The Frick Collection was outstanding. Housed in the owner and collector's actual housed the atmosphere was completely natural. The majority of the art was from the nineteenth century and blended well with the architecture and furnishings of the time. But there were also some earlier art from Italy that were just as impressive, such as a small piece by Cimabue. The trip was enhanced by the audio tour we took, allowing us to explore the first floor of the Frick house at our own leisure. It was definitely another course in art history that we couldn't get anywhere else. Did you know that Manet cut one of his paintings in half to rework both parts into separate paintings? It's an uncommon practice but not unheard of!
After we made stops at two galleries, one being Hirschl and Adler Modern. This continued on the theme of mostly nineteenth century or earlier art, at least on the first floor. On the second floor was a series of watercolor paintings by an English artist - Alexander Creswell. His stuff was amazing, having a high command and control of the medium. It was also interesting that we've seen a lot of watercolorists in this trip, but it isn't a dominate form. As Tim had mention in a conversation later that day, none are really dominating; at least overwhelmingly so. Video art installations and watercolor have been more prevalent than probably most of us thought though.
Today was just as good, if not a bit better. We went down to Columbus Circle and went to MAD: the Museum of Arts and Design. It was insane. We started from the sixth floor with open studios and worked our way down. In said studios we met a woman names Malika Green who made wearable art in the form of shoes. Her stuff is awesome. It brings together the sculptural arts with fashion in an amazing way. When asked about her aspirations after her residency at the museum, she answered with wanting to perhaps work for Lady Gaga. With her fun and funky footwear, I'm sure none of us would be surprised if that became a reality - working under the Fame Monster or some other trendsetter.
The next to floors below held the exhibition of Dead or Alive and we all have to admit it was spectacular. Each piece was made with some kind of biological material and even with those pretenses the application was vast. There was a lot of crazy and complex stuff such as a pile of rat bones collected from owl pellets to a skull made of scarab beetle shells. I think we all have to admit that one of the most impressive or at least perhaps OCD items was a piece called "Fragile Future.3" done by studio DRIFT. It was a series of LED lights with multiple dandelion seeds individually glued to each light by means of tweezers. It was insane, but the whole exhibition was.
The next floor held a series of woven or wound items as well pieces from the museums ceramic collection, but the second floor was where another heaving hitting exhibition was located. On it's almost closing day - it closes tomorrow (2/5), we saw the works of Viola Frey. Her monumental ceramic sculptures were incredible. Making a lot of larger than life forms she captured the human figure with a splash of abstract expressionism in their coloring. The description of her work on one of the walls explained it as the line between art and craft diverging and also merging in her work. She definitely helped bring the ceramic arts into the fine art world.
All in all it was an incredible day and weekend. Good thing we have tomorrow to relax and process it all a bit before jumping back in . . .
*Note: All pictures found from frick.org or google image search*
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