LONEY'S MUSEUM NOTES

Tropical butterfly alights on visitor to Vivarium. Photo Copyright: American Museum of Natural History.

Tropical Butterflies on the Wing
At American Museum of Natural History

But there are hundreds of tropical butterflies from Latin America. From 300 to 500 at any given time. With beautiful new Lepidoptera constantly bursting out of their chrysalises.

Visitors to the museum will be able to walk through this tropical environment and study the butterflies at very close range.

So close that—as they leave through a kind of Decompression-Chamber—any butterflies clinging to their clothing can be returned to their museum habitat.

Thus, it's a very good thing that there's no rain to complicate this brief excursion into another biodiverse world.

Although there are some 18,000 species of butterflies—divided into five classes—only examples from three of those divisions are now on view.

Among them are the Pieridae, such as the Orange-barred Sulphur and the White-angled sulphur.

Some of the most exotic of these visitors to Manhattan are from the Papilionidae. You may have seen a Giant Swallowtail or two, but how about the Zebra Swallowtail? Or a Battus belus?

Various members of the Nymphalidae family are far more numerous in this Live Show. They include the all-too-familiar Monarch and some really unusual butterflies such as the Owl, the Blue Morpho, the Malachite, and the Stinky Leaf Wing.

Outside the Vivarium—which can be entered only in small walk-through groups—are some vividly illustrated wall-panels with lots of important details about these lovely fluttering insects.

Brightly colored caterpillars—and poisonously vivid butterfly wings—warn predatory birds and insects that this or that species is Off Limits. If it doesn't kill them, it can make them very sick.

If they survive, they will be more careful next meal. So Please Don't Eat the Butterflies!

Oddly enough, some non-poisonous species have evolved with similarly vivid colorations. This protective evolutionary adaptation is called Mimicry.

Butterflies seem to have been on earth since the Cretaceous Period. In this show is a fossilized butterfly which may be over 100 million years old! There's also a much younger one in amber—which may be only 30 or 40 million years old.

Although every effort has been made to recreate tropical climes—complete with some of the kinds of plants the butterflies are accustomed to—not only the rain is missing from this rainforest habitat.

There are No Host Plants. This prevents the butterflies from mating and laying eggs. The US Department of Agriculture insisted on this.

The Authorities do not want to increase our butterfly population. They fear foreign flying insects which might contain unknown viruses—which could then spread to domestic forms of life.

With a two-week life-span, the Vivarium's colorful visitors are being constantly replaced with 250 pupae shipped weekly from butterfly farms in Costa Rica and Florida.

Not all species fold their wings permanently after a short two weeks.

In Mexico, I once visited a valley filled with Monarchs. They covered tree-trunks. They swarmed on leaves and branches. I knew they had flown there from North America.

I asked the American Museum's James Miller—Associate Curator of Entomology and curator of this colorful exhibition—how this airborne migration was possible if Monarchs are doomed to die in 14 days.

Is their silent slogan: "Mexico or Die!" Or, more accurately: "Mexico and Die!"

The Monarchs just live longer than most butterflies. But how they know it is Time To Fly and where they have to go is still a mystery.

Like those Swallows who always come back to Mission San Juan Capistrano.

As Dr. Miller and his colleagues point out, there are still many things we do not know about butterflies. But we do know that their habitats are increasingly in danger.

The Vivarium has been constructed like Kit, which can be taken to pieces and re-assembled. It will surely be used in future, possibly with a mixture of species.

If the concept of exhibiting Biodiversity in such a habitat proves popular, there's even speculation that a larger, free-standing Vivarium could be created outside on the grounds of the Museum.

Because this intriguing interactive live-show was inspired by the American Museum's new Hall of Biodiversity, Curators' Choice is recycling last spring's report on that impressive installation.

Now, at the American Museum of Natural History, you can see at least a cross-section of one. It is among the largest Museum Dioramas in the world. It has been modeled on just such a forest in the Central African Republic.

But its lanky trunks and shiny green leaves aren’t just standing there behind walls of glass. They have a story to tell. It’s a tale of stupid, mindless greed, in search of mineral wealth, lumber, and farmland.

Of course burgeoning populations—especially in “undeveloped” areas of the earth—need more food and more wood. And speculators always want more gold, diamonds, coal, and oil.

But these are being obtained at incalculable and unseen costs, endangering the future of the Planet and its Peoples. Destruction of not only Rainforests, but of other ancient stands of trees, such as the Redwoods, also damages or destroys the delicate Eco-balances which make human, animal, and plant life possible.

But the big Rainforest Diorama is only one of a number of exhibits and audio-video-installations which colorfully and powerfully also make this point in the new Hall of Biodiversity.

Along one wall—called The Spectrum of Life—there is an amazing range of blown-glass models, dried and preserved specimens, and other examples of the earth’s astonishing riches of living forms. From the smallest bacterium to the largest mammal, both videos and models demonstrate what is endangered if Mankind continues to be so profligate with our varied resources.

The artifacts and models are massed in various design-collages. Myriads of bright butterflies soar silently skyward. Boxes of shells and other collectibles suggest that museum curators have finally found an interesting way to show their hoards of small objects. Which once were lying inert in dusty glass-cases, or hidden away in basement storage.

Kids should go crazy over such closely-packed collections. I could spend hours studying them myself. But they are also accompanied by a number of video-screens which show various life-forms colorfully Doing Their Thing. Whether it’s eating smaller fish, waving in the wind, or bifurcating.

The technology of video—with the artistry of gifted cameraman and the insights of concerned scientists—makes possible a sixty-foot-long multi-screen survey of nine distinct ecosystems on our planet.

The Crisis Zone, embedded in the Hall’s floor, is a TimeLine of five previous eras of major extinctions, with examples of species lost. Remember the Dinosaurs?

But we’ve also lost the Passenger Pigeon and the Dodo-bird. Those that have disappeared fairly recently, as well as those in serious danger are also displayed and documented.

In the Resources Center of the Hall, there are ten computer-monitors to link adults and kids to the latest information about biodiversity, planetary endangerments, and related websites!

The Transformation Wall, using videos, as well as text and graphics, documents ways in which urbanization, population-explosion, “development,” and greed are hurting the world’s delicate ecobalances.

Fortunately, there’s also a Solutions Wall. But it’s much later than most of us may think. If we are even aware of the problem.

The American Museum’s Center for Biodiversity and Conservation—which is actively studying the problem and devising solutions—points out that most biologists believe we are at this moment in the midst of a mass extinction of living things. And that this poses a major threat to continued human existence in the next century.

These mass extinctions are the fastest in the planet’s 4.5-billion-year history. Unlike the vast, superheated ravages of volcanoes and seas of molten lava—or the grinding glaciers of the Ice Age—our current destructions result mainly from human activities. Not from natural phenomena!

Problems of the Ozone Layer, Global Warming, Nuclear Contamination, and Pollution of Air, Land, and Sea are severe indeed. But the Museum’s Center is more concerned about the rapid loss of the earth’s biodiversity—which of course directly affects those other dangers.

In sum, what the Hall has to show and think about is more frightening than Jurassic Park and Godzilla combined. But, like those Monster Horror Films, the multi-media exhibits are designed to engage the attention and interest of even the most jaded juvenile TV-addict. Not to mention his or her Concerned Parents.

If Edgar Degas, born 1834, had taken up photography early in his career—which was also the infancy of photography as an art—would he have created a body of work as impressive as his achievements in painting?

From the evidence on view at the Metropolitan Museum, he certainly could have done so.

But Degas took up photography with a passion only late in his career. He lived on until 1917, but his sight was already beginning to fail when he became infatuated with the powers of the camera in 1895.

Reserving his daylight hours for pastels and sculptures in his studio, he usually took his haunting pictures in the evening. Among the most haunting of his surviving photographic images are those of the Halévys, almost a surrogate family.

Portraits of Louise Halévy and her son Daniel, made in moody interior lighting, are arresting in their lights and shadows.

A Degas gelatin silver print from the Getty Museum, Nude (Drying Herself) , is clearly the same figure as the woman in his 1986 pastel, After the Bath.

Among the 40 surviving negatives and positive Degas prints, there are some almost surreal color negatives.

One of these, Dancer (Arm Outstretched) , is the signature-image for this show. Its orange-red color-reversals, with grayish highlights, make it almost an abstraction. Until one looks at the plate very closely.

Obviously, no one—not even Degas himself—took these explorations of the possibilities of cameras, photographic plates, subjects, poses, and lighting seriously. None of the images was included in his posthumous studio sales of 1918 and 1919.

In 1920, his brother gave three negatives of the dancer—among other archival survivals—to the Bibliothèque Nationale. It is good that the 40 images now on display did survive.

But what has been lost? And what might have been?

Idealized male beauty in Donato Creti's painting of Mercury and Paris. Photo Courtesy of Metropolitan Museum.

And, because his major works belong to the City of Bologna, matters have remained largely that way until this major exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum.

The show is titled Donato Creti: Melancholy and Perfection. If small in scale, it nonetheless makes an impressive showing in its major exhibition chamber.

On view are 17 paintings of an allegorical cycle created early in the 18th century by Creti for a wealthy patron. When this worthy died, the cycle passed to the City of Bologna in 1744.

But, because Creti's artistic sensibility and his vision of Idealized Beauty was so refined, he was out of the mainstream of Italian painting even in his own time.

The ungrateful Bolognese eventually shipped the cycle off to storage. From which it was rescued only in the 1930s.

That Creti chose the Greek Hero Achilles—especially in infancy and youth—as an exemplary instance of beauty doesn't at first seem so unusual.

Such classical subjects were bread-and-butter to many painters of his time. Patrons couldn't get enough of mythological heroes and lovely goddesses.

His virtuoso rendering not only of his figures, but also of their drapes and props, is amazing in its detail.

In Creti's Mercury and Paris, seldom have virtually nude male bodies been posed so voluptuously and yet been so free of sensuality. That must be what Idealized Beauty is all about.

But even Paris' accompanying hunting dog gets Creti's detailed attention!

Also impressive is a series of Creti's allegorical figures, painted in the round, oil on copper. His Prudence is a lady in elegant profile and flowing classical robes.

She is holding a skull aloft in her right hand, while looking in a mirror held by a putto with eyes averted. Obviously, she is comparing her temporal beauty with the vision of what it will become after death.

Now that is very Prudent!

Were the skull a football, she could probably also throw a good forward pass.

Reiko Sudo's "Shutter," created by stitching nylon to a base-fabric and then dissolving the base material. On view at MoMA in Structure and Surface. Photo: Karen Willis.

It is called Structure and Surface: Contemporary Japanese Textiles. You will surely be astounded at the ingenious materials, astounding weaves, unusual dyes, and novel finishes of fabric swatches, sculptures, and finished garments.

How about a lighter-than-air translucent white scarf that looks like a folded Origami sculpture in repose? Extended for wear, it seems an endlessly repeating pattern of geometric surfaces.

These lovely novelties are made by folding the fabric, along with the Origami paper, to form a kind of accordion-pleated compaction. Then this object is put into a press at very high temperature and pressure.

Separated, both the paper and the scarf will spring back into the compressed form. Some of these are on sale in the MoMA shop.

At the press-preview, I had just finished reading a wall-text about the new stainless-steel thread initially developed to strengthen Bridgestone radial tires. Some woven samples of this superstrong fiber were on the wall.

The text told me that Sheila Hicks intended to weave a theatre-curtain from this remarkable material, endlessly and finely drawn out from stainless-steel rods.

At that moment, a lady asked me if I'd read the text. I thought she hadn't been able to read it herself, in the rather dim light. [Can't these textiles stand the light of day?]

So I told her of the artist's idea of weaving a decorative stainless-steel theatre curtain. And of my hope that such curtains—since they should be fire-proof or retardant—could be installed in all those theatres which still have asbestos fire-curtains.

Wouldn't it be a great idea to have a beautiful front-curtain which could also replace the fire-curtain? Two curtains for the price of one?

Sheila Hicks—for it was she!—agreed with me.

And we both agreed that, lovely though the Tiffany Glass curtain in Mexico City's Palacio de Bellas Artes is, it won't help in a major fire. Nor will it survive the heat.

Ms. Hicks took me over—followed by TV crews—to meet creators and manufacturers of this new miracle fiber. I learned that it cannot be dyed. It is colored by chemical reactions, and some colors have not yet been achieved.

I met Junicho Arai, a master of textile design, who has been experimenting with the potential of the fiber. He was wearing a long scarf of varied earth colors.

He took it off so I could feel its textures and heft its weight. I nearly dropped it! He told me it weighed about two kilos.

But the idea of beautifully colored threads, wonderfully woven, into a fire-proof garment is intriguing. As long as wearing such clothing wouldn't turn out to be a hard day's work!

Although you are not supposed to touch—and especially not to stroke or fondle—the seductive fabrics on display, Curator Matilda McQuaid knows the samples are very appealing. So there are swatches on the wall which you can manhandle to your heart's content.

The show offers examples of innovation in six areas of characteristics of textiles: Transparent, Dyed, Reflective, Printed, Sculpted, and Layered.

How about Triaxial Fabric? Or cloth with feathers woven into it? The range of ingenuity in use of materials, dyes, and processes is amazing.

Yoshihiro Kimura's "Pedocal" fabric. On view at MoMA in Structure and Surface. Photo: Karen Willis.

Considering how small Japan is in area, why haven't American artists, weavers, and technicians been able to create and manufacture such a wealth of new fibers and textiles?

If you are not able to see this show at MoMA, there is an excellent catalogue. Its title repeats that of the exhibition: Structure and Surface. It's published by MoMA [$24.95] and distributed by Harry Abrams, Inc.

By co-curators McQuaid of MoMA and Cara McCarthy of the Saint Louis Art Museum, this handsome book is covered with one of the fabrics on display. Inside, there are no swatches, but the rich color photos show the textiles in such detail and size that you will have an almost tactile sense of how they look and feel.

There are some hundred photos, with 67 in color, along with very informative essays, artists' bios, and a glossary for those who aren't facile in Japanese or textiles.

1925 French daycoat designed by Paul Poiret, with embroidered Japanese motifs. On view in Japan Dresses the West. Photo Courtesy of Brooklyn Museum of Art.

But it will seem more impressive if you see it first. Much of it is a prelude to the textiles and garments on view at MoMA.

It could seem an anti-climax, if seen after MoMA.

It does have its obligatory tribute to contemporary Japanese clothing design. But the gowns and clothes of Issey Miyake, Kenzo Takeda, and Kansai Yamamoto, striking as they are, form only a small part of the show.

As long as the Shogun kept Japan free of the Foreign Devils, there was no major export of Japanese fabrics or garments. Dutch traders did help the West learn about some of the more wonderful woven silks and lavish embroideries.

But this was only a trickle, compared to the flood of Japanese goods and garments which flowed into Europe and the Americas after Admiral Peary "opened" the Floating Island Kingdom.

On show are both elaborate Japanese kimonos and western garments made from such fabrics. It is really interesting to study western adaptations of traditional Japanese clothing.

But it is a bit unsettling to see wonderfully woven silk kimono and obi-sash patterns contorted to form Victorian bustles on thoroughly western gowns.

Japanese embroidered kimono material made up into a western Victorian dress, complete with bustle-effect. On view in Japan Dresses the West. Photo Courtesy of Brooklyn Museum of Art.

The exhibition chronology doesn't overlook the special Japanese contribution to fashions of the Art Deco Era.

Originally organized by Akiko Fukai, Chief Curator of the Kyoto Costume Institute, for Kyoto's National Museum of Modern Art, this show has undergone changes as it moved to Tokyo, Paris, Los Angeles, and now to Brooklyn.

Because the Brooklyn Museum's own costume collections are so comprehensive, it has been possible to enrich the exhibition with some very stylish gowns.

There is a very handsome catalogue, Japonism in Fashion, to accompany the exhibition. The vividly colored illustrations of garments and fabrics make it a valuable reference.

But, if you do not read Japanese, you may need some help. Aside from a brief but informative essay in English, the text is entirely in Japanese. The book was printed in Tokyo for the showing there.

Persia's Qajar Monarch, Fath'Ali Shah, enthroned in formal portrait. On loan from the Louvre Museum. Photo Courtesy of Brooklyn Museum of Art.

The Judaic ban concerned objects of worship originally, not art and decoration as such. But the effect, over the centuries, was to restrict and limit most Orthodox and Moslem artists.

Islam's most talented artists were involved in schematic representations of flowers and plants, of geometric designs and forms, intricate patterns and color-contrasts, and splendid calligraphies of the Name of Allah and texts from the Sacred Qu'ran.

Before Persia was converted to Islam in 641 AD, there was already a strong pictorial tradition. So it was not completely eradicated after the Conquest of the Faith.

The paintings just got a lot smaller—the fabulous Persian Miniatures—as though they did not want to call too much attention to themselves.

After a Golden Age of the Arts under the Safavids, that all changed. With the ascendancy of the Qajar Dynasty [1785-1925] large royal portraits, religious themes, battlefield confrontations, and harem scenes became court favorites.

The scale and colorful grandiosity of some of the portraits on view in Brooklyn are impressive. But also somewhat amusing, as these Qajar Shahs decorated themselves like Christmas Trees.

In fact, some portraits of Fath 'Ali Shah make him look like Santa in a long fake beard, but stark black instead of snowy white.

In a towering jeweled crown, with jeweled belt, armlets, staff, and long white jeweled skirt, he even looks a bit like a fabulous Bearded Lady.

Some important Qajar Royal Portraits were commissioned as gifts to foreign monarchs. They were intended to impress, especially with samples of the material wealth of Persia so grandly displayed on the monarch's person.

The Qajar Shahs—and their subjects, apparently—believed that the portraits themselves were almost incarnations of rulership. These images were treated with as much respect as the monarchs.

They were even carried with great ceremony in parades, rather like religious icons in the West.

This may help explain why even Iran's contemporary Islamic Fundamentalists still parade huge photographic portraits of their leaders, such as the Ayatollah Kohmeini.

If the Mullahs were as strict as their Fatwahs indicate, there wouldn't even be as much as a wallet-photo of any of the Faithful to be found.

Under the Qajars, noble rulers and great men—even lesser men—could be painted. But not noble women of the court.

Elaborately gowned female dancer in Qajar court, a portrait shown in Royal Persian Paintings at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Photo Courtesy of Brooklyn Museum of Art.

Female entertainers, however, were interesting subjects. Two of the more unusual paintings in this show depict beautiful and bejeweled women acrobats with their legs high in the air, their heads down, and their arms balanced on the floor.

[Not quite the same entertainment-value as a half-hour with Monica in the Oval Office. But then Bill Clinton didn't have a Qajar monarch's harem either.]

The Brooklyn Museum has one of the most important collections of Qajar art, but this exhibition also has drawn on some 36 other sources. These include the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, the Louvre, and London's Victoria & Albert Museum.

There are more than 100 remarkable works of art in this exhibition. And it is the first major showing of so many Qajar masterpieces in one venue. Many had already been dispersed into Russia and Europe during the zenith of the dynasty's power.

The splendid and very informative catalogue has been edited by Layla S. Diba, the Hagop Kevorkian Curator of Islamic Art at the Brooklyn Museum, and Senior Research Associate Mayam Ekhtiar.

This weighty tome has 296 pages and many marvelous illustrations. Not only of pictures and objects in the show, but also of pre-Qajar art and Western influences, as well as Persian scenes and locales.

It has been published by the Brooklyn Museum and is available in the bookshop. The show—and the catalogue—will travel to Los Angeles and London in 1999.

Rembrandt Peale's 1853 portrait of George Washington. On view at the New-York Historical Society in Treasures from Mount Vernon.

The Father of His Country was always scrupulously honest and forthright. And he did not wear wooden false-teeth.

Now, on the eve of big Bicentennial Celebrations in his honor, Americans have the opportunity to take the measure of Washington as a real human-being. Not just the National Icon that he became even in his lifetime.

In an impressive installation at the New-York Historical Society, many dimensions of George Washington are documented. In all of them, he manifests himself as a remarkably courteous, compassionate, courageous, intelligent, and far-sighted American.

So it is easy to undestand why he was so admired, even revered, even before his death in 1799. In his own time, he was known as the Man who would not be King.

Treasures from Mount Vernon: George Washington Revealed presents some 170 period objects and documents in special contexts to illuminate the man and his life. Many are on loan from Mount Vernon, thanks to the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, the oldest preservation society in America.

George Washington's false-teeth. On view at the New-York Historical Society in Treasures from Mount Vernon.

Washington's false-teeth might have been more comfortable had they been made of wood. The historic choppers on view in New York have teeth set in jointed metal frames, operated with springs.

One of the teeth is Washington's own. The others are carved from a cow's tooth and hippopotamus ivory. There's even a courteous letter from Washington asking his dentist to make needed repairs.

This handsomely mounted exhibition is divided into six sections, opening with The Presence of Washington. This offers impressions of the physical man and how he changed from Commander in Chief to our first President.

Venturing Forth shows a sixteen-year-old Washington beginning work as a surveyor of frontier territories and as an officer in the French-and-Indian War. He was a war-hero at 23!

A full-scale recreation of Washington's tent, when he was Commander of the Continental Army, is the centerpiece of Assuming Command. It is furnished with his personal equipment, including his folding camp-cot.

The Pleasure of His Company shows Washington as a very loving husband, a caring foster-father—for he never sired children, a generous host, a stalwart comrade, and a courtly dancing-partner.

Apparently George Washington loved to dance and was a charmer with the ladies, although he was most often reserved, even aloof, in his demeanor.

As did all gentlemen plantation-owners of his time, Washington of course had slaves. He even inherited some slaves at age eleven, when his father died.

It is clear from the documentation in On His Own Farm that Washington certainly was concerned for the well-being of his and his wife's slaves. At his death, there were some 300 slaves at Mount Vernon.

In his will, he freed his own slaves, but Martha Washington's "dower slaves" did not really belong to her. On her death, they had to be passed on to her heirs. As there had been intermarriage between the two groups, this meant some bitter separations.

Washington was reputed an excellent horseman, breaking and training his own mounts. He was also an experienced farmer and planter.

Unlike some Virginia gentlemen, he oversaw every aspect of work on his extensive lands. Even during the long absences required by commanding the Continental Army and serving as President, he kept in touch with Mount Vernon by mail and messenger.

The last section of this exhibition, Getting a Touch of Him, deals with the Mythologising which was already well underway during his lifetime.

It is interesting to note that even strangers who came to Mount Vernon just to see this Famous Man were hospitably received, fed, and even invited to stay overnight. And Washington was certainly not running for office.

As the courageous leader of the forces fighting the American Revolution—when he was the only man who could hold the army together—Washington became a great hero in Europe.

The American Revolution inspired the French Revolution. And the Marquis de Lafayette—who fought as Washington's aide in the American cause—sent him the great key to the Bastille after French revolutionaries had stormed it.

Later, Washington was given a model of the Bastille, carved from one of its original stones. This soon became a plaything for his step-daughter's children.

Unfortunately for Lafayette, the savage Revolutionaries turned on him, despite his championing of liberty. His estates were ravaged, and this hero of the American Revolution was imprisoned.

He sent his son to the Washingtons for safety. They cared for the lad like one of their own family. Washington had regarded the boy's father, the Marquis, rather like a son.

Had Washington not caught cold while out overseeing his farms—and had he had better medical care—1999 might not yet have been his Bicentennial.

The treatments prescribed by Washington's physician—and friend—for his last illness would have killed even a healthy man. He was bled copiously three times, surely weakening him. Not to mention forced vomiting, enemas, and similar tortures.

This exhibition will travel to the Huntington Library, in San Marino, California. It will be on view there from March 16 to June 6.

Then it moves on to the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond, followed by the Atlanta History Center in Georgia, and the Chicago Historical Society in Illinois.

During its stay on Central Park West, however, it is enhanced by a special exhibition of relevant documents from the extensive Gilder Lehrman Archives of American History.

Some rare treasures belonging to the New-York Historical Society have a prominent space of their own, to complement the Mount Vernon Treasures.

Even though Mount Vernon has lent so many objects to this traveling celebration, there remains much to see on the Potomac premises. Special events are planned there throughout 1999.

The Mount Vernon tours even have a special title: ONLY IN 1999.

There are two websites: www.mountvernon.org and www.gwashington1999.org

For those who cannot manage an excursion to Mount Vernon, the current exhibition concludes with a large scale-model of Washington's home, complete with period furnishings!

Also at the New-York Historical Society is New York's Finest: A History of the New York City Police Department. It shows the good with the bad, covering a span of more than 300 years. This installation will be on view until March 21, 1999.

Jackson Pollock in his Long Island studio, standing in front of Number 32. Photo Copyright & Copy—Hans Namuth Ltd. 1998

And, if you are so young or so isolated that you don't know the work at all or Pollock's Legend, that's all the more reason to see this show.

Jackson Pollock wasn't just some Long Island Crazy who one day decided to dribble a couple of quart cans of house-paint—in black and white and red—over a butt-end of Masonite.

But that's what he seemed to be in the art-film, The Day of the Painter, which appeared when he first came to prominence. In this artistic spoof, the painter was randomly dribbling and spattering paint left-overs on a pressboard panel laid out on a dock.

The work proved too large to be salable, so he got a hand-held circular-saw and cut it up into smaller segments. The implication was clearly that trend-setting art-dealers and their gullible customers would never know they were getting only a piece of a large-scale conception.

Fortunately for Pollock, MoMA's recent gallery enlargements provided epic running wall-spaces to show huge abstract murals. But even in his heyday, there were the patrons and museums eager for drip & spatter on a large scale.

It is easy for some to dismiss Pollock's major abstractions as huge jokes, as Emperor's New Clothes, clever cons. Or simply as random scattering of basic paints on supine surfaces.

Nonetheless, there clearly was some planning before Pollock began a session. And the effects were not entirely random. This was not purely Accidental Art.

The rhythm of Pollock's repeated loops and swirls, the contrasts of dots and splats of bold colors, the overlays of liquid lines and stark spots and spatters of contrasting and complementing colors: all argue control and purpose in an act of liberating abandon.

When the Metropolitan recently showed pages from Pollock's sketchbooks, his sense of cubic forms—reducing figures in High Renaissance and Baroque masterpieces to series of connected solids—showed a talent precariously poised between the figurative and the abstract.

He studied with Thomas Hart Benton, but his later works don't even hint of this association.

Had Pollock even followed the beckoning style of the Mexican muralists, Orozco and Siquieros, he might have created yet another body of respectable figurative work.

But, after Picasso, what was a young painter to do, if he wanted to attract attention and win fame. Not to mention selling his work?

What was needed was Something Completely Different. And that he was able to provide. So much so, that he was one of the first Art Celebrities who was almost more famous for his celebrity than for his work.

Jackson Pollock became a Household Word even in households where his canvases and panels would never have been seen. Not even in reproductions.

In the current show, major and minor Pollocks are hung in profusion. Developments in his technique are chronicled.

Some ingenious art-conservators have even tried to recreate his painting methods. Their results are very decorative. As are MoMA's Pollock shopping-bags.

For the shop-till-you-drop crowd, there's even a Jackson Pollock Jazz CD. Not that he's jamming with a big-time back-up band of Benton and Orozco.

No, these are only some of his favorites. He liked to paint with jazz in the background.

His Long Island barn-studio has even been reconstructed. With black-and-white photos of the Master at Work.

And Hans Namuth's films of him at work in the studio are on view, which should clear up any remaining giggles about his painting as a put-on or the product of mindless flinging-about of left-over house-enamel.

How about his punching a hole in a pigment-tube, rather than squeezing the color out the screw-top?

What is most surprising to some new to Pollock is how short his really productive period was—before the booze and endemic desperation got to him.

Was he a Lost Soul, like James Dean, who also died in a drunken auto-crash?

The MoMA press-kit includes a number of laudatory quotes, notably from the then Pope, Clement Greenberg—who was in the habit of canonizing Living Favorites. Greenberg set the Official Tone: "The strongest painter of his generation…"

More acute is the observation of John Berger: "If he had not been talented… one would simply dismiss his work as incompetent, bogus, or irrelevant. As it is, Jackson Pollock's talent makes his work relevant. Through it one can see the disintegration of our culture." [Italics added.]

Berger wrote this for The New Statesman in 1958. Now we are 40 years farther downhill.

Had he lived and laid off the spirits, Jackson Pollock might be creating Installations at the Guggenheim with Robert Rauschenberg. But not with Ross Bleckner.

Two at the Guggenheim—

Rendezvous—Artworks from Paris & Manhattan

Obviously, those on view at MoMA from its permanent collection usually are taken for granted. Perhaps too much so, considering the MoMA treasures not currently on display.

But the remarkable works on loan from the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris are certainly not to be dismissed as just More of the Same to be seen at MoMA.

Together with some outstanding canvases from the Guggenheim Collection, these constitute a visual chronicle of the development of Modern Art up to 1970. The mix is a bit lopsided, for the Pompidou has concentrated on modern French artists, while the Guggenheim's bent has long been for non-objective painting.

At least this rendezvous gives the Guggenheim a plausible excuse to trot out some of its Kandinskys yet again.

Ordinarily, masterworks from the Pompidou would never leave Paris, let alone France. This is the first time that has been permitted.

And the real reason for allowing its canvases to fly at all is that the Centre is undergoing a two-year renovation and expansion.

Constantin Brancusi's bronze head—The Sleeping Muse—on loan to the Guggenheim from the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. Photo Courtesy of Guggenheim Museum.

Rather than put such remarkable works as Henri Matisse's The Dream and Constantin Brancusi's The Sleeping Muse in storage, the Centre is giving itself and its treasures a bit of Western Exposure.

Constantin Brancusi's marble head—The Muse—on view at the Guggenheim in Rendezvous. Photo Courtesy of Guggenheim Museum.

The latter sculpture, a polished bronze female head, lying on its right side, compares neatly with the Guggenheim's own Brancusi, called The Muse. This is a marble bust which echoes the stylized suggestion of facial features of the Pompidou head.

When the Centre Georges Pompidou opened in 1977, some cynics thought it would need both material and structural repair in short order. It wore its guts outside its skin, so to speak.

Designed by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers—with all its support-systems exposed on its exterior—it was widely derided by traditionalists.

And just as widely cheered by admirers of Modern Art, who consider architecture one of the most important expressions of art in any age.

Louise Bourgeois' Dangerous Passage, one of the "Invested Spaces" installed at the Guggenheim SoHo. Photo Courtesy of Guggenheim Museum.

Le Corbusier, Christian Boltanski, Yves Klein, and Jean Nouvel are among the architects and artists whose projects are on view. Some of these are presented as Installations. Others are present as models or photographs or videos.

Leaving aside the fanciful and the fantastic, it is amazing how much innovative and very attractive architecture is being designed and built in many areas of France. Paris is not the only showcase for splendid new buildings.

But some of the more imaginative arts-installations are just as provocative, if not habitable. Some play on architectural concepts and ideals.

Translucent and faintly transparent plastic sheeting has been used to construct exhibition spaces. This prevents a sense of confinement when the objects or visuals on view want to fly free.

For the first time, the basement exhibition area is open. Some of the most interesting space-inventions are on view here.

Those art-lovers who think they have no particular interest in architecture will surely find enough visionary and imaginary art/architecture to engage their attention. And then some.

This show is well worth a special excursion to SoHo!

Briefly Noted:

Building the Empire State Building
At 16 Wall Street Until March 31!

The Empire State Building is the architectural masterpiece of Shreve, Lamb, & Harmon. But the former Bankers Trust, at 14-16 Wall Street is also impressive.

This majestic exhibition venue is just across from the New York Stock Exchange and Federal Hall. It is worth a holiday excursion—which could end at South Street Seaport with cider and carols.

Under construction, the Art Deco Empire State Building rose at the astounding rate of a story a day! While there's a lot to see in the actual structure, the exhibition documents much that no longer shows on the surface. Or which has been forgotten.

The Real Thing, however, is in trouble. Its cladding has been causing problems for some time. Wind, weather, heat and cold: all take their toll. Long cracks have run up and down the corners, requiring frequent repairs.

There is now a marquee along the building's three street-fronts, to protect from falling masonry. This looks rather permanent—and it tries to suggest Art Deco design—but it obscures the sleek lines of the skyscraper and its elegant entrances.

The new exhibition, which runs until December 31, is especially instructive, however. It shows actual artworks which influenced her own visions in close proximity.

Among those whose images made such a strong impression on her that she even adapted some of them for her own compositions are such Masters as Lucas Cranach, Hendrik Golzius, and Francisco Goya.

More modern influences came from works by Ernst Barlach, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Eugene Carriere, and Max Klinger.

The gallery is located at 24 West 57th Street.

Curator Hideki Kawahara insists the duo's methods of dealing with daily-life "can apply to anyone living in a multicultural postmodernist environment."

"Gulping" involves absorbing random cultural phenomena, and then "Galloping" with the power of impulse, "adding a personal dimension to the fragment absorbed."

This show will run until January 16 in the heart of the Bowery. It's on the third floor of 26 Bowery, in fact.

The current show at the Taipei Gallery seeks to correct this impression. Works by Windy City artists such as Ray Yoshida, Fred Lo, Charles Liu, Michiko Itatani, and Jin Soo Kim demonstrate why they've had such an impact on Chicago's art-scene.

The gallery is in the bowels of the McGraw-Hill Building, 1221 Avenue of the Americas. Unfortunately, the show runs only until December 18, but the gallery usually provides handsome catalogues for its exhibitions.

Using a gift from the endlessly generous Phyllis Wattis, the museum purchased this and Andy Warhol's 1962 Red Liz from Christie's auction house.

In fact, 1998 has been a year of unprecedented acquisitions at SF MoMA. These include works by Louise Bourgeois, Marcel Duchamp, and Robert Arneson.

The trendy museum also acquired the Whitney's former director, David Ross.

The colorful invitation for the lecture features a snapshot of Krens and the Afro slogan cited above. The talk was one in a series at Vienna's trendy MAK, or Museum of Applied Arts.

Under the umbrella-title of Visionary Clients for a New Architecture, Krens discussed the conception, planning, and construction of the Bilbao Guggenheim. It is already one of the most visited of new museums.

Client Krens' title was: Developing the Museum for the 21st Century: A Vision Becomes Reality.

Winner of the Mies van der Rohe Award for Latin American Architecture: Multi-purpose building for Mexico City's Televisa, shown at MoMA. Photo Credit: Luis Gordoa.

This impressive Post-Modernist structure has just won the Mies van der Rohe Award for Latin American Architecture. In November, its designers, Enrique Norten and Bernardo Gómez-Pimienta, were honored at MoMA with an exhibition of their prize-winning project in the Philip Johnson Galleries.

Innovative projects of nine other architects—among the 24 finalists—are also briefly on view. This launches the new season of Architecture and Design Programs at MoMA

But this fall has also seen an onslaught of antiques brought in from outside the hallowed chambers and drill-halls of this imposing old brick fortress.

Wendy's shows always call forth a variety of 19th and 20th century treasures. Some of them look a bit the worse for wear—and not just because of their actual age. Dealers are constantly dragging their best and most showy pieces hither and yon, in hopes of a major sale.

Watching some stouter dealers wrestle heavy furniture into position at previews, I wonder why they didn't chose to deal in estate jewelry or old coins. Why not have valuable stock that doesn't weigh a ton and can easily travel?

[Why not play the flute, rather than the tuba or the bass? If you really love bull-fiddles and Mission Furniture, of course, there's nothing more to be said!]

Two of the most interesting Autumn shows at the Armory are annually staged by Sanford L. Smith. One is the Fall Antiques Show, specializing in marvelous Americana.

There are, of course, elegant examples of early American furniture. But the greatest ingenuity appears in the folk-art, both skilled and naive, and the various practical crafts.

Some of the crude signs for sale were hilarious in their designs and slogans. A few looked like the not-so-naive products of a dealer's back-room.

19th century woodcarvers must have known you cannot go wrong with an American Eagle, especially if you attach it to a weather-vane. Running horses remain eminently collectible as well.

Exhibitors included Laura Fisher, who specializes in antique quilts and other covers; The Tin Man, with Vermont sap buckets circa 1930, and With All Due Ceremony, with trade signs and hand-sewn 19th century American and parade flags.

For those collectors whose taste is not still Down on the Farm or marooned in Colonial Concord, Smith's Modernism & Photography: A Century of Art & Design is the seasonal high point at the Armory.

Some of the historic photographs can hardly be classed as Modern, but they are all the more attractive for their rarity and subject-matter.

For fans of Art Deco, the furniture, wrought-iron, glass, ceramics, silver, sculpture, paintings, posters, costumes, and first-edition books on display provide an almost endless array of desirable and valuable collectibles.

Among exhibitors were Barry Friedman Ltd., Deco Deluxe, Decodence, Robert Gingold, Maison Gerard, Moderne Gallery, Ophir Gallery, and the Witkin Gallery.

This year's preview was an impressive benefit for the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Its Lifetime Achievement Award in the Decorative Arts was won by Alberto Alessi, Jr., a distinguished manufacturer and marketer of fine designs.

Karim Rashid won the Museum's Young Designer Award. He designs furniture, lighting, and other products. And he's Professor of Industrial Design at Philadelphia's University of the Arts.

A brochure for the Society's handsome publication, the Classical Realism Journal, has just arrived. It is addressed to your reporter and Curators' Choice.

A cover-page of this journal features Bouguereau's At the Edge of the River. Smack in the middle, seated on a stone, is a waif-like girl with a Madonna-like halo of flowers. It is enough to make Norman Rockwell sigh.

The only reason I can imagine for receiving this flyer is that I have previously reported exhibitions at the Dahesh Museum. Its stock-in-trade is 19th century academic painting.

Such canvases are by no means all sentimentality or technical contrivance. But too many of them are. There has to be a good reason why few of the painters are known today.

The announced aims of the Society are "preserving and promoting Classical Realist and New American Impressionist painting." If there's a Not-So-Hidden Agenda, it may be to promote the careers of specific favored painters, such as Stephen Gjertson.

Just in case your curiosity gets the better of your good judgment, these Art Crusaders can be contacted at 1313 Fifth Street SE, Minneapolis, MN 55414. If there's anything to Numerology, 1313 is twofold bad luck.

The next installment is due in June 2002. It will surely again make the baroque capital of Hessian Kassel a magnet for art-lovers and the merely curious.

While there are a number of distinctive artists at work in Nigeria, it is not for his African nativity that Enwezor has been chosen. The search committee was especially impressed with his ideas for "making contemporary art accessible to the public."

Kassel's various venues—which include the historic railroad station—could certainly profit from greater ease of access. And less Davidian crowding.

Actually, Okwui Enwezor's credentials for the Kassel curatorship are outstanding. In 1993, he founded the Journal of Contemporary African Art, published by Cornell University Press.

In 1996, he organized the greatly praised Johannesburg Biennial in South Africa. At present, he's assembling an exhibition of contemporary art for the Art Institute of Chicago.

Currently, he lives in Brooklyn, having come to the United States in 1883. He studied political science at Jersey City State College.

His interest in poetry led him to language-based art-forms. And from that on to art criticism.

For the forthcoming Dokumenta XI, Enwezor foresees a theme of Globalization and its effects on art in different cultures. Such a focus can prove both provocative and productive.

Facade of National Gallery of Ireland. Photo Copyright & Copy—Glenn Loney 1998/The Everett Collection.

Judging from major acquisitions purchased with funds from his estate and those of other patrons, the culture-level has risen noticeably over the years. Not that the dam has been in danger of overflowing, for some mediocre Irish painters have to be included in the collections.

Nonetheless, major eras in Western Art are well represented, both by masterpieces and lesser works. And some of the native artists on view are also very impressive, although little known in the Americas.

Unfortunately, the Shavian Bequest comes to an end in the year 2000. Not that all GBS's writings will finally be in the Public Domain. Rather, this is the cut-off date Shaw stipulated.

By the Millennium, he must have reasoned, the collections would be respectably representative. Which they certainly are.

And other patrons—including the government of the Irish Republic—would have become financial sureties for the operation of the museum and the further development of its collections.

The museum's £13.5 million Clare Street extension will also be ready for more artworks by 2000 AD.

On a recent visit to Dublin, I was indeed impressed with the breadth and depth of the collections. But then I had last seen them in 1956, when they seemed almost as impoverished as many Dubliners.

When I tried to make contact with a press representative—arriving unannounced and unexpected—I ran into difficulties. I finally did see a PR person, but she was not very forthcoming, even with press-materials.

If I had not gone to Wexford for the Opera Festival, I could have attended a photo-call at the museum and made my own snaps of Prince Joachim and Princess Alexandra of Denmark. They were opening the exhibition: KrØyer and the Artists' Colony at Skagen.

When I asked for some courtesy slides, representative of the collections—to share with readers of this column—that proved impossible.

So I noted I'd take a photo of the exterior of the building instead. She told me that was not allowed, which seemed a strange architectural restriction indeed.

Especially as I was only one of a number of tourists who had already snapped the neo-classical facade that morning.

I did buy the handsome catalogue of the National Gallery, updated to 1998. Published by Scala Books, it's distributed in North America by the Antique Collectors' Club in Wappingers Falls, NY. It is divided into 8 sections, covering major national schools, from the Italian to the Irish.

Impressive moderns in that last group include Jack B. Yeats, William Orpen Stillorgan, and Roderic O'Conor, a partisan of bright colors and influences from Van Gogh onwards.

Admission to the National Gallery is free, but that 's hardly the only reason for making a beeline for its collections when you visit Dublin.

In the meantime, there's a website: http://www.nationalgallery.ie

New Books on Art: