BWW Reviews: MOMA's Fun, For a Friday Night and More

MOMAS Fun, For a Friday night and more:

What was so hot in "The Street" when Oldenburg's Old Storefront was in Town

By Barry Kostrinsky

Two Girls dresses 1961 Braselette 1961

MOMA is hot, blame it on Global Warming.

I can't remember anytime I enjoyed such a large range of works on different floors at MOMA. Claes Oldenburg's old storefront packed up a little differently this week compared to what must have happened after its four year run in the early 1960's. You may have missed this one that has sat too long on my desktop. As recompense go to MOMA for free one Friday night from 4-8pm, tell them Barry sent you. Often we only read about exhibitions, who can schlep to so much?

Breakfast Table and Lingerie Counter 1962

You could taste the energy in Oldenburg's drawings and sculptures and feel the force from the MOMA exhibit hall. Oldenburg made palpable the street energy of the era. Claus's drawing were not coming from a Zen-like introspective searching for an outward guiding hand but from a fierce hand with a frenzied pace reaching for a similar power of the possessed. Claus removes the function of the object to make it useless as anything else but art. He tricks us and plays between the lines of the real, the faux and art.

From MOMA's greatly expanded ceilings hung screens that projected happenings from an era we are mostly removed from and are now distant from today's Sotheby's and Christies sales happenings. The cynic in me wants to mention the destruction of the temple, the ruin of the old MOMA by its older Dadas- the garden, the lone relic of the past, but I won't digress. I want to compare boards desires for bigger and better art spaces as a parallel with some other infatuation in our society for bigger and better something but the words and image eludes me and I won't do that either.

Back at MOMA, my friend mentioned he was in many such happenings like the ones we gazed mesmerized at from the well-hung ceilings. He recounted tails of happenings in pools. Nothings changed, pools are still happening. Oddly enough when we came to one of Oldenburg's seminal pieces, his shelve of solidified and splatterized dessert and ice cream treats gone mummified, it was my time to bring the work home, or better to work.

Claes Oldenburg. Pastry Case, I. 1961-62. Painted plaster sculptures on ceramic plates, metal platter, and cups in glass-and-metal case, 20 3/4 x 30 1/8 x 14 3/4" (52.7 x 76.5 x 37.3 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. The Sidney and Harriet Janis Collection. © 2012 Claes Oldenburg

I looked closely and said in almost disbelief that there is my #28 base and a #566 top in the case. My old family business made, amongst other things, silver plated banana split and ice cream sundae dishes for many 50's ice cream shops. Mr. Oldenburg had used two of my products in his case! One of the sundae dishes was polished and the silver looked great and very reflective, almost too much so. The other had lost all it's silver and the base metal, nickle silver gave the opposite effect, a flat mat lighter grey finish. The clash of the two different finishes irked me a bit as I wondered how Claus had it and what would be the proper polished presentation.

Now eat that in an hour you quick gobbling gargantuan guerillas

Oldenburg is mostly known for his soft sculptures and growing the small bigger: the mundane gone somewhat monumental. A few of these large limp alien like objects graced the grand exhibit space on MOMA's 6th floor. A few years ago I saw an exhibit that just focused on these game changers for contemporary sculptures that opened up doorways of possibilities for many young sculptures to whom Claes implies Santa. That show left me thinking Mr. Oldenburg, though critical for steering the path of art history was behind the times and his work was fading like a drawing in sunlight. I had seen other soft work, by other artists, in particular a white soft piano at the Bronx Museum, that moved me more than Oldenburg's work did. The MOMA show sets these soft oversized nonsubtleties in their proper context. They do come alive amongst the other art works cranked out from his creative and memorable though short lived storefront.

I like hearing the thoughts of the common folk, the regular Joe and often provoke a dialogue with strangers to hear their thoughts. This time an art stranger started chanting her thoughts to me. This eager New Yorker quickly told me what she thoughts of the Oldenburg show. She expressed that the artist was having fun, that he was playing and probably stoned when he did the work. In her eyes, the show did not belong in a Museum, in a stiff and stogy place that raises art to a level of complexity and substance it may not deserve. Mr. Oldenburg is quoted in MOMA's on line literature for "The Store" as saying: "I'd like to get away from the notion of a work of art as something outside of experience, something that is located in Museums, something that is terribly precious."

Score one for the average Josephine!

You should hop in a cab for the grouping of exhibits throughout the Museum. Lunch at Danny Meyer's Modern doesn't suck either; the Sea Urchin foam on the appetizer was Marilyn mintable. Folder paper wonton holder tricks were demonstrated delightfully and seemed easy after a soft crafts display of décor origami.

If you made it this far, here's a bonus;

Free Museum Hours and listings:

http://www.nycgo.com/articles/free-nyc-museums

The Corbusier exhibit brought back fond memories of an older Modern Museum.

Le Corbusier: An Atlas of Modern Landscapes

To September 23, 2013

Le Corbusier (Charles-Edouard Jeanneret) with Pierre Jeanneret. Villa Savoye Poissy-sur-Seine, France. 1929-31. Wood, aluminum, and plastic, 16 x 34 x 32" (40.6 x 86.4 x 81.3 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Purchase. © 2012 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris/FLC

XL: 19 New Acquisitions in Photography

To-January 6, 2014

Lynn Hershman Leeson. Roberta's Construction Chart #2. 1976. Chromogenic color print, printed 2003, 22 15/16 x 29 5/8" (58.3 x 75.3 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. The Modern Women's Fund. © 2013 Lynn Hershman Leeson

Abstract Generation: Now in Print

To September 2, 2013

James Siena. Sequence One. 2009-10. Illustrated book with 36 woodcuts, page: 16 15/16 x 13 7/16" (43 x 34.1 cm); overall (closed): 17 x 13 7/16 x 1 1/8" (43.2 x 34.2 x 2.8 cm). Publisher and printer: Flying Horse Editions, Orlando, Fla. Edition: 20. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. General Print Fund. © 2012 James Siena

Bill Brandt: Shadow and Light

To August 12, 2013

Bill Brandt. Bombed Regency Staircase, Upper Brook Street, Mayfair. c. 1942. Gelatin silver print, 9 x 7 5/8" (22.8 x 19.4 cm). Acquired through the generosity of Clarissa A. Bronfman

Performing Histories (1)

To August 5, 2013

Is now History too.

Barry Kostrinsky