco "Seeing five stories" in the Jewish museum to Washington in National Portrait Gallery .And after Paris, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York for our pleasure .

    And the must is to see for the first time in the same place portraits by Picasso, Picabia, Riba-Rovira, Rose ,Tall-Coat, Valloton .Never before it was .

    You have the translate of Gertrude Stein's Riba-Rovira Preface on english Gertrude Stein's page on Wikipedia and in the catalog of this Roquepine exhibition you can see in first place the mention of this portrait .And also other pictures Gertrude Stein bought to Riba-Rovira .
    There is another place where you can see now Riba-Rovira's works in an exhibition in Valencia in Spain "Homenage a Gertrude Stein" by Riba-Rovira in Galeria Muro ,if you like art ...

    We do not missed today that all over Europe a very bad wind is blowing again bringing the worth in front of us .And we must know that at least were two antinazis and antifascists in this exhibition but the only one fighting weapons in hands would be Riba-Rovira who did one of the first three « affiches » supporting Republicans in the beguining Spanish civil war .

    Seeing the Portrait of Gertrude Stein by Riba-Rovira in the Metropolitain Museum of New York with Picasso ,Cézanne ,Matisse we feel a recreation of spirit .

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