ART IN NEW YORK CITY: MOMA AND THE STREAMLINED WORLD OF DONALD JUDD

When a pandemic grounds you in New York, you adapt and explore more art locally. So, while we wait for the lockdowns and vaccines to start working their magic and returning us to normalcy, expect to see more local art stories here. First up, MoMA’s recent show on Donald Judd.

MoMA IS ALWAYS A GOOD IDEA

Museum of Modern Art is one of my favorite museums in New York both for the clean lines of its architecture and the amazing richness of the art inside.

MoMA’s sixth-floor special exhibit space

The building itself is worth a visit. I loved the 2004 design by Japan’s Yoshio Taniguchi. The Keio University and Harvard School of Design-educated Taniguchi got his training working with the likes of Walter Gropius and Kenzo Tange, one of the prominent modernist architects in Japan, and, later on, Isamu Noguchi. After opening his own studio, he became known for museum projects, including the Nagano Prefectural Museum, the Marugame Genichiro Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art, the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, and the Gallery of the Hōryū-ji Treasures at the Tokyo National Museum. In 1997, Taniguchi won a competition to redesign the Museum of Modern Art, beating out several architecture powerhouses such as Rem Koolhaas, Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron. MoMA, his first project outside Japan, let the artwork breathe by expanding the exhibition space, adding skylights to the galleries and offering visitors lots of unexpected lookout points that allowed them to experience the art and the space in a new light.

In 2019, MoMA morphed again, this time based on the work of Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with Gensler. The renovated space includes an additional 165,000 square feet of gallery space and it is to the architects’ credit that the design, in many ways, disappears in favor of a seamless experience, letting guests focus on the art without noticing that they are moving between multiple buildings. The expanded space gives MoMA the ability to showcase a much broader range of art and visitors have a chance to learn about a more diverse set of artists.

In the summer, grab a book and ice cream and enjoy the outdoor sculpture garden. It is lovely.

DONALD JUDD’S STREAMLINED ART

Donald Judd, MoMA 2020

Earlier this year, MoMA put on an extensive show of Donald Judd’s streamlined, minimalist (a term that he himself avoided) sculptural work. Judd, one of the best known sculptors of modern time, made his fame through innovative use of industrial materials, production approaches and use of color and surface that let audiences experience his work in new and different ways.

Judd started his art career as a painter but quickly moved from figurative to abstract work and by the early 1960s, was concentrating on straight lines and angles. By 1963 he had moved on to forms — ‘stacks’, ‘boxes’ and ‘progressions’ — that he would become known for over the next thirty years. His use of simple, often repeated forms and everyday materials such as metals, plywood or plexiglass lent itself to exploration of use of space.

The MoMA exhibition showcased the full evolution of Judd’s work and, in what turned out to be a silver lining of the pandemic, due to the socially distanced crowds, allowed you to really engage with the art at your own pace.

Donald Judd, MoMA 2020

Although the show itself has now closed, you can still see one of Judd’s pieces in the outdoor sculpture garden. Those who are willing to explore further afield can venture out to Dia:Beacon that has a long-term exhibition of his plywood work or take a road trip to Marfa, Texas and the Chinati Foundation where the permanent collection includes many large-scale works by Judd and his contemporaries such as Dan Flavin, Robert Irwin and John Chamberlain. Marfa is on my list and when we can travel again, expect a post about it here as well. For now, you can also explore Judd’s work through one of the books showcasing his work.

BUDAPEST CONTEMPORARY ART, PART DEUX

While I try to explore new art destinations, when I recently traveled to Budapest for the second time in under a year, I took it as an opportunity to drill a little deeper into the city’s contemporary art scene.

This time, I moved away from the city center to The Ludwig Museum. The museum holds Hungary’s collection of international contemporary art. Its current location in the nondescript Palace of Arts north of Rákóczi Bridge, focuses on temporary exhibitions in the space that stretches over three floors. A new building by the amazing SANAA architects is under construction and I can’t wait to see it when it’s done. Temporary space notwithstanding, the shows did not disappoint. The Family Album, showing the emotional stories of three families impacted by the Kosovo conflict, pulls at your heartstrings and Dead Web - The End show on the first floor will make you both laugh out loud and ponder what our lives could look like if the web just went away one day. Could we handle it?

My favorite, however, was The Imaginary Cameras show highlighting the work of Tamás Waliczky. Tamás, a media artist who started his work as a cartoonist, is a multitasker. Painter, illustrator, and a photographer who went digital in 1983 focusing on spatial representation of time, futuristic renderings of augmented reality, and the examination of optical distortions. The show, which represented Hungary at the 2019 Venice Biennale, examines mechanisms an designs that inventors could use to create new picture recording devices. The stunning black and white photographs and videos of fantasy machines (cameras, projectors and viewers) captured both the photography lover and the geek in me. I couldn’t get enough and I suspect you would enjoy them as well.

Well done, Budapest!

THE LATEST COOL ART DESTINATION IN NEW YORK

Fotografiska’s Wes Anderson’esque hallways

Most of my posts cover interesting art and design destinations around the world. That said, when a new art hotspot opened right in New York, backed by a great Stockholm gallery that I admired during my visit there, I had to write a few words to welcome the opening. That new hotspot is Fotografiska.

After a long-ish wait required to complete the full-blown renovation of the gallery’s landmarked Renaissance Revival–style building on lower Park Avenue, the contemporary photography gallery finally opened its doors in mid December and my wait was finally over. And I could not be happier to have this new museum just a cab ride away.

Much like its Swedish parent, Fotografiska is not a run-of-the-mill photography gallery. Spread over six floors of its historic building, it combines a cool, laid-back art opening lounge on the 6th floor, a fancy restaurant, Veronika, on the second floor, a cool Scandi cafe and book store on the ground floor and gallery rooms showcasing interesting photography everywhere else.

As a photo portrait lover, I was totally in my element in the original Stockholm gallery, and its New York offspring did not disappoint. In the top floor lounge area, I could admire Danny Clinch’s photographs, a virtual Who’s Who of the music world, including my favorite, Bruce Springsteen.

A few steps away, down the darkened industrial staircase decorated by large photo prints that lend them a Wes Anderson-like feel, on the fifth floor, the bold, loud, passionate world of Ellen Von Unwerth’s Devotion! awaits. You can wander the dark rooms, moving from “Passion” to “Lust” to at your own pace, admiring the bold imagery that comes at you in color as well as in black and white. It will pull you in, I guarantee it.

One of my favorite shows I found on the fourth floor. Tawney Chatmon’s ”Inheritance” tackles the difficult topic of racial challenges through unusually beautiful, ornate work that doesn’t deny its Klimt-esque inspiration. I liked it more than I ever imagined I would and I suspect you will, too.

Tawney Chatmon “Inheritance”

Two additional floors cover other gems from the world of contemporary photography and works by Anastasia Taylor-Lind, Adi Ness, and the powerful landscapes by Helene Schmitz.

On the ground floor, you can lose yourself among the many books, posters and other items that photo lovers young and mature will enjoy. I may have just found my favorite new gallery spot in NYC!