The Met - December visit

David Hockney

For nearly 60 years, David Hockney (British, born 1937) has pursued a singular career with a love for painting and its intrinsic challenges. This major retrospective—the exhibition's only North American venue—honors the artist in his 80th year by presenting his most iconic works and key moments of his career from 1960 to the present.

Working in a wide range of media with equal measures of wit and intelligence, Hockney has examined, probed, and questioned how to capture the perceived world of movement, space, and time in two dimensions. The exhibition offers a grand overview of the artist's achievements across all media, including painting, drawing, photography, and video. From his early experiments with modernist abstraction and mid-career experiments with illusion and realism, to his most recent, jewel-toned landscapes, Hockney has consistently explored the nature of perception and representation with both intellectual rigor and sheer delight in the act of looking.

The delightful exhibition highlighted that range of this amazing artist by going far beyond his California portraits and pool scene.  We were given a sense of his extraordinary creativity as hinted at by his iPad art.  

This video really shows his genius: https://youtu.be/cO5rCS6G3XU

The Met Breuer December 2017

Edvard Munch: Between the Clock and the Bed

Norwegian artist Edvard Munch (1863–1944) attained fame early in his career for his depictions of human anxiety. Throughout his career, Munch regularly revisited subjects from his earlier years, exploring them with renewed inspiration and intensity over time. Self-Portrait: Between the Clock and the Bed (1940–43) was one of his final such works and it serves as a lens to reassess Munch's oeuvre.

This exhibition features 43 of the artist's landmark compositions created over a span of six decades, including 16 self-portraits and works that have never before been seen in the United States. More than half of the works on view were part of Munch's personal collection and remained with him throughout his life.

Following a light lunch, Harriet and I explored the Edvard Munch exhibition which was dominated by self portraits.  We were delighted by some unexpected sketches.  

Read Here: https://hyperallergic.com/418681/edvard-munch-between-the-clock-and-the-bed-met-breuer-2017/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=sw