Watteau, Music and Theater
Metropolitan Museum of Art
September 22-November 29
Like no other artist, Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) intrigues the viewer's eye and perplexes the mind, who lures the imagination and yet leaves us wondering if we had missed some essential element that would reveal exactly what Watteau intended to say with his work. The subtlety of Watteau's drawings, his use of the "trois crayons" method (three-colored chalks) and his skill at observation of human form and expression translate into magical paintings.
Watteau was very interested in music and theater, the most popular form of entertainment in the 18th century. Whether his paintings actually depict specific actors or just models dressed in theatrical costumes acting out scenes from particular plays is not clear but through theater and the actors, Watteau was able to blur reality and fantasy. We walk away from his paintings suspecting that what we are witnessing here is also Watteau himself as the protagonist of the works as he expresses his own longing, human frailty and desire through the magic of these works. This exhibit presents a rare opportunity to see so many of Watteau's works gathered at one time. It is a small but worthy exhibit to see.

The Milkmaid by Vermeer
Metropolitan Museum of Art
September 10-November 29
One of Johannes Vermeer's (1632-1675) masterpieces, the Milkmaid is here on a visit from the Netherlands, which it hasn't left since 1939. I would greatly recommend for everyone to seize the opportunity to see this jewel of Vermeer's oeuvre. You will be surprised at how small the work is and certainly spend time examining it up close. The subtle, enigmatic details that add up like layers enveloping this work as a cocoon of underlying intention are worth looking for. Vermeer is a master here of the effects of light on the ordinary objects around a seemingly ordinary kitchen. The milkmaid appears to us to be a model of virtue and hard work. Yet, other elements are subtly disguised within the objects and the maid herself. What do the Delft tiles along the bottom of the wall depict? What is she making? What is she thinking while she is making the dish? Is there a certain meaning infusing the objects such as the pitcher itself, and the action of pouring the milk? I will leave it to the visitor to find out. The show also presents Vermeer's five works from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum as well as a few other Dutch 17th century paintings by his contemporaries such as Pieter de Hooch and Gerard Dou.
This is a small but exciting show to see, not to be missed!

Kandinsky
Guggenheim Museum
September 18-January 23, 2010
Vasiliy Kandinsky (1866-1944) was the Russian born artist whose search for abstract expression through colors and forms by way of musical inspiration is on view at the Guggenheim museum, which boasts one of the largest collections of his works. The Guggenheim has joined forces with the Centre Pompidou in Paris and Stadtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich to put together this traveling exhibit.
As you ascend the spiraling ramps, so does his work progress from colorful but somewhat amorphous figures and forms that are still biomorphic in their nature and are rooted in his Russian background to delicately combined and delineated color forms that dance and jump and congregate on his canvases in progressively more non-objective manner. One can almost hear the musical compositions he had in mind as he strove to achieve in art what he saw could be possible in music. Kandinsky had said that music should be seen and art should be heard. Look for Picture with an Archer, (1909), a painting that harks back to the folk-tales of his native land, saturated with deep and exuberant colors and forms that move the artist into the abstract direction and invite the viewer to contemplate spiritual triumph of good.
His later paintings do begin to resemble colorful and somewhat erratic musical pages. But though Kandinsky's works became free of figurative imagery they were not devoid of content and meaning. In the work In the Black Square (Juen 1923), for example, the Russian influences are now translated to his contemporaries such as Kasimir Malevich. Our eyes will quickly begin to relate what we see even in extreme abstract form to objects and concepts that we are familiar with. Here the geometry of the composition will still awake an illusion of a landscape. Walk through the exhibit with some kids and their eyes, especially, will begin to decipher what perhaps the artist intended subconsciously through all these circles, lines, and triangles. Several Circles (9126) is one of my favorite works, as Kandinsky reduces the imagery to utilizing only circular forms against a black background so that the painting takes us into an alternate universe of colors against its velvety blackness.
Kandinsky had started out in Russia but after years of dissatisfaction with his work not being readily accepted, he moved to Germany where the Bauhaus was in full force and he was allowed to teach, and eventually to Paris with the outbreak of WWII, where he lived until his death. In Germany Kandinsky formed the Blue Rider group together with Franz Marc, Paul Klee and others. His imagery and ideas were apocalyptic. Unlike his fellow Blue Rider artists, though, the colors of his works were bright and positive, there was hopefulness and optimism in how he portrayed the world even as historically tragic events unfolded and followed his own life.