Compiled from holdings of the NY MoMA, tracing the development of three totemic genres - landscape, still life and portrait - from the late 19th century through to today.
Opens with one from each, all very strong - Van Gogh's "The Olive Trees" (1889), Cezanne's "Still Life With Ginger Jar, Sugar Bowl, and Oranges" (1902-06) and Toulouse-Lautrec's "La Goulue at the Moulin Rouge" (1891-92) - and invites reflection by closing with another trio: JoAnn Verburg's "Olive Trees after the Heat" (1998 - four large photograph panels, a sort of triptych in four parts), Urs Fischer's "Untitled" (2000 - a suspended piece made up of a half-apple and half-pear bolted together) and Elizabeth Peyton's "Jake at the New Viet Huong (1995 - actually not a world away from the paired Toulouse-Lautrec).
In between, it takes the three in turn. Probably unsurprisingly, given what draws me in art, I was most drawn to the 'Landscape' section; it, like the others, was essentially a tour of modern through to contemporary art - the fauves, expressionists, surrealists, cubists through to more conceptual work all represented, along with some of those harder to categorise but essential individuals like Cezanne, Kandinsky ("Church at Murnau", 1909), Klimt ("The Park", 1910 or earlier - I was very taken with this one), Duchamp, Matta, Gerhard Richter ("Meadowland", 1985 - an oil work that looks very much like a blurred photo).
'Still life' was haunted by the mournful sound of Laurie Anderson's "Self-Playing Violin" (1974); I was struck by the Klee apples, Boccioni's "Development of a bottle in space" (1912 - the futurism somehow made more sense to me in a bronze sculpture than it usually does in a painting) and another bronze work, Lichtenstein's "Glass IV" (1976)...given that still lives are about objects, pop art made much more of a showing in this section.
Somehow very few of the portraits made an impression, but that one that did, really lodged in the stomach for me. It was a series of photos by Nicholas Nixon, actually - black and white portraits of his wife and her three sisters ('the Brown Sisters') taken at five year intervals from 1976 through to 2011, so eight altogether (so far), all in the same ordering and all outdoors, mostly in Massachusetts - although I see from the MoMA website that there are actually many more.
There was something about them that really got to me - I guess there's an inherent poignancy in being able to see the ageing process, but I also responded quite personally to them, trying to place myself within the chronology (by age) and also seeing elements of people I know in the appearances, faces and expressions...particularly in the relatively earlier, but certainly not the earliest, of them.
Opens with one from each, all very strong - Van Gogh's "The Olive Trees" (1889), Cezanne's "Still Life With Ginger Jar, Sugar Bowl, and Oranges" (1902-06) and Toulouse-Lautrec's "La Goulue at the Moulin Rouge" (1891-92) - and invites reflection by closing with another trio: JoAnn Verburg's "Olive Trees after the Heat" (1998 - four large photograph panels, a sort of triptych in four parts), Urs Fischer's "Untitled" (2000 - a suspended piece made up of a half-apple and half-pear bolted together) and Elizabeth Peyton's "Jake at the New Viet Huong (1995 - actually not a world away from the paired Toulouse-Lautrec).
In between, it takes the three in turn. Probably unsurprisingly, given what draws me in art, I was most drawn to the 'Landscape' section; it, like the others, was essentially a tour of modern through to contemporary art - the fauves, expressionists, surrealists, cubists through to more conceptual work all represented, along with some of those harder to categorise but essential individuals like Cezanne, Kandinsky ("Church at Murnau", 1909), Klimt ("The Park", 1910 or earlier - I was very taken with this one), Duchamp, Matta, Gerhard Richter ("Meadowland", 1985 - an oil work that looks very much like a blurred photo).
'Still life' was haunted by the mournful sound of Laurie Anderson's "Self-Playing Violin" (1974); I was struck by the Klee apples, Boccioni's "Development of a bottle in space" (1912 - the futurism somehow made more sense to me in a bronze sculpture than it usually does in a painting) and another bronze work, Lichtenstein's "Glass IV" (1976)...given that still lives are about objects, pop art made much more of a showing in this section.
There was something about them that really got to me - I guess there's an inherent poignancy in being able to see the ageing process, but I also responded quite personally to them, trying to place myself within the chronology (by age) and also seeing elements of people I know in the appearances, faces and expressions...particularly in the relatively earlier, but certainly not the earliest, of them.
