MUSEUM/PARK
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Central Park
Friday, yesterday, we went to The Met to see the Irving Penn Photographic Exhibit.
"The most comprehensive retrospective to date of the work of the great American photographer Irving Penn (1917–2009), this exhibition marks the centennial of the artist's birth. Over the course of his nearly 70-year career, Penn mastered a pared-down aesthetic of studio photography that is distinguished for its meticulous attention to composition, nuance, and detail.
The exhibition follows the 2015 announcement of the landmark promised gift from The Irving Penn Foundation to The Met of more than 150 photographs by Penn, representing every period of the artist's dynamic career with the camera. The gift forms the core of the exhibition, which features more than 200 photographs by Penn, including iconic fashion studies of Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn, the artist's wife; exquisite still lifes; Quechua children in Cuzco, Peru; portraits of urban laborers; female nudes; tribesmen in New Guinea; and color flower studies. The artist's beloved portraits of cultural figures from Truman Capote, Picasso, and Colette to Ingmar Bergman and Issey Miyake are also featured. Rounding out the exhibition are photographs by Penn that entered The Met collection prior to the promised gift."
That included lunch in the Member's Dining Room, viewing the 19th And Early 20th Century European Paintings, and the Irving Penn Exhibit.
We then went to the roof terrace of The Met to see The Theater of Disappearance.
"Argentinian artist Adrián Villar Rojas has transformed the Cantor Roof with an intricate site-specific installation that uses the Museum itself as its raw material. Featuring detailed replicas of nearly 100 objects from The Met collection, The Theater of Disappearance encompasses thousands of years of artistic production over several continents and cultures, and fuses them with facsimiles of contemporary human figures as well as furniture, animals, cutlery, and food. Each object—whether a 1,000-year-old decorative plate or a human hand—is rendered in the same black or white material and coated in a thin layer of dust.
The artist has reconfigured the environment of the Cantor Roof by adding a new pergola, a grand tiled floor, a bar, public benches and augmented planting throughout the space. The Met's own alphabet has even been incorporated into the graphic identity of the project. To realize this extensive work, the artist immersed himself in the Museum and its staff for many months, holding conversations with the curators, conservators, managers, and technicians across every department who contributed to the realization of this installation."
We then went to the roof terrace of The Met to see The Theater of Disappearance.
"Argentinian artist Adrián Villar Rojas has transformed the Cantor Roof with an intricate site-specific installation that uses the Museum itself as its raw material. Featuring detailed replicas of nearly 100 objects from The Met collection, The Theater of Disappearance encompasses thousands of years of artistic production over several continents and cultures, and fuses them with facsimiles of contemporary human figures as well as furniture, animals, cutlery, and food. Each object—whether a 1,000-year-old decorative plate or a human hand—is rendered in the same black or white material and coated in a thin layer of dust.
The artist has reconfigured the environment of the Cantor Roof by adding a new pergola, a grand tiled floor, a bar, public benches and augmented planting throughout the space. The Met's own alphabet has even been incorporated into the graphic identity of the project. To realize this extensive work, the artist immersed himself in the Museum and its staff for many months, holding conversations with the curators, conservators, managers, and technicians across every department who contributed to the realization of this installation."
Saturday, today, we walked into Central Park from the South and walked up the Mall to the Loeb Boat House and then over to 5th Avenue. The weather and the park were perfect. There I got a Halal Falafel Lamb Gyro and Carolyn got a Kosher Hot Dog. We sat for an hour eating and watching people walk by.
We then walked home down 5th Avenue from 73rd to Rockefeller Center at 50th. There we saw the Seated Ballerina.
Jeff Koons’s Ballerina caught up in a pas de deux
Prima ballerina? Oksana Zhnikrup's porcelain figure, left, and Jeff Koons's inflatable Seated Ballerina
Jeff Koons’s 45-foot-tall inflatable sculpture Seated Ballerina, installed at Rockefeller Center earlier this month (until 2 June), is not only drawing crowds in Manhattan. The kitschy work of appropriation art has also attracted a surprising amount of attention in Ukraine.
In a 22 May Facebook post, Lado Pochkhua, a New York-based Georgian artist, pointed out the sculpture’s striking resemblance to a porcelain figure designed by the Ukrainian artist Oksana Zhnikrup. Zhnikrup, who died in 1993, worked for the Kiev Experimental Art Ceramics Factory.
While some have called for Ukraine to confiscate the sculpture and install it in Kiev, Alexander Roitburd, a well-known and outspoken artist noted on Facebook that “I’m even glad that he’s popularising Ukrainian art”, adding however: “I hope that he named the source.”
A spokeswoman for Koons's studio said: "We are aware of Oksana Zhnikrup’s work and have a license to use it for Mr Koons’s work."
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