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The Morgan Library & Museum exhibit Acquisitions Since 2004 |
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| Written by Holland Cotter |
| Monday, 21 September 2009 05:03 |
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Some of this he stored at a family home in London, and some at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he was president of the board. The rest ended up at his neo-Renaissance library-pavilion on Madison Avenue. To visit him there, surrounded by Madonnas, missals and brocaded walls, must have been some kind of papal experience. Nearly a century after Morgan's death, his library is still collecting - less spectacularly, but even more eclectically, on the evidence of "New at the Morgan: Acquisitions Since 2004," a potpourri of 100 drawings, manuscripts, books, letters and photographs at the Morgan Library & Museum. A few of these items might give him pause - an Andy Warhol poster of a liquor store receipt; a note from Oscar Wilde to his boyfriend - but most would probably make perfect sense, and, of course, leave him wanting more. If there are no grand paintings in the show, there are studies for some. The head of a young woman drawn in chalk by Watteau also graces the central figure in his two great "Cythera" paintings. Here, as there, you wonder what she is feeling as she looks back over her shoulder. Anticipated pleasure? Sinking-in regret? The paintings leave open the question of whether she and her band of amorous friends are setting out for the Isle of Love or departing from it. Van Gogh's ink study of his Arles bedroom, drawn in a letter to Gauguin from October 1888, is nearly identical to his painting of the same subject. Both images are true-to-life portraits of a place. But they are also projections of a fantasy: a wished-for safe haven as solidly grounded as plain country furniture. Samuel Palmer's "Oak Tree and Beech, Lullingstone Park," done around 1828, works in the opposite psychic direction. Using a mix of pencil, ink, watercolor and gouache, Palmer creates an exacting depiction of natural forms in shades of gray, then sets a line of yellow and red paint sizzling along the distant horizon: the granite-hard world we know will soon be a blaze of light.  Certainly Anthony van Dyck's suave and courtly ink portrait of the
17th-century architect Jacques Dubroeucq would have pleased him. So, no doubt,
would John Singer Sargent's watercolor of the artist Paul-César Helleu, the
original painter of the Grand Central Terminal ceiling, whose long, lithe,
leisurely form stretches right out of the picture. As an artist, Palmer, at least early on, had it all: skill, passion, focus and imagination. In the way true visionaries do, he managed to get outside himself, beyond himself, and to record what he saw from that distant but intimate place. If I were to recommend a handful of underappreciated historical figures for young artists to seek out today, he would be among them. Speaking of today, the show - organized by Isabelle Dervaux, curator of Modern and contemporary drawings at the Morgan - has a surprising amount of post-World War II material. There's that Warhol poster, done in 1967 to raise money for The Paris Review. And there are masterly sketches for projects by Bruce Nauman and Robert Morris. Mr. Morris's proposal to control the earth's temperature by burying heaters and air conditioners here and there had no takers in 1969, but seems very much of the present global-warming moment. Very much to the point, however, is the continuing expansion of the Morgan's book and manuscript collection. The gem among the new arrivals is an early-16th-century French prayer book made for, and possibly commissioned by, Claude de France, wife of François I. Smaller than a BlackBerry and sweetly illustrated, it is open to an image of the Holy Trinity framed by a truelove knot, François's signature emblem. Oscar Wilde, on the other hand, comes across as utterly relaxed in a mash note to Lord Alfred Douglas that reads, "I should awfully like to go away with you somewhere where it is hot and colored." The words, widely spaced, drift languidly down the page. If spoken, they would be interspersed with pauses and sighs. Opera fans will pick up the buzz of excitement emanating from the show's musical ephemera: a playbill for the 1788 Leipzig premiere of Mozart's "Don Giovanni"; a set of tickets for Wagner's "Ring" cycle during the 1876 debut season at Bayreuth festival in Germany. And the music itself is there, soundless but clear, in written and printed scores. A first-edition copy of Palestrina's Pope Marcellus Mass, printed in Rome in 1567, evokes memories of vocal textures as lucid as flowing water, which feel at home in this mini-Vatican of an art museum. The score is also a reminder of what fueled Morgan's shopping mania, uncurbable and lifelong. What compelled him was not primarily a love of beauty or ideas or status, you guess, but the primal need for things: firm, tangible, right here, right now - or rather here and there, now and then, in this polyphonic, time-leaping show. "New at the Morgan: Acquisitions Since 2004" continues through Oct. 18 at the Morgan Library & Museum, 225 Madison Avenue, at 36th Street; (212) 685-0008, www.themorgan.org. / By Holland Cotter / NY Times Click on logo below to add this article to your favorite Social Website ~ |
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